Asia Art Weekly News Bulletin – ISSUE 59 Week of 6 April 2026
(1) How this Catholic artist is sharing the faith in Japan
Japanese Catholic artist Haruhi Aisaka is using the familiar visual language of manga and anime to make Catholic faith feel intimate, native, and beautifully at home within Japanese culture.
(2) Nat’l Museum of Korea in 2025 ranks third worldwide in visitors
Buoyed by the global K‑pop wave, the National Museum of Korea surged to third place among the world’s most‑visited art museums in 2025.
(3) Liu Wei’s “You Like Pork?” leads Poly Hong Kong modern and contemporary art sale at US$3.5m
Poly Auction Hong Kong’s modern and contemporary art sale on 6 April realized about HK$76.4 million (US$9.8 million), led by Liu Wei’s Cynical Realism masterpiece You Like Pork? at HK$27.6 million.
(4) ‘5-year deal with Art Basel brings economic benefits’
Culture chief Rosanna Law said Hong Kong’s new five‑year partnership with Art Basel, which will make the city the fair’s sole regional host, will bring substantial economic benefits and job opportunities.
(1) How this Catholic artist is sharing the faith in Japan
(Photo Credit: Haruhi Aisaka/Aleteia)
Japanese Catholic artist Haruhi Aisaka is offering a fresh, quietly hopeful vision of how faith can speak to culture from within, letting Catholicism breathe through the familiar visual language of Japanese manga and anime.
At this year’s Comiket in Tokyo, where artists gather to showcase self‑published work, Aisaka presented Catholic‑themed illustrations that felt native rather than foreign: saints, Mary, and Christian symbols appeared as if they naturally belonged in a Japanese artistic world, not as imported religious icons. Her approach is not about “making Catholicism trendy” but about allowing the faith to be expressed in a style many Japanese people already know and love, using the expressive, emotionally open language of manga to make holiness feel intimate and near.
Aisaka has shared that her work has deepened her own faith, pushing her to study Scripture, the saints, and Church tradition in detail as she strives to ground her anime‑style depictions in something more than just surface aesthetics. Her St. Mary Magdalene, for instance, uses vivid anime conventions, red eyes, soft coloring, stylized hair, not to imitate traditional images but to convey a sense of who Mary Magdalene is through modern Japanese visual vocabulary.
While she initially drew fan art, her creative focus has shifted almost entirely to Christian themes, partly because drawing has become a way to express what she cannot fully say in words. In Japan, where Christianity remains a minority religion, seeing sacred images in a recognizably local style helps faith feel rooted rather than imported, quietly opening a door for viewers to encounter the Church not through arguments, but through beauty, recognition, and a sense of closeness.
News Source: https://aleteia.org/2026/04/06/how-this-catholic-artist-is-sharing-the-faith-in-japan/
(2) Nat’l Museum of Korea in 2025 ranks third worldwide in visitors
(Photo Credit:Lee Jeongwoo)
Fueled by the global K‑pop boom, interest in Korean cultural heritage has helped the National Museum of Korea (NMK) leap to third place among the world’s most‑visited art museums, with 6.5 million visitors in 2025, according to The Art Newspaper’s 2025 ranking.
The NMK’s attendance jumped more than 70 percent from 3.8 million in 2024, the largest such rise The Art Newspaper has recorded in absolute numbers, driven by sophisticated exhibition planning, innovative displays, and lively cultural events and museum merchandise. Foreign visitors made up about 3.55 percent of NMK’s total, highlighting growing international curiosity about Korea’s traditional culture, the very foundation of today’s K‑culture wave.
Other major Korean museums also broke into the global top 100, including the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (35th), Gyeongju National Museum (39th), Buyeo National Museum (78th), and Gongju National Museum (89th), with regional branches in Jinju, Gyeongju, Cheongju, Buyeo and Iksan all seeing sharp attendance gains. NMK Director You Hong‑june said the ranking reflects both rising global interest in Korea’s cultural roots and the sophisticated cultural appetite of Korean museum‑goers, who increasingly seek deeper connections with their heritage through museum visits.
News Source: https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=290017
(3) Liu Wei’s “You Like Pork?” leads Poly Hong Kong modern and contemporary art sale at US$3.5m
(Photo Credit: The Value)
Hong Kong’s art‑market momentum from March carried into early April as Poly Auction Hong Kong held its modern and contemporary art sale on 6 April, with 46 of 69 lots finding buyers and a total hammer of about HK$76.4 million (US$9.8 million), including three works that each exceeded HK$10 million. The top lot was Liu Wei’s 1995 painting You Like Pork?, a key work from his Cynical Realism strand that first appeared at the Venice Biennale the same year and sold for HK$27.6 million (US$3.5 million) via a phone bid arranged by art adviser Li Lanfang.
Painted during the height of China’s first market boom, You Like Pork? stages a grotesque, sensory‑rich critique of consumer culture and the commodification of the body, placing a nude woman at the centre of a composition ringed by neatly stacked slabs of meat and crude, phallic forms. Liu’s use of obliterated eyes, automatic‑looking numbering (“543183”, “034321”) and the blunt, slogan‑like repetition of “YOU LIKE PORK” turns the figure into a statistical unit within an emerging economic machine, where desire, sex and the self are processed like items on a supermarket conveyor belt.
By shunning overt political icons in favour of the intimate mechanics of craving and consumption, Liu offered international audiences a more unsettling, humorous lens on Chinese contemporary art at Venice and beyond, positioning You Like Pork? both as a period‑defining image and a characteristically sharp, metaphor‑laden piece within the broader Poly auction line‑up.
News Source: https://en.thevalue.com/articles/poly-auction-hong-kong-modern-contemporary-art-2026-spring-sale-result
(4) ‘5-year deal with Art Basel brings economic benefits’
(Photo Credit: RTHK)
Hong Kong’s culture chief Rosanna Law has said the city’s new five‑year partnership with Art Basel will bring significant economic benefits and job opportunities, underlining how the deal strengthens Hong Kong’s position as the art fair’s sole host in the region.
Appearing on a TVB programme, Law explained that large‑scale exhibitions like Art Basel generate strong interest across Asia, with governments and venues offering incentives to host them, so the agreement reflects both the city’s competitive edge and the wide‑ranging advantages in tourism, culture, arts and business transactions. The government’s long‑standing support for the annual show was a key factor in securing the multi‑year deal, she added, noting that it should help lift local art‑market turnover as Asia’s buyer base continues to grow and increasingly looks to Hong Kong as a hub for major transactions.
Beyond Art Basel, Law also outlined broader plans for the city’s cultural and sports infrastructure, saying policymakers will review key performance indicators for the Kai Tak Sports Park to ensure it delivers on public and economic goals. She suggested the park might expand into emerging sports formats, such as indoor car racing, to broaden its appeal and attract new audiences and events. Together, these moves signal an effort to leverage high‑profile international fixtures like Art Basel alongside home‑grown sports and entertainment venues to stimulate cross‑sector collaboration, tourism spending, and employment in creative, exhibition and event‑driven industries.
News Source: https://gbcode.rthk.hk/TuniS/news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1850013-20260405.htm
