Howardena Pindell, Autobiography: India (Lakshmi), 1984, mixed media collage on paper. 18 x 20 1/2 x 2 in. (45.7 x 52.1 x 5.1 cm); Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
(Re)Generations: Rina Banerjee, Byron Kim, and Howardena Pindell amid the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection
March 4 – August 10, 2025
Patrons Preview Tour: Monday, March 3, 5:30-6pm
Members-Only Opening: Monday, March 3, 6-9pm
This exhibition reintroduces key works in Asia Society Museum’s Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of pre-modern Asian art through the lenses of three leading contemporary artists: Rina Banerjee, Byron Kim, and Howardena Pindell. Each artist has selected a number of works in the collection within which to situate their own new and existing works, approaching historic objects in the collection through their practices and from multiple cultures, heritages, and positions. Creating dialogues across multiple histories and places, these artists offer a range of new insights and entry points into the collection.
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Hiraki Sawa, trail (detail), 2005, single-channel video with animation and sound, duration: 14 minutes; Asia Society, New York: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold and Ruth Newman, 2011.18
Hiraki Sawa: Journeys in Place
March 4 – August 10, 2025
Japanese-born and London-based Hiraki Sawa creates video works that explore psychological landscapes, unexpected worlds, and the playful interweaving of domestic and imaginary spaces. His works traverse specific, often personal, landscapes to consider memory, migration, and displacement. Asia Society invited Sawa to frame his video trail (2005), held in the museum’s collection, with a selection of works from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, echoing the approach of the exhibition (Re)Generations in the museum’s 2nd- and 3rd-floor galleries. His selection of a small-scale pair of lion-dogs (flanking the video monitor) and bixies (mythical creatures) relate to the miniaturized camel who is the main protagonist of trail. Asia Society’s beloved elephant-headed sandstone Ganesha completes the display, bringing joy, good luck, and wealth to the many who venerate the popular deity.
Sawa’s trail is looped with his works fantasmagoria (2017) and pilgrim (2022), while the artist-made monitor box on view loops dwelling (2002) and elsewhere (2003). All five videos present abstracted montages of spaces that are intimate to the artist.
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Marcos Kueh, Woven Poster—Homo Servantis Erotis, 2023, industrial weaving, recycled PET, 8 colors; Courtesy Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam. Copyright © Marcos Kueh
Installations
March 4 – August 10, 2025
Also on view will be Marcos Kueh’s colorful, fluorescent tapestries that critically address the theme of eroticization and tourism, particularly on the island of Borneo, where Kueh was born and where identity and culture are commodified as touristic entertainment; Yoko Ono’s ongoing interactive art installation, Wish Tree, begun in 1996, where visitors are invited to write a wish on a paper tag and tie it to the tree; and Ai Wei Wei’s With Colored Vase, 2008, where he asks us to confront our values in relation to the past.
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