15 Artists To Follow In Asia

1.      Korakrit Arunanondchai, Thailand

Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, combines traditional Thai motifs with Japanese manga to produce installation spaces with silkscreen and digital media. In his works, Arunanondchai weaves such icons as the snake, the cross, and the jewel which can mean a million disparate things in different contexts. Thus his art asks, in this moment, what does the transmigrated symbol mean? The artist transforms not only the symbol but also creates more abstracted iterations of them until they can exists only as solitary objects, installed in a fantasy gallery in a digital world.

Born in 1986, he is one of the youngest emerging artists. He had his fine arts training in the US where he presently resides.

2.      Liu Shih-tung, Taiwan

Experimentation is what Liu Shih-tung is primarily known for. Born in 1970 in central Taiwan, he has been a practicing artist since 1985 when he entered the newly established senior high school art major classes.  By the time Liu had graduated from college and completed his compulsory military service it was the early 1990s. Installation and performance art were popular mediums of expression in Taiwan at this time. In 1997 and 1998 Liu took part in two environmental art projects but later left installation and performance for a complete change in direction of art. Since early 2000, he had been focusing on collages.

3.      Gigi Scaria, India

Gigi Scaria is a immensely versatile artist working in multiple media including photography, sculpture and paintings. His work draws the viewer’s attention towards the painful truths of migrancy and displacement. Scaria primarily works with architectural images and often juxtaposes them in curious fashion to make biting statements.  

4.      J. Ariadhitya Pramuhendra, Indonesia

J. Ariadhitya Pramuhendra is a rising contemporary artist in Indonesia and in this group, perhaps the youngest. His works are autobiographical and mostly delves in the medium of photography and dramatic self-portraits in charcoal on canvas.

5.      Kana Morita, Japan,

Born in 1982, Kana Morita is one of the few artists of this generation who paint in the traditional fashion to create idyllic scenes. Her works are of significance as she delves into creation of fantasy as against the brutal standardization of the Japanese society. As against digitalization of the visual art, she makes large oil paintings depicting a world of her own imagination. Her style is original and fresh.

6.      Chen Fei, China

Chen Fei is fascinated by China’s consumer society. He was born at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, when farm and factory output was flagging and most imports were banned. Today, goods of all kinds are abundant. But Chen Fei cannot bring himself to celebrate this bounty. A Buddhist, he uses his art to warn people against greed and the lust for more. His cartoonishly cute images show fat, babyish characters, often with no features but a mouth, stuffed to bursting with gold, jewels, cosmetics and lucky charms. Since the Opening-Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s, China’s authoritarian rulers have given people only one kind of freedom, Chen Fei believes: to consume. The result has been “a mad chase after worldliness and fortune” that in his view is just another form of enslavement

7.      Devajyoti Ray, India

Devajyoti Ray’s works which he calls Pseudorealistic engages the viewer through fantastic colours and then exposes the myriad realities of his native land India. In his works, offbeat abstract shapes and colours combine together to create images that are unrealistic and yet give the feeling of something recent and real.  

8.       Li Wei , China

Li Wei works with himself as the protagonist of his story like works where he often depicts himself in apparently gravity-defying situations. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. He uses mirrors, metal wires, scaffolding, etc to create scenes, whose photographs are then exhibited.

9.      Kiko Escora, Philippines

In an era of non-figurative installations and merging of media to create multidimensional art, Kiko Escora is an exception. Escora’s works draw inspiration like in olden days from people around. But the novelty in his works come in his selection of themes and their brash of presentation. Severe-looking, quietly dignified and standoffish, Escora’s characters are often attired in the latest fashion. What invites one’s attention is not a particular physical feature but an expression, a vibe, a pose, or a gesture that would give away a subject’s uncompromising claim on his own life. These paintings are depictions of contemporary upbringing, made known by Manila’s iconic urban elite.

10.  Ng Swee Keat , Malaysia

Winner of this year’s Malaysian Emerging Artist Award, Ng Swee Keat’s paintings mostly show the demons of the modern world. Environment protection, man-machine interface are some of his hammered subjects. But the artist is in the process of creation of a style which is to be followed. Ng Swee Keat’s works are colourful, vigorous and yet disturbing, something that reminds of the modernization of every aspect of our lives.

11.  Mohammad Syahbandi SamaT, Malaysia

Mohammad Syahbandi Samat is the youngest in this list of emerging artists from Asia. His works are surrealistic and violent. Mostly in charcoal, pen and ink and sometimes a little paint, his artworks dazzles because of the brilliance of craft. Fairy-tale like images with a twist of the off-beat, Samat’s works are mostly monochromatic with droplets of chromatism in patches.

 

12.  Koo Sung Soo, South Korea

Koo Sung Soo is one of Korea’s most fascinating photographers whose works juxtapose colourful and whimsical objects against a greying Korean urban landscape. Koo Sung Soo transforms space into a gigantic yet empty amusement park and plays with architecture that captures the stimulating in the midst of a typically dull and mundane urban landscape. Koo Sung Soo thus satirizes the fast pace of modern Korean life which is colourful and yet so dull and mundane.

13.  Hein-kuhn Oh, South Korea

Hein-Kuhn Oh is a Seoul based photographer whose works look simple and cosmetic. Mostly photographs of women, that remind of fashion photography, however  asks the viewer to try to look beyond make-up, poses, and photographic conventions, which then reveals a deep malaise that afflicts the stereotypes about women- stereotypes that are strongly influenced by the entertainment world in South Korea. In his most famous series, “Cosmetic Girls”, he portrayed girls wearing make-up that he met on the streets, intrigued by the duality in the Korean society of the 'subject and object of desire'.

14.  Mahbubur Rahman Bangladesh

Mahbubur Rahman is one of the most important contemporary artists from
present- day Bangladesh and is part of a generation of Bangladeshi artists who have introduced new techniques, work and subject matters into their work. With his experimental ouevre and his active involvement in the socio-political milieu of Bangladesh, Mahbubur Rahman is also an commentator and a practicing artist who runs a platform for other emerging artists in Bangladesh.

15.  Cyra Ali, Pakistan

Cyra Ali is a feminist artist from Pakistan, whose installations of entwined female limbs wrapped in colourful silk creates a fascination commentary on the over-emphasised respect for female beauty while treating women as objects of desire. Her works are fresh and beautiful as also something that stands out against the contemporary art works of present day Pakistan.