Inaugural Art Futures Awards honors outstanding Asian graduates in visual arts

Lau Jin-ki 劉彥希 (Hong Kong)

Chronicles of distortion 《失真圖記 》

2023

Stoneware, Porcelain 

73 x 109.5 x 4 cm

By utilizing printmaking and clay, daily photographs are translated, with the images overlapping and fading away simultaneously. The process involves twisting, distorting, deforming, and fracturing the images. Through repeated contemplation, the images solidify into three-dimensional forms, moving away from their original scenes and evolving into new and different scenarios.

Yoo Seokgeun (South Korea)

Giant 

2023

Live performance, Installation [Wood, Rope, Giant’s cervical vertebrae no.4, Rose thorn]

In traditional fairy tales or fantasy films, giants are often portrayed as foolish and villainous but wise and compassionate at the same time. Giant is experiencing the contradiction of being ‘far from the ground and far from the sky,’ unable to be contained by anything, and simultaneously embodying the paradox of being included in everything. The giant’s ambivalent state always shifts their position outside the ‘norm,’ and the inherent distinctions and ‘objectified ideologies’ in the world provide the causes of the tragedy experienced by the giant as the other. The giant responds to the irrationality of rejection based on distinctions by not revealing their physical abilities and always actively responding to the call of the other with a ‘listening’ attitude. 

Images with heterogeneous rhythms emerge between clips that faithfully follow the grammar of the film. At this moment, performers existing outside the footage invade the internal space of the video through physical passages, and lying in the “place where they stand at that time,” the image in the 2.35:1 frame, which shines on one wall is separate-dispersed while performers putting fingers together over branches in the air, by the eyes of performers scattered on the real-time scene. The segmented time of the narrative in the video can be delayed through the performance after the video, and moments when the roles of performers immediately shift and the relationships between characters are organically connected, become clearer when the performance utilizes the time and sound of the video. Each medium and character that constitutes “Giant” ‘touch’ each other, becoming an inevitable premise for each other’s existence, and their synthesis advocates violation, and the dual state of <Giant>, which refuses to be reproduced. 

“The space between bodies possesses nothing beyond the substantiality of the place where they reveal themselves to each other, that is, the emergence of their images. The space between bodies is the birth of those images. Images are not similar. There is even less similarity with illusion or fantasy. An image is the way bodies are offered to each other, arriving in the world, reaching boundaries, and thus giving glory to boundaries and flashes. One body is an image offered to other bodies, the entire corpus of countless images stretching from body to body, so colors, local shadows, folds, freckles, small scars, crescents, fingernails, hairs, veins, skulls, ribs, pelvis, abdomen, and cheeks, foam, tears, teeth, saliva, gaps, lumps, tongues, sweat, fluids, blood vessels, pain, and pleasure, and me, and you, everything that exists.”

Erina Yoshimura

There is our horizon

2023

Live performance

A long plastic foil tube is filled with water and then carried by members of the same community. As they navigate the ever-changing environment of the mountain path, which lacks even ground, the participants engage in the shared act of horizontally carrying the water. These actions allow the participants to express their individual characteristics and explore their relationships with one another. Simultaneously, the project addresses the social question of what equality truly entails.

Lim E-Lynn Joanne

The Smile Machine

2023

Clear and Mirror Acrylic, Raspberry pi, LED Lights, Glitter Round Stickers, Esp32 Camera, Postcards on Cardstock, Coloured Envelopes, Envelope Rack, Colour Markers

43 x 43 x 15 cm

The Smile Machine(2023) is an interactive art installation designed for children and the young-at-heart. Using a Raspberry Pi, a camera module and a custom colour display, it turns each unique smile into a burst of colour, creating a vibrant reflection of the participant’s emotions.

The installation also invites everyone to share positivity. Participants can write uplifting messages on postcards, transforming the gallery into a treasure hunt of joy. Hidden and found, these messages spread warmth and happiness.

The work aims to create a playful space, where children and the young-at-heart can explore the power of smiles, emotions and kind words. It encourages happiness, self-awareness, and a sense of wonder, painting the world in more colorful and joyful hues.

Ritwika Ganguly

Breath

2023

Animation

5” 03’

Breath is a work of animation that involves making moving images through sequential drawings of subtle movements experienced in the surroundings. The references are drawn from captured videos and aim at evoking a sense of stopping and being in the moment, observing the precision with which one second of a minor minute is made. This is a work of 24 hand-drawn watercolor frames and an animation followed by it.

He Chen 賀晨

Birth

2023

silicone, stainless steel, acrylic board

190 x 100 x 200 cm

Earth’s known life forms adhere to a carbon-based paradigm, but the possibility of alternative life forms, such as silicon-based life, cannot be dismissed. Is the definition of life, based on anthropocentric thinking, comprehensive and authoritative?
Birth aims to satirize the notion of human centrality by combining human body parts and steel to simulate the birth process of unconventional forms of life.