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New: The Tale of Shuten Doji
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Upcoming: March 21, 2009 - September 20, 2009
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This exhibition explores modes of visual narration through the museum's exceptional collection of works illustrating the Tale of Shuten Doji, which is about the conquest of the monster Shuten Doji by the hero Minamoto Yorimitsu (948-1021). This popular tale was retold by many artists during the Edo period (1615-1868), appeared in works commissioned for elite patrons, and was widely available in printed books. For the first time since their acquisition, on display are two sets of handscrolls, a pair of screens, sketches for a set of fan paintings by Kawanabe Kyosai and book illustrations by Hokusai and other artists together with paintings from private collections.
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New: Moving Perspectives: Lida Abdul and Dinh Q Le
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December 6, 2008 - March 1, 2009
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As part of the year-long series Moving Perspectives that focuses on recent works of video art that provide rich sensory experiences of the many changes taking place in contemporary Asia, works by Lida Abdul and Dinh Q Le are shown continuously. Both artists explore the shifting memory of trauma and the inevitable resilience of life. • Lida Abdul (b. 1973, Kabul, Afghanistan): After leaving Afghanistan at the start of Soviet occupation and subsequent years living in India and the West, Abdul currently divides her time between Los Angeles and Kabul, where she has created a series of short performance-based videos staged among the ruins of her homeland. In Bricksellers of Kabul (2006) and her most recent work In Transit (2008), children recycle the detritus of war and turn them into objects for survival and play. For Abdul, children and their imaginative acts embody the simplicity of hope amidst devastation. • Dinh Q Le (b. 1968, Ha-Tien, Vietnam): Similarly, Le returned to Vietnam to examine his own memories of wartime within the context of contemporary Vietnamese society. For Le, who grew up in the United States, the Vietnam War is an amalgamation of distant childhood memories, documentary materials, and Hollywood films. In The Farmers and the Helicopters, he focuses on the helicopter, both as a "death machine" and technological dream. Inspired by the actual story of a farmer who attempted to reconstruct his own helicopter, Le uses the multichannel video format to juxtapose contemporary interviews and images of the rural landscape with film footage to reveal more complex narratives surrounding the memory of war in a changing postwar Vietnam.
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New: Perspectives: S-Curve by Anish Kapoor
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November 22, 2008 - July 19, 2009
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As part of the Perspectives series of contemporary Asian art, on view is S-Curve (2006) by internationally-renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor. Consisting of two 16-foot lengths of polished steel that are gently curved to create a continuous convex and concave curve, the work recalls the exploration of form most famously embodied in Cloud Gate, in Chicago's Millennium Park. At a height of 7 feet and with highly reflective surfaces, S-Curve engages the viewer in a powerful physical experience. Known for his sublime approach to pure form, space, and materials since the early 1980s, Kapoor continues to examine spatial perception and the immateriality of the object in this work.
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New: Taking Shape: Ceramics in Southeast Asia
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April 1, 2007 - through 2010
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This exhibition of approximately 200 diverse and visually striking ceramic vessels from Southeast Asia explores the migration of pots from their makers to their users. This exhibition also illuminates the dimensions of international trade that brought southern Chinese ceramics into mainland Southeast Asia and from there reaching distant markets -- from Japan to Turkey. Spanning four millennia on invention and exchange, from the prehistoric period to the present, the vessels on view were crafted for rituals, burials, domestic use, and trade. These clay pots and jars, made permanent by firing in bonfires or kilns, form the most enduring record of human activities, interactions, and ideas about form and decoration in mainland Southeast Asia.
Web: www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/TakingShape.htm
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Last update: February 23, 2009, 13:08
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