New talents in Asian video art at the Joan Miró Foundation

The Fundació Joan Miró inaugurates the exhibition New Talents in Asian Video Art, a show dedicated to the works of the artists Musquiqui Chihying (Taipei, 1985) and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (Yogyakarta, 1989). The audiovisual works exhibited belong to two of the artists who won the Han Nefkens Foundation - LOOP Barcelona grant, in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró, which supports the production and dissemination of new voices in video art.

Musquiqui Chihying's work The Lighting explores the biases of the film and technology industries in the lighting of racialized subjects. Through interviews with lighting technicians and mobile photography specialists, the artist analyzes the relationship between visual representation and colonial history. The piece combines aesthetics inspired by 1970s kung fu cinema with contemporary digital technologies, including an artificial intelligence-generated narrator with the face of Bruce Lee.

The Lighting, Musquiqui Chihyihg (2021)

Meanwhile, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno presents Reversal and Terra Incognita, two pieces from his Phantoms trilogy, in which he explores jathilan, a traditional Javanese dance in which participants enter a trance state. The work connects this phenomenon with resistance to political repression and the colonial memory of Indonesia, creating a hypnotic visual experience full of symbolism.

The Fundació Joan Miró, in collaboration with several international institutions such as the Centre d'Art Contemporain de Générale , the MoCA de Taipei and the Inside-Out Art Museum de Beijing, highlights the relevance of video art as a means of expression in a time of cultural change and globalization. In this context, both works invite reflection on the political and social tensions in their respective societies, while exploring themes such as the representation of cultural identities, colonial history and the relationship between technology and visual narrative. The exhibition, which will be open to the public until May 18, reaffirms the Fundació Joan Miró's commitment to innovation and support for new voices in the contemporary art scene.

Nous talents del videoart asiàtic a la Fundació Joan Miró. Fotografia: Roberto Ruiz