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Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Departs For Australia Council
By Ruby Fung
Curator, academic, and former 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art director Mikala Tai will oversee visual arts at The Australia Council for the Arts. Portrait by Vien Tran. Courtesy 4A, Sydney.
Mikala Tai has left Sydney’s non-profit 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art after five years as its director to head up the visual arts department at The Australia Council for the Arts, according to a statement by 4A on October 20.
Under Tai’s leadership, 4A organized a number of high-profile exhibitions, including performance artist Xiao Lu’s first retrospective, “Impossible Dialogue” (2019), co-curated by Tai with Claire Roberts and Xu Hong, as well as multimedia artist Eugenia Lim’s Australia-wide traveling show, “The Ambassador” (2019–21). The organization also partnered with global initiatives, leading the performance program for Art Central Hong Kong since the fair’s 2017 edition and presenting Australian artists Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Owen Leong, and Kynan Tan at the inaugural Longli International New Media Arts Festival in 2016.
4A’s deputy chair, Julie Ewington, remarked: “Since joining 4A as Director in 2015, Mikala has led the organisation with a creative and entrepreneurial spirit that has built 4A's reputation locally and internationally. Her breadth of knowledge and skill as a researcher, curator, and academic have seen her lead 4A—and the wider sector—in a way that is accessible, inclusive and engaging.”
Prior to joining 4A, Tai, who holds a doctorate in contemporary Chinese art from the University of New South Wales, served as director of Melbourne Intercultural Fine Art gallery from 2009 to 2011, and founded Supergraph: Contemporary Graphic Art Fair in Melbourne in 2013. Tai will remain engaged in the curation of the Sydney show “I am a heart beating in the world: Diaspora Pavilion 2,” a collaboration between 4A and the International Curators Forum that will coincide with the 2022 Venice Biennale.
4A will be led by acting director Bridie Moran until a new director is hired. The recruitment process will be initiated by the organization’s board in due course.
Ruby Fung is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
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