Each year, we put together the definitive list of artists to watch, identify the Asian artists on the rise, and shine a light on the exciting and provocative works enriching the region’s artistic and cultural landscape.
Here are 26 talents to put on your radar, from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
Chang Teng Yuan
Taiwan
Born in Kaohsiung and now living and working in Taipei, Chang Teng Yuan has created an artistic world around the concept of archaeology in a post-apocalyptic era. His works are a reflection of East and West cultural influences, distinguished by his bold use of simplistic lines, saturated colours, classical landscape elements, and the distinct Parrotman figure.
Szelit Cheung
Hong Kong
Not confining himself to just one creative area, cross-disciplinary artist Szelit Cheung works with painting, drawing, photography and installations. The latest concept to captivate him is the essence of void, and he explores this connection between presence and emptiness by using simple forms, colours and light as a means to echo and amplify intangible yet powerful sentiments.
Din Art
Cambodia
Borin Teang, known as Din Art in the art world, is one of Cambodia’s leading contemporary abstract artists, a visionary who transforms ancient and mystical apsara dancers into modern and vibrant masterpieces.
Kei Imazu
Japan / Indonesia
Kei Imazu is a dynamic painter, born in Yamaguchi, Japan, and living in Bandung, Indonesia. Her artistic senses allow her to blend the past and present through meticulous hand-painted canvases. Imazu depicts a surreal world in which time is an ever-changing element, while simultaneously merging baroque artistry with digital-age discoveries.
Etsu Egami
Japan
Artist and global citizen Etsu Egami has lived in the US and Europe, and actively works between Tokyo and New York, London and Beijing. Constantly shifting between countries and cultures, her work focuses heavily on the discipline of language and communication, using various media forms, including voice, video and drawings, to question humankind’s instincts and the authenticity of communication. Egami is also a postdoctoral researcher at Tsing Hua University.
Minyoung Kim
UK / South Korea
With an interest in capturing paradoxes and conveying equal doses of danger and humour in her work, South Korean artist Minyoung Kim has left a huge impression on those who’ve come across her creepy yet cute canvases, which often depict inanimate objects with googly eyes and feature her ubiquitous cat in various menacing situations.
Hilmi Johandi
Singapore
How do we remember what we never knew? When is collective memory reliable? Deconstructing nostalgia, memory and the past, and all of their discontents is what occupies Hilmi Johandi. The Singaporean artist, a graduate of Lasalle College of the Arts – Goldsmiths, explores and reinterprets the familiar and symbolic in Singapore’s memories.
Yuree Kensaku
Thailand
The candy-coated, pop-art visions of Thai-Japanese artist Yuree Kensaku present viewers with hyper-cute cartoon characters cavorting in surrealistic, technicolor landscapes. Her unmistakeable style has gained the 44-year-old Bangkok University graduate and part-time lecturer a loyal following among Thailand’s art community.
Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun
China
Artists and transdisciplinary researchers Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun live and work in Chengdu. Their art practice is research-based and process-driven, and their works highlight the reciprocal collaboration between them and their partners. With a particular interest in the material ecology of waters and the current socio-environmental realities of man, many of the duo’s intervention art projects are centred around the realities of rural villages and societies in China.
Atreyu Moniaga
Indonesia
Actor, filmmaker, and multifaceted artist Atreyu Moniaga from Jakarta produces work that explores the hidden narratives of symbolism. His artistic journey involves introspection and revelation, utilising illustration and photography to explore themes of self-discovery and acceptance.
Shafiq Nordin
Malaysia
Surrealism meets Pop in the satirical art of Shafiq Nordin. Every inch of his canvases is coloured with a riot of imagery, pattern and hue that sparks discussions on current affairs transpiring in real time.
Ruben Pang
Singapore
Best known for his evocative and fluid dreamscapes on metallic surfaces, Ruben Pang embarks on every new work with an intent to explore. Rather than create with a pre-conceived vision of the final work, Pang embraces the process.
