The Winter issue of ArtReview Asia circles back to one of its favourite topics, the gift that keeps on giving, one year after the other: how identity is constructed. From the personal to the national. From the real world to the not-real one – the world of art history. Often in unexpected ways. With the odd posthuman take on all that chucked in for good measure.

Chinese writer Hu Anyan, whose bestselling debut I Deliver Parcels in Beijing (2023) has just been translated into English, talks to Lai Feiabout labour, freedom and solitude as both productive and destructive aspects of contemporary life.

Tyler Coburn traces how Japanese artists Hikaru Fujii, Yu Araki and Tatsuma Takeda look back to early encounters between Japan and foreign powers – spanning Japan’s period of nationalisation beginning in 1633, the arrival of four American warships in Edo Bay in 1853 that forced the reopening of the country and the ensuing decades of westernisation – to expose the ways in which imperialist narratives, racial hierarchies and cultural translations continue to shape Japan’s society today.

Channelling the old florist’s slogan ‘say it with flowers’, Ilaria Maria Sala examines Singapore’s botanical diplomacy and the ways in which the city-state has made nature a tool of foreign policy by creating a lineup of orchid hybrids for visiting political and celebrity figures: among them Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, Jackie Chan and Rodrigo Duterte. The last, a former president of the Philippines, now on trial at the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity. ‘Recruiting nature to diplomatic service’, writes Maria Sala, ‘unavoidably means asking it to flower in front of unsavoury politicians’. And begs the question of what happens to the flower once its human namesake has fallen from grace. Posthuman entanglement at its worst.

Connie Zheng’s map-based works, some of which centre the experiences of Asian Americans, are examined by Max Crosbie-Jones as speculative, research-driven tools that challenge received narratives of migration, labour and environmental history. Her multifaceted work negotiates ‘the rigorously erudite… and the avowedly self-expressive and dreamy’, claims Crosbie-Jones. ‘In aesthetic terms, the latter… seems to be winning’.

Also in this issue, Mark Rappolt annotates Stella Kramrisch’s translation of The Vishnudharmottara, reconsidering one of the earliest guides to investing images with meaning; Lai Fei takes a look at the work of Peng Zuqiang; and Adeline Chia argues that one year into a new government, and 25 years into art collective ruangrupa, Indonesia is the setting for lively debates around capitalism and its countercultures.

Plus reviews of Ghost 2568 in Bangkok, Zheng Bo in New York, Samson Young in Taipei, Yuko Mohri in Milan, the Aichi Triennale, reviews of books by Wong Phui Nam, Bhisham Sahni, and more.

Art Review