Conversation

The session will expand on the thematic directions of Colomboscope, Rhythm Alliances, with Hajra Haider Karrar, followed by a conversation with Basir Mahmood on his practice.

Speakers
Hajra Haider Karrar, the Guest Curator of Colomboscope 2026
Basir Mahmood, Artist

Conversation

This panel explores the vibrant inter-Asian dialogues that reflect this shift, focusing on initiatives bridging West and East Asia—particularly those connecting the Gulf and East Asia.

Speakers
Jay Junghee Kim, Artistic Director, Curator, Founder/Director PUSH TO ENTER
Mizuho Yamazaki, Independent Researcher, Curator
Arnaud Morand, Independent Curator, Member of Asia Now 2025 Curatorial Collective, Head of Arts AFALULA
Han Mengyun, Artist

Moderator
Sophie Mayuko Arni, Independent Curator, Founding Editor of Global Art Daily

Conversation

Speakers
Annette Johansen, Director of  the Thorvaldsen Museum
Bharti Kher, Artist, represented by Perrotin, Hauser & Wirth and Nature Morte

Moderator
Kathy Alliou, Curator

Conversation

A conversation on hybrid art ecosystems across West and East Asia, where visual art intersects with performance, craft, research, and archives in public space. The panel looks at how cross-sector models—spanning public/private, commercial/non-commercial, and institutional/vernacular—respond to layered histories and emerging publics, favoring adaptability and long-term impact over spectacle.

Speakers
Vittoria Matarese, Independent Curator, Artistic Director, Riyadh Art Week
John Tain, Curator, Lahore Biennale
Anissa Touati, Curator, Visiting Scholar at Brown University and Co-curator of the Biennale BCK in Greece

Moderator
Arnaud Morand, Independent Curator and Head of Arts at Afalula

Conversation

Organized by the Musée Cernuschi in summer 2025, The Future of Forms revisits the pioneering 1950 exhibition that first introduced contemporary Japanese ceramics to France.
This conversation with artist Yoshimi Futamura explores her personal journey, the evolving dialogue between ceramic artists and museums, and the place of Japanese ceramics in France today.

Speakers
Pierre Gautier, Responsable des collections japonaises, Musée Cernuschi
Yoshimi Futamura, Artiste

Conversation

As South Asia’s art scene continues to evolve beyond its borders, a new generation of artists, curators, and cultural practitioners are reshaping how the region is seen and understood. In this conversation, curator Sofia Lanusse, artist Sajid Wajid Shaikh, and Sahil Arora, founder of Method (India), explore the shifting terrain of contemporary art across the subcontinent. Together, they discuss the ecosystems that nurture emerging practices, the networks that bridge local and global contexts, and the urgency of building spaces for experimentation and dialogue within and beyond South Asia.

Speakers
Sahil Arora, Founder & Curator, Method
Sajid Wahid Shaikh, Artist (India)

Moderator
Sofia Lanusse, Curator

Conversation

Speakers
Nav Haq, Senior Curator at M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp
Jamilya Nurkalieva, Director, Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture

Conversation

This panel brings together art professionals and cultural practitioners from or working in Kazakhstan to explore current developments shaping the country’s artistic landscape through the lens of gender.

Speakers
Aïda Adilbek, Multidisciplinary Artist and Curator, based in Almaty, Kazakhstan
Inga Lāce, Chief Curator, Almaty Museum of Arts, Kazakhstan
Jamilya Nurkalieva, Director, Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture
Dilda Ramazan, Independent Curator, based in Paris, France

Moderators
Carolina Hernández Muñoz, International Networks Manager, AWARE: Archive of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions
Matylda Taszycka, Head of Research Programs, AWARE: Archive of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions

*This title comes from artist Saule Souleimenova’s 2019 eponymous work.

Conversation

Through the lens of Sumakshi Singh’s practice, the conversation will explore the Indian contemporary art scene, its specificities, and its role within the global context.

Speakers
Sumakshi Singh, Artist and Educator
Amin Jaffar, Director of The Al Thani Collection
Shubhankar Bharti, Curator and Co-founder of TAK Contemporary

Moderator
Sayali Mundye, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art

Conversation

Created by Takesada Matsutani and Kate Van Houten, the Matsutani Prize of the SHOEN Endowment Fund, awarded annually since 2017, celebrates artistic individuality and cultural dialogue. Winner in 2019 and jury member in 2025, Nathanaëlle Herbelin will share her dual experience with the prize. Together speakers will discuss distance, cultural identity, and otherness in artistic practice.

Speakers:
Kate Van Houten, Artist, Co-founder and Vice President of the SHŌEN Foundation
Tom Laurent, Art critic, Head of support for creation and publications at the SHŌEN Foundation
Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Artist, Winner of the Matsutani Prize in 2019 and Member of the jury in 2025

Moderator
Liyu Yeo, Asia NOW VIP Ambassador

Conversation

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale’s sixth edition, curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, centers on process and imagines itself as a living ecosystem where bodies, histories, and practices grow in dialogue, a theme explored in conversation by artist-curator Nikhil Chopra, writer and researcher Dr. Shwetal Patel, and curator Anissa Touati.

