The Asia Society Museum announces new artist projects and commissions, as well as an outdoor sculptural installation on Park Avenue, for Part 2 of the inaugural Asia Society Triennial. Titled We Do Not Dream Alone, the exhibition opens its next installment on March 26, 2021, and runs through June 27, 2021, with Xu Zhen, Eternity ~ an outdoor art installation on Park Avenue at 70th Street, on view March 16 through June 27, 2021. In response to the current moment—both nationally and globally—the Triennial’s mission is to connect cultures and inspire visitors through the arts.
The Asia Society Triennial Part 2 brings together a diverse range of artists showcasing a multitude of perspectives that highlight Asia’s rich contribution to the canon of contemporary art. This exhibition comprises more than 30 works—over half of which are new commissions—across the mediums of painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance.
Among these new commissions are Dokusho Dokushi Hello World, by Shanghai-based artist Lu Yang, an immersive virtual-reality experience evoking a solo journey towards spiritual enlightenment, as well as Reza Aramesh’s Study of the Vase as Fragmented Bodies, an installation of hand-thrown terracotta and white-clay vases modeled after Hellenistic urns that serves as a reminder of the subjective nature of connoisseurship.
Visitors will experience new works such as New Delhi-based multimedia artist Vibha Galhotra’s series The Final Feast (Staged Photographs), which explores issues of sustainability and food systems. Also featured is an interactive work by identical-twin artists, Mountain River Jump! (Huang Shan + Huang He). The collective’s work on view, Cards of Chinese Animal Idioms: Legends in Human World, merges the traditional Chinese practice of divination with contemporary technology, inviting visitors to learn their futures through forty-nine Chinese animal idioms.
“We are excited to welcome a new suite of thought-provoking artworks to the Asia Society Museum as part of the inaugural Asia Society Triennial,” said Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, cocurator of the Asia Society Triennial and vice president for Global Artistic Programs and director of Asia Society Museum. “We are grateful to our participating artists, many of whom had to reconceive their works due to changes wrought by COVID-19. We Do Not Dream Alone offers much-needed solace through the healing potential of art to inspire and empower.”
Another highlight of Part 2 of the Asia Society Triennial is an outdoor sculptural installation on Park Avenue at 70th Street by Chinese artist Xu Zhen titled Eternity—Male Figure, Statue of Venus Genetrix. The sculpture comprises an inverted replica of an eleventh-century figure from Cambodia that is part of the Asia Society Museum Collection, angled on top of a replica of a second-century Roman figure of Venus Genetrix that is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The installation, which will be on view just outside of the Asia Society Museum building for the duration of Part 2 of the Triennial, is undertaken in partnership with the Fund for Park Avenue under the auspices of the NYC Parks, Art in the Parks program.
Eternity – Male Figure, Statue of Venus Genetrix by Xu Zhen was commissioned by Asia Society Museum, New York, for the inaugural Asia Society Triennial, We Do Not Dream Alone.
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