Asia Art Weekly News Bulletin – ISSUE 31 Week of 8 September 2025
(1) Henderson Land partners with Art Hong Kong Society launches innovative exhibition at Cattle Depot
A groundbreaking contemporary art exhibition, “What’s It Worth?” is set to captivate Hong Kong audiences from September 5 to 28 at Cattle Depot Artist Village, Unit 8, located at 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon.
(2) From Sharjah to Seto: Hoor Al-Qasimi on connecting artists from the Middle East with Japan at Aichi Triennale
Hoor Al-Qasimi, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, topped ArtReview’s Power 100 list in 2024; this month, she takes the helm of one of Japan’s most prominent international art festivals: Aichi Triennale.
(3) Korean artist Lee Bul’s new Seoul exhibition shows what came after her shocking beginnings
Coming to Hong Kong in 2026, Lee’s mid-career survey at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art comprises over 150 sculptures, installations and more
(4) What to see at Singapore Design Week, from cyborg cockroaches to food of the future
Singapore Design Week 2025 showcases a new era of creative problem-solving – where even creepy-crawlies and sausages get re-engineered for the future.
(1) Henderson Land partners with Art Hong Kong Society launches innovative exhibition at Cattle Depot
(Photo Credit: The Standard)
The groundbreaking contemporary art exhibition “What’s It Worth?” launched at Hong Kong’s Cattle Depot Artist Village (September 5–28), challenging conventional art valuation by inviting visitors to assign personal prices to nearly 100 works across ink painting, sculpture, ceramics, and photography by 20 local artists. Sponsored by Henderson Land, sales general manager Thomas Lam highlighted the group’s commitment to integrating art into property development, citing projects like Highwood, Baker Circle, and The Henleyas examples where artistic elements enhance community landmarks. Lam noted strong public engagement, with the sales center at Mira Place recording 1,500 visitors and 500 registrations on opening day.
Curated by the Art Hong Kong Institute, the exhibition eliminates fixed pricing, encouraging audiences to act as “collectors” who determine artworks’ worth based on emotional resonance and personal interpretation. This innovative format, inspired by an earlier Artist Commune initiative, aims to disrupt market-driven valuation and foster a dynamic exchange where artists may respond to public assessments. The approach reframes art as a medium for social interaction and collective value negotiation, questioning traditional authority in cultural production and blurring the lines between spectators and co-creators.
Running daily with free admission, the exhibition serves as the launchpad for the “Artwork Co-Collection Movement,” creating an open platform for public participation in cultural discourse. Its significance was underscored by attendance from senior representatives of major developers (Henderson Land, Sun Hung Kai Properties) and cultural organizations, reflecting growing cross-sector collaboration in Hong Kong’s art scene. By merging artistic diversity with experimental economics, the event redefines how communities engage with creativity, emphasizing dialogue over transaction and inviting a reevaluation of art’s role in societal development.
News Source: https://www.thestandard.com.hk/arts-and-culture/article/310939/Henderson-Land-partners-with-Art-Hong-Kong-Society-launches-innovative-exhibition-at-Cattle-Depot
(2) From Sharjah to Seto: Hoor Al-Qasimi on connecting artists from the Middle East with Japan at Aichi Triennale
(Photo Credit: Sebastian Boettcher)
Hoor Al-Qasimi, Artistic Director of the Aichi Triennale (Japan’s major international art festival), is orchestrating its 2025 edition (September 13–November 30) featuring artists from 22 countries and territories across Aichi Prefecture. Despite exhaustion from intensive preparations, including dawn inspections at venues like the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum in Seto—her enthusiasm underscores the event’s significance. This marks her groundbreaking role as the first non-Japanese director in the festival’s history since its 2010 inception.
Al-Qasimi’s expertise stems from her transformative work as founding president of the Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), where she elevated the Sharjah Biennale and earned the top spot on ArtReview’s 2024 Power 100 list. Her deep ties to Japan include studying Japanese language and culture during her art training at London’s Slade School, complemented by fluency in Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Mandarin. The choice of Seto, a historic ceramic arts hub, reflects her deliberate curation beyond mainstream urban centers.
