arthub | Publications

Arthub is a supporter of series of articles, magazines, and publications on art and visual culture in China and rest of Asia. This particular funding is provided either in the form of a commission or a barter agreement in return of a limited studio stay in Shanghai, in order to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of art and culture in this region through internationally acclaimed projects and texts that explore a range of issues pertaining to contemporary art. The publications can be in the form of articles, reports, art historical books, artist editions, journals, magazines, and online presentations. See recent articles publications commissioned by Arthub below.

I’m Not There, a satellite publication for Gwangju Biennale at Basel 2010 The Gwangju Biennale Foundation is proud to announce the publication of I’m Not There, a sourcebook edited by Biennale Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni with advisors Defne Ayas and Davide Quadrio of ArtHub Asia. With 572 pages and more than 400 color reproductions, I’m Not There brings together the work of 190 artists from Asia, making it [...]

With Charles Esche on China A collaborative encounter between the Van Abbemuseum and Arthub Asia, Double Infinity took place at the Dutch Culture Centre in Shanghai, parallel to the World Expo 2010. Comprising of an exhibition, a performance series, a lecture programme and a publication, Double Infinity marked the first time that a museum opened itself and its permanent collection [...]

The Cultural Agenda of Baghdad Arthub Asia has supported the research travels of this exciting project. As its third phase of The Cultural Agenda of Baghdad is now concluded, we are happy to disseminate this information.
In 2002 Atelier Veldwerk started also the project The Cultural Agenda of Baghdad. A series of ‘agendas’ that each chart a month in the cultural life of the city. Physically hard to [...]

Double Infinity publication The publication
The publication, designed by Dutch designer, Joost Grootens, seeks to map a world of crossovers and collisions between art and urban design starting from both Eindhoven and Shanghai. Through photographic essays Jiang Jun and Ingmar Swalue conceptually and aesthetically locate these strange but close sites for our comparison. The book includes contributions by the [...]

The Aesthetic Debate and the Nation State in World Exhibitions- Interview with Pieter van Wesemael Interview with Pieter van Wesemael
Professor Pieter van Wesemael is an urban designer and partner at Inbo Amsterdam, an architecture, consultancy and urbanism bureau. He is also Professor of Architectural Design and Urban Culture at the Technical University in Eindhoven. Van Wesemael’s research at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University of Delft presented the [...]

What’s Special in China’s Special Zones? What’s Special in China’s Special Zones?
JIANG Jun
Special zones might not be China’s invention, but it could be the society most in need of them. Chinese civilisation is well known for two unique features: a power that has occupied most of the territories in East Asia, where the span of both climate zones and elevation has [...]

A Vision for Expansion:Arthub Asia and Van Abbe Museum – Groundedness and Double Motivations. Means of Expansion: Arthub Asia and Van Abbe Museum – Groundedness1 and Double Motivations.
“Awareness of the importance of working cross culturally has been on the rise and many art activities now privilege cross cultural exchanges, as we face new challenges in cultural diversity, fragmentations and conflicts, both within a common locality and inter-locality.
Yet what are the [...]

Points of Encounter- a Timeline to be Completed Prepared by Defne Ayas for the occasion of Double Infinity book. TIMELINE 1852
Stichting van de eerste school waar
door jezuïeten westerse schilderkunst
wordt gedoceerd: het Tushanwan
Arts and Crafts Centre (Tushanwan
huaguan).
Founding of the first Jesuit school
teaching Western painting by
Jesuits – the Tushanwan Arts and
Crafts Centre (Tushanwan huaguan)
耶稣会创立第一所教授西方绘画的学
校...

About our Residency- STREETS THAT SING by Anne Warr April 2010
STREETS THAT SING
Along Wuxing Lu, once called Route Pershing, is a lane.
It curves a little as you walk along, concealing the large gateway towards the end. You’ll need your key. Fiddle fiddle. Proceed through the cat-scented, bike-lined undercroft, turn right and it’s the red gate at the end. Another key, a pad-lock, a barrel-bolt. You’re [...]

