Resources

The Wooden Fish Ensemble plays the music of Hyo-shin Na, including the world premiere of a new work based on A Meadow by Czeslaw Milosz for piano solo. Program includes commentary by Hyo-shin.

Artist Koki Tanaka discusses his works.

Learn about how people in Bali approach the story of Rama and see how to facilitate different forms of Balinese kecak with Gamelan Sekar Jaya and teachers at the Asian Art Museum.

Justin Chin reads a poem he wrote in response to the artwork, Absence of God VII, 2008 by Raqib Shaw. This work is in the exhibition Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18 – September 2, 2012). Co-presented by Litquake.

In his most recent work, Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto explores political and cultural identity, particularly around the people and history of Java. Informed by theories drawn from the field of cultural studies, he connects local history to global movements with a focus on the fragility of changing identities.

“If the Qur’an is indeed a divine message to all peoples, what does it mean to an individual American in the 21st century?”

This is the question that artist Sandow Birk contemplated during his extensive travels through the Islamic world, which ultimately led to his nine-year project to transcribe and illustrate the entire Qur’an. Birk will present his project, American Qur’an, which finds connections between the universality of the messages in the sacred text and contemporary American life.

Birk will be joined by Bay Area artist Ala Ebtekar; Qamar Adamjee, Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of Art of the Indian Subcontinent; and Jeffrey Durham, Associate Curator of Himalayan Art, to discuss the roles art has played in religious and political contexts.

Prior to the Edo period (1615–1868), many painters and sculptors remained anonymous, occupying relatively equal status to carpenters and other artisans. The position of the artist during the Edo period changed, as artists became more successful financially, and better educated. Some of them began to be seen as celebrities, arbiters of taste with eccentric personalities. Although many still worked for low wages in obscurity, the Edo period marks the emergence of the artist as individual, as the genius creator in Japan. Learn more.

Xu Bing is renowned for his artistic explorations of the role of language in human life.

Refined Character Type: Arjuna, third of the Pandava (Pandawa) brothers, approx. 1950. Indonesia; West Java. Wood, cloth, and mixed media. From The Mimi and John Herbert Collection, F2000.86.115.

Explore the ancient kingdom of Angkor, which was one of the most powerful states in Southeast Asia from the 800s to the 1300s. A succession of kings built huge temples that remain in Cambodia today as some of the world’s greatest religious monuments.