| ART ASIA Presents |
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SALAAM BOMBAY:BEAUTY AND CHAOS WITHIN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS .jpg) ANJALI BHARGAVA, Ladies Compartment 1, 2006 Digital C-print
Throughout the history of global art, the idea of the city—the undulating and varying components of the urban landscape—has served as a primary source of inspiration for artists of all backgrounds. Salaam Bombay: Beauty and Chaos within the Urban Environment is a conglomerated curatorial homage to the city.
The exhibition offers audiences various perspectives from which to understand the different layers of the city—from exploration of the city’s physical nature to its social, or collective, human element, as well as the individual’s navigation of urban space. Although this exhibition was originally inspired by Mira Nair’s beautiful and provocative 1988 film, Salaam Bombay!, I have chosen to ignore the geographical specificity of Bombay and instead extract its components—good, bad, and ugly—as a symbol of a larger idea of urbanity, of more universal or general motifs found within all urban environments. Drawing from the experience and expression of artists from the Middle East to South Asia, Salaam Bombay offers a personal, yet nonpartisan, presentation of the city. About the curator: Jasmine Wahi is a New York City–based curator and the co-founder of Project for Empty Space, a nonprofit arts organization that is dedicated to bringing contemporary art to communities through the use of abandoned and unusual urban spaces. Ms. Wahi currently serves on the board of directors of the South Asian Women’s Creative
BABALOGIC GUARDIANS ARTIST: Qin Weihong  QIN WEIHONG, Guardian of Life, 47" x 31" x 69", 120 x 80 x 175 cm, Bronze sculpture
ARTIST: Pratima Björkdahl Mix+Match is a multimedia, interactive installation that creates composite photographic portraits of people from different backgrounds, using technology, interactivity, social media, and content sharing. Björkdahl creates a theoretical representation of contemporary culture and uses the visual mixing of cultures and races to reflect the perpetual integration within our shrinking global culture.
Inspired by the traditional game “mix and match,” each portrait is divided into four squares, which users can rearrange with a swipe motion to create a unique face. There are more than one million distinct combinations. The release of the Mix+Match iPhone app coincides with Art Asia 2012, and is part of the Salaam Bombay: Beauty and Chaos in the Urban Environment exhibition. The remixed images will be projected onto a large screen, and visitors can download the app from the iTunes store, join in creating and discussing new portraits, and share their creations through the app’s integrated social media. Additional works by Pratima Björkdahl can be found at the Uprise Art booth. PAPER TIGER ARMY (2012) ARTIST: Fay Ku Originally commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum in 2012, Paper Tiger Army is the realization of several cultural and personal themes from artist Fay Ku’s life. Born in the year of the tiger, Ku has consistently defined herself in close association with her Chinese zodiac symbol. In Chinese, to call someone a paper tiger is an insult—albeit not one that is particularly strong or profane. Growing up in the United States, Ku found this phrase to be strange, exotic, and intriguing. For this installation, she chose paper material for its associations with Chinese cultural history and the funerary ritual of burning joss paper (paper money). Paper Tiger Army is also influenced by First Emperor Shihuangdi’s terracotta army necropolis. Individual paper tigers and additional works by Fay Ku can be found at the Uprise Art booth. THROUGH ANCIENT EYES ARTIST: Marlene Rose
“In Large Eternity Relic, as in all my work,” says Rose, “I look to my real and imaginary forebears for the root inspiration. “This work refers to a distant system of symbols that derive their power and strength from the common core we share with our ancestors. I feel myself riding this ancient energy, and in the glass, I reach out through time, linking the shards of what I have seen, linking these unnamed emotions, these visions, and these part-?remembered memories of the past.” Rose has won numerous awards for her glass sculpture and is internationally known in museums, as well as among top art and glass galleries. Her works are collected by the glass cognoscenti, by fine-art collectors, and by Hollywood A list celebrities.
ARTISTS: Monica Jahan Bose And Preema Nazia Andaleeb Gallery Cosmos presents two performances by two female artists. In their work, Preema Nazia Andaleeb and Monica Jahan Bose address gender, power, and the female body. Andaleeb’s piece, Marry My Egg, and Bose’s performance/installation, Indelible Scent, each present a woman carrying out a repetitive food-related act—one eating eggs while wearing bridal attire, the other chopping onions in a bed under a canopy of saris. Both artists use food to refer to consumption, fertility, and sexuality.
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LAURENS TAN, Babalogic II (Version 1), 2009, ABS architectural plastics, dual channel projection
