Asia NOW has selected 65 leading contemporary art galleries from all over the world, presenting more than 220 artists coming from 26 territories from all over Asia and its diaspora, stretching from Central Asia to Asia-Pacific, including West, South, South-East and East Asia.

Slavs and Tatars will be the first artists to take over as Guest Curators for the 9th edition of Asia NOW. The exhibition proposed by the collective will bring together 14 artists from Central Asia working on textiles as a means of better understanding questions of crafts, identity and information. A reading room and a Chaikhaneh (tea salon) will act as further activation spaces for gathering, whether discursive or gustatory. 

It embodies and resonates with the issues highlighted by this edition. This includes an attention to emerging art scenes, a reevaluation of the relationship between craft and art, and the collective dimension of the artistic practice and experience.

By their very nature, textiles contain multitudes. This is true both in their production through the web and warp of several threads–as well as in their genealogy–through the transfer of collective knowledge and skills. The ikat of Central Asia adds a further element–via multiple rounds of dyeing–to this understanding of quantities, of abundance, of excess. What often results is a shimmer effect–as the threads are dyed prior to weaving and perfectly aligning them becomes a near impossible feat–in essence, a blur, but one which is sought after, coveted and prized.

The weaving of ikats is called abr-bandi, an Persianate term originally, meaning “to tie clouds.” Seen from the perch of the early 21st century, in the thick of the information age, the cloud-tying of ikats suggests another horizon: one of data and digitalization as much as one of dyes and fabric.

More information on the event can be found here.