Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists, 2015

Rockbund Art Museum /October 30, 2015–January 3, 2016 The Rockbund Art Museum’s partnership with the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists leaves the museum free in terms of the artistic organization of the project, the composition of the jury (presided by Frogier as the museum’s director), the exhibition of work by the nominees, the catalog and a research program. The six artists shortlisted for the second edition (the first was in 2013) come from mainland China (Yang Xinguang and Guan Xiao, the latter the best known internationally, seen at the Lyon biennial), Taiwan (Huang Po-Chih, who made an excellent tri- bute to textile workers), the Philippines (Maria Taniguchi), Burma and Cambodia—a geopolitical ambit that is as fascinating as it is complex. Taniguchi (born 1981) won the prize with her large, darkly lit paintings, simultaneously conceptual and formalist, covering surfaces with aminiscule brick-shaped motif. Personally, I preferred Moe Satt (Burma, 1983), who provides a humanist and quite precise view of that society with his performances, videos and installations (such as Umbrellas, an ensemble of big parasols whose colors are those associated with the region’s political protest movements, which visitors can modify using the eight zippers each is equipped). In the end, however, I would have awarded the prize to Vandy Rattana (Cambodia, 1980), an outstanding artist whose work evokes the tragic history of his country. His sister was one of the Khmers rouges’ many victims. The memorable video @Monologue (2015), coproduced by the Jeu de Paume and the CAPC in Bordeaux, narrates his search for her last resting place. Avoiding the expectable, Rattana shakes up our forgetful memory by giving shape to what has become invisible.

J.-M. H Translation, LST