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The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
From empty pools in Iran that symbolize a bygone era of hedonism to civic buildings in India transformed into residential communities, the built artefacts that inform these artists’ works reveal how broad social and political change impacts domestic space.
EXHIBITION
Words by Penny Craswell
Architecture, space and the city are rich subjects for artistic practice. The Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s tenth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art is a future-focused edition, encompassing work by more than 150 individual artists from 30 countries in the Asia Pacific region. The curatorial statement introduces a show that is “rich with stories of how to navigate through time and space, reimagine histories and explore connections to culture and place.” With this remit, it makes absolute sense that several of the works in the show have overlapping themes with architecture and the built environment. Three artists in particular deal with questions of architecture and space through three-dimensional form. Iranian artist Nazgol Ansarinia’s Connected Pools is a series of sculptures in gradations of blue plaster inspired by swimming pools, the blue symbolizing water. The work is inspired by the many pools in Tehran built for middle-class families prior to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that were subsequently seen as a sign of lavish hedonism and that now languish, disused and empty. Despite land being a high-value commodity in the city, these voids remain, a symbol of the physical and social chasms that remain in contemporary Iran. Through her works, Ansarinia explores a possible future in which these pools may be used once again. Also exploring the social aspect of housing in the city, this time in Kolkata, is Indian artist Rathin Barman. Notes from Lived Spaces is a series of sculptural pieces that
expresses the interiors of residential spaces as blocks of pigmented concrete – the upper forms in a terracotta red and the lower pieces in grey. Barman spoke to members of the communities in Kolkata’s migrant neighbourhoods to research how families occupy and restructure the interiors of the city’s existing buildings, adapting them to suit their daily lives, their cultural practices and their economic necessities. While Ansarinia and Barman are preoccupied with the political and social aspects of real-world architecture, Japanese artist Koji Ryui’s works are more speculative. Citadel is a wondrous installation of abstract forms, figurines and other recognizable shapes such as coffee cups and champagne flutes, which have been coated in sand. Whimsical and humorous, Ryui’s works climb a seven-metrehigh wall in the gallery, transforming mundane household objects into a fantastical cityscape – the artwork’s name itself, Citadel, carries the connotation of a grand fortresslike structure in a fairy tale. While the design of buildings is the substance of architecture, experiencing the built environment is everybody’s business – and its intersection with politics, family life and even fiction has proved inspirational for these artists.
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The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) is on show at QAGOMA in Brisbane until 25 April 2022. qagoma.qld.gov.au
POSTSCRIPT
01 Nazgol Ansarinia, Connected Pools (2020). Courtesy the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan. Photograph: Lorenzo Palmieri. 02 Rathin Barman, Notes from Lived Spaces 18 (2021). Courtesy the artist and Experimenter, Kolkata. Photograph: Merinda Campbell, QAGOMA. 03 Koji Ryui, Citadel (APT10 installation view, 2021). Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA.