Speakers
Dr. Shwetal A. Patel, Founding Member, Kochi-Muziris Biennale
Nikhil Chopra, Artist & Curator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025
Anissa Touati, Researcher at Brown University, USA, Co-Curator of the Biennale BCK in Greece

Conversation

Depuis 1740, la manufacture de Sèvres expérimente, innove et contribue à l’évolution des styles. Le savoir-faire des artisans et l’imagination des artistes invités se nourrissent mutuellement et font de la manufacture un lieu incontournable de la scène artistique contemporaine : de Zao Wou Ki à Yang Jiechang, de Lee Ufan à Kim Sooja, nombreux sont les artistes qui ont créé à la manufacture des œuvres emblématiques imaginées in situ en s’appuyant sur des techniques anciennes. Or ces collaborations récentes s’inscrivent dans une longue tradition marquée par des échanges artistiques et techniques constants entre la manufacture et le continent asiatique. Cette communication se propose ainsi de revenir sur près de trois siècles de regards croisés : pour la manufacture de Sèvres, l’Asie est tout à la fois source d’inspiration et source d’émulation ; et en retour, la manufacture de Sèvres exerce une intense fascination auprès des artistes invités.

Speakers
Céline Paul, directrice du Musée national de Céramique Manufactures nationales – Sèvres; Mobilier national

Conversation

Une conversation sur la façon dont l’art révèle les réalités culturelles et symboliques des matériaux — de la terre à l’artisanat, du troc aux échanges humains — et comment ces transformations façonnent notre compréhension de la valeur.

Speakers
Victoire de Pourtalès, Curator, Fondatrice de 91530 Le Marais
Désiré Moheb-Zandi, Artiste
Marion Flament, Artiste
Emanuele Coccia, Philosophe

Moderator
Benjamin Eymère, Co-fondateur, 91530 Le Marais

Conversation

K11 Art Foundation and Asia NOW warmly invite you to the K11 Salon – a conversation that ventures into the vibrant, tangled ecosystem where culture and technology intersect. Hear from artist Vivien Zhang and curator Alexis Loisel-Montambaux navigate creativity in the digital era, through deliberations in the studio, explorations of ecological and social relationships, and multisensorial approaches to exhibition making.

Speakers
CRO – Alexis Loisel-Montambaux, Curator and Writer
Vivien Zhang, Artist

Moderator
John Tain, Curator, Art historian, Writer

Conversation

A thought-provoking conversation exploring how art and China since 2008 has navigated the complex intersections of cultural identity, technological innovation, and global migration.

Speakers
Ying Kwok, Senior Curator at Tai Kwun
Yao Qingmei, Artist
Han Qian, Artist

Conversation

Les diasporas sont au cœur d’un dialogue constant entre leur culture d’origine et celle du pays d’accueil. De cette rencontre naît souvent une troisième culture, reflet d’identités plurielles et d’expériences partagées. Comment cette hybridité nourrit-elle le processus créatif des artistes et influence-t-elle le regard des publics ? Quel rôle jouent les collectionneurs, les institutions et le soft power dans cette dynamique ? Cette table ronde explorera les enjeux culturels, économiques et symboliques de la création issue des diasporas asiatiques.

Speakers
Anthony Phuong, Co-founder and Director of A2Z Gallery
Pierre-Antoine Donnet, Journalist and Editor, Founder of Asia Magazine
FU Liang, Artist, Matsutani Prize Candidate

Moderator
Jean-Michel Dumont, Co-founder and General Secretary of Asia Society France

Lecture-performance

This lecture-performance expands on Tintin Wulia’s 2024 drawing installation Memory is Frail (and Truth Elsewhere), which incorporates her essay Language No Pheromones originally written for the edited volume Field Guide to Bugs and Metamorphosis: Glitching Photography (Art & Theory Publishing, 2025). Blending storytelling, drawing, and projected text, the live essay traces how distance—bodily, technological, and emotional—structures both knowledge and violence. It becomes both a tool and a wound, shaping how we see and harm, remember and imagine. From frozen ants to distant wars, from telescopes to touch, Wulia follows the line between observation and empathy. Through family stories and acts of drawing, Wulia reclaims understanding as something made in relation: through shared emotion and collective imagination.

Presented by BAIK ART

Conversation

This session brings together Yuan Fuca, Marie Martraire, Clara Che Wei Peh, Abi Tariq and Eunice Tsang to explore how an ethos of resonance, kinship and DIY contribute to co-building new networks and para-institutions as critical gestures that rethink art institutional systems and foster new forms of exchange and mutual support across the art world.

Speakers
Marie Martraire,  Curator and Director of Collections & Special Programs of KADIST
Yuan Fuca, writer, curator, and researcher, Associate Program Director for China at Kadist.
Eunice Tsang, Curator and founder of Current Plans
Clara Che Wei Peh, Independent curator and writer
Abi Tariq, Artist and Director of Programs at AFIELD

Conversation

Une discussion autour de la creator economy comme voie d’autonomie créative. Comment repenser la valeur et la circulation de l’art hors des modèles traditionnels ?

Speakers
Sébastien Borget, Co-fondateur, The Sandbox
Sébastien Devaud (Agoria), Artiste et musicien
Victoire de Pourtalès, Fondatrice 91.530 Le Marais

Moderator
Benjamin Eymère, Fondateur, Soilonic

Conversation

This panel brings together artists Anum, Hoa Dung Clerget and Macha Pangilinan, who are re-examining art histories and cultural belief systems through the creation of their own unique realities and speculative imagery. 

Speakers
Hoa Dung Clerget, Artist
Noor Mahnun (Anum), Artist
Macha Pangilinan, Artist

Moderator
Chelsea Pettitt, Director of the Bagri Foundation

Conversation

Speakers
Golzar Yousefi, Curatorial Advisor, MACS MTO®
Nirvana Assili, Member of Zendeh Delan ensemble