Al-Qasimi’s connection to the Aichi Triennale dates to 2010, when she first attended and admired its multi-city format spanning beyond Nagoya into lesser-known locales. This approach, contrasting with single-venue events, offers audiences a uniquely immersive regional experience. Her curatorial philosophy emphasizes accessibility and geographic diversity, aligning with her legacy of bridging Global South perspectives with international art discourse while honoring Japan’s local artistic heritage.
News Source: https://www.tatlerasia.com/lifestyle/arts/aichi-triennale-artistic-director-hoor-al-qasimi-interview
(3) Korean artist Lee Bul’s new Seoul exhibition shows what came after her shocking beginnings
(Photo Credit: SCMP)
South Korean artist Lee Bul first gained notoriety in the late 1980s and 1990s through radical performances confronting patriarchal norms and political repression. Her seminal works, including dangling nude from a Seoul theater rafters to narrate her illegal abortion (1989) and roaming streets in a grotesque tentacled costume (1990), used her body as a tool of shock and social critique. These early acts, such as Majestic Splendor (1997) at MoMA (where rotting sequin-covered fish forced closure due to odor), established her as a “woman warrior” challenging Korea’s conservative landscape.
Lee’s mid-career survey, “Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now” at Seoul’s Leeum Museum, intentionally bypasses her early shock tactics to focus on her shift toward exploring broader systemic forces: technology, ideology, and failed utopias. Central to this phase is her Mon Grand Récitseries, inspired by philosopher Lyotard’s concept of collapsing “grand narratives” (e.g., Enlightenment, Marxism). Through fragmented architectures and precarious monuments, like the 17-meter Willing To Be Vulnerable Zeppelin inflatable, she interrogates the ruins of idealized progress and the micro-stories emerging from its wreckage.
Lee’s work refracts Korea’s turbulent history, from Bunker (M. Bakhtin), referencing militarized childhood landscapes, to Aubade V, built from debris of dismantled DMZ guard posts after the 2018 inter-Korean summit. Despite dismissals of her ideological focus as “outdated,” her themes feel urgently contemporary amid modern polarization. As Lee notes: “The past is always summoned into the present… We’ve never overcome it.” The exhibition, featuring 150+ works, runs until January 2026 at Leeum before traveling to Hong Kong’s M+ in March, cementing her legacy as a visionary interrogator of broken ideals and resilient futures.
News Source: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts/article/3324688/korean-artist-lee-buls-new-seoul-exhibition-shows-what-came-after-her-shocking-beginnings
(4) What to see at Singapore Design Week, from cyborg cockroaches to food of the future
(Photo Credit: HTX/SCMP)
Singapore Design Week (SDW) 2025 unveils its most provocative exhibit: the “Unnatural History Museum” featuring cyborg cockroaches equipped with electronic backpacks for disaster rescue missions. Created by Kinetic Singapore’s Pann Lim, this National Design Centre installation reimagines reviled pests as lifesaving heroes, embodying Singapore’s talent for “turning challenges into opportunities.” The project exemplifies the festival’s “Nation by Design” theme (commemorating Singapore’s 60th independence anniversary), celebrating how human ingenuity transformed a resource-scarce nation into a modern city-state.
Four design districts anchor the festival (September 11–21), including the new Singapore Science Park zone curated by CapitaLand and OuterEdit. Highlights here include “Man+Machine” collaborations and Luke Tay’s futuristic dining experience. At the Marina District, architect Randy Chan reinterprets Singapore’s ubiquitous 1990s plastic stool (designed by Chew Moh-Jin) in “The Care Pavilion” at Millenia Walk – a structure built from 929 stools reimagined as vessels of “attentiveness, trust and empathy.” This transforms a commonplace object into a symbol of cultural identity and human connection.
SDW expands its global reach with ”Emerge” at FIND – Design Fair Asia, featuring 70+ designers from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and mainland China responding to “Dialogue through Design.” Their works, spanning furniture, art, and objets, demonstrate design’s power to bridge cultures and disciplines. Key events like the Design Futures Forum and experimental food project “The Sausage of the Future: Singapore Edition” further position SDW as a hub for reimagining tomorrow through creative exchange and technological reinvention.
