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.