Field Trip: 1st Asia Biennial and 5th Guangzhou Triennial
By Karena Lo
On December 11, the Guangdong Museum of Art (GDMoA) in Guangzhou unveiled the newly amalgamated 1st Asia Biennial and 5th Guangzhou Triennial. Already one of the largest festivals in Asia, it boasts an international curatorial team led by Dutch curator Henk Slager and Zhang Qing of National Art Museum of China.
All subsumed within one venue, the GDMoA, the exhibition shows works that have intimate ties with Asian culture, trade and history. Forty-seven artists from seventen countries contributed more than fifty works that represent the theme of “Asia Time”—a response to the sociopolitical and economic changes that have occurred in Asian regions over the last few years, and the challenges they face under forces of capitalism and globalization. A symposium was organized to accompany the exhibition, to which scholars, curators and cultural historians from museums and universities all over the world were invited to attend.