Mire Lee
South Korea
Born in South Korea and now living and working between Seoul and Amsterdam, Mire Lee is a sculpture artist who makes art using concrete, steel, silicone, oil and clay, turning these industrial materials into raw, primordial and yet highly mechanised structures, which are both unsettling and visceral.
Meeson Jessica Pae
US / South Korea
Korean-American artist Meeson Jessica Pae is appearing on the radar of a growing number of collectors in Asia, fascinated by the fantasy worlds in fleshy pink and red hues that she paints and sculpts. Working
in a variety of media, including painting, video, sculpture and installation, Pae depicts the cavernous interiors of the body – its systems, architecture and landscapes – and explores its intricate connections with the wider systems of our environment and society.
Wantanee Siripattananuntakul
Thailand
After completing her studies at Silpakorn University, Wantanee Siripattananuntakul went to to study under professor Jean-Françis Guiton at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, eventually becoming
a meisterschüler (master pupil). Now back in Bangkok, she divides her time between lecturing at Silpakorn University and her own artistic pursuits.
Zhu Chen Wei
Taiwan
Zhu Chen Wei is a new-generation artist who’s making waves for his unique creative style and his keen observations of contemporary culture and consumer behaviour. His recent show, Madness Never Ends, was his largest solo exhibition with Artelli as well as his first in Macau.
Fawwaz Sukri
Malaysia
Fawwaz Sukri’s Pop Art paintings use the soft power inherent in art to discuss coercive political tactics
he observes on a global scale and the cultural homogenisation resulting from traditional and social media. His commentary touches on political and economic struggles between East and West as the Global South is strengthened in a post-colonial world.
Saroot Supasuthivech
Thailand
Born and raised in Bangkok, Saroot Supasuthivech studies mixed-media arts at Silpakorn University. His work often combines installation, image and sound to construct intensely sensorial hyperrealities that reimagine a range of localities, merging both chronologies and perspectives. “My areas of interest are beliefs, rituals and history,” he explains.
Peap Tarr and Lisa Mam
Cambodia
From the streets of Sydney to the islands of the Maldives, Peap Tarr and Lisa Mam have left their mark on the world with their stunning urban art. The couple met in Cambodia in 2011 and have been creating eye-catching murals that fuse their diverse backgrounds and cultures, earning them recognition and admiration from fans and brands.
Jono Toh
Hong Kong
Former fashion designer Jono Toh discovered his passion for painting during the pandemic, using it as a form of escapism from the lockdown. Years of technical training and a thorough understanding of composition and colour theory led to widespread interest from social media and collectors around the world.
Nor Tijan Firdaus
Malaysia
While studying for a master’s in fine art and technology in 2015, Nor Tijan Firdaus attended a sustainability seminar that profoundly affected her. Reassessing modern-day throw-away culture and questioning commercialism, Firdaus creates her distinctive E-Waste Assemblages by repurposing used computers, tablets and phones.
Vivien Zhang
China / UK
Beijing-born Vivien Zhang had a multicultural upbringing, moving first to Kenya and then to Thailand before settling in the UK. It’s through this lens of globalism and the breaking down of walls and borders that Zhang presents a cultural and geographical fluidity in her paintings, questioning the ever-changing, expanding and encompassing nature of contemporary culture and the paradoxes presented by this technological information age.
Anida Yoeu Ali
Cambodia
Now based in Tacoma in the US, Anida Yoeu Ali was born in Cambodia and fled the country with her family during the Khmer Rouge regime. Ali co-founded Studio Revolt, an independent artist-run collaborative media lab and was named senior artist-in-residence at the University of Washington Bothell. Her work has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Art Matters Foundation.
Hiroka Yamashita
Japan
In an artistic statement, Japanese artist Hiroka Yamashita once described the world as something that could “never be fully understood in a single person’s lifetime”. Born in Hyogo and now based in Okayama, Yamashita eschews an urban life, preferring to lead a satoyama lifestyle surrounded by nature.