World Art, A NEW JOURNAL FOR 2011, call for papers The content of World Art will be broadly themed according to a number of generic categories, however, not every category will necessarily appear in each issue of the journal and others may be added:
Studies
We look for original and creative contributions to world art studies. We are keen to see work thThe content of World Art [...]

 Digestion: The Making of the New Silk Roads by Seph Rodney It was later I realised I had to look at the road in the title as a conduit for information, knowledge. The original road was such as well, though the story of its conduct of goods, that is, its commercial interchange, has had greater historical emphasis. Initially, I think we were traversing a few familiar [...]

Silk Roads publication: We are Not Professionals by Hakan Topal “We are not professionals” but this does not mean that we are incompetent, unskillful or clumsy. It does not mean that we are hobbyists or ‘Sunday painters’. We are not professionals, because we are not in the business of packaging, distributing, selling, and buying. If being a pro is about making money in [...]

Talking, Walking and Making – Transforming Ideas of a New Silk Road by Zoe Butt Constructive notes for a potential Stage Two….
The making of a road necessitates a journey. How that journey eventuates is both a question of mental and physical strategy. Re-tracing the knowledge of our inherited and lived memories is always a process of a kind of sentimental nostalgia, perhaps somewhat more traumatic for some. Performing these memories, [...]

Silk Road publication essay by Nikusha (Nikoloz) Chkhaidze Name: Nikusha (Nikoloz) Chkhaidze
Status: Indepedent artist
www.nikusha.info
Title: Conversation with democracy
The origin for this performance was the November 2007 demonstrations in Tbilisi. These were the first political demonstrations where Georgia’s‘democratic’ government used water cannons against protestors. The water cannons and the trucks on which they were mounted had both been imported from European Union. The government had [...]

NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE –– What is the Academic Context for Chinese Contemporary Art? by Lee Ambrozy Response to the Berlin Conference (info here) As contemporary scholarship integrates art from China into a broadening notion of art history, the growing list of important reasons for its study in the west are plagued by methodological fissures, differences between contexts and backgrounds, and a host of competing interests contending for the roles of gatekeepers in [...]

The Secret Li(f)e of Chinese Contemporary Art, by Roberta Lombardi “Culture” and “art” can no longer be simply extended to non-Western peoples and things. They can at worst be imposed, at best translated.
James Clifford It exists an education of the taste that have the gradual effect of masking, instilling arbitrary notions, the arbitraries of the notions instilled.
Pierre Bourdieu Civilization is just a chaotic jumble of rags [...]

Situating Socially Engaged Art in China This text is based on the paper by Zheng Zhuangzhou given in the occasion of “Negotiating Difference Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global Context”, in Berlin, October 2009. Please click here for more information about the symposium.
Within the past few years, a number of socially engaged art projects have emerged in China. Let me give you [...]

Between Anxiety and Exhilaration: Observations on the Attitudes and Outlooks of Chinese Contemporary Artists Post-residency Observations
Written by Chu Chu Yuan a.k.a. Zhu Ziyan
Chinese contemporary art has been the focus of global attention for a while now. And without a doubt, visitors to the Chinese art scenes in Shanghai and Beijing will feel the buzzing excitement, capped with the added element of the ‘exotic’ – a former communist nation with [...]

Daring to fail. Qiu Zhijie’s consciousness for experimentation “I believe that there are lots of secrets awaiting discovery. Man’s perceptive capabilities can be further raised.” Quote during a conversation with Wang Xingwei, 2007. After almost two years, the series of conversations I had with artists based in Shanghai and that led to the project 40+4, still come out to be a source of incredible inspiration. [...]

Access All Areas, IMMA publication out now! Dublin, Irland The Access All Areas symposium at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2006 was the
second in a series of international symposia that interrogated aspects of museums
and contemporary arts practice. This followed Curating Now, in 2004, and preceded
Museum21, in 2008. This publication presents texts based on the presentations
delivered over the two-day symposium. Access All Areas addressed [...]