The waiting is intolerable in the soupy Beijing heat of Liang Huiping’s sixth floor flat. She glares at the hourglass spinning endlessly on her computer. The screen glares back—a palimpsest of her warped reflection in the curved glass of the monitor, superimposed on her Instant Messenger. She clamps her legs together and squeezes, looking down at her black […]
Maya Kóvskaya
MAYA KOVSKAYA is a Delhi- and Beijing-based writer, art critic, curator, translator, scholar and consultant with over a decade of experience in China. She has curated numerous exhibitions in China, the USA, India, and Europe, and her art criticism appears regularly in art catalogues, international art magazines and academic journals. Her book, China Under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People’s Republic (2007), is available in bookstores worldwide.
Rana Dasgupta interviewed by Maya Kóvskaya: CARBON The Residue of Life and Daydreams
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as “the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation,” critically acclaimed writer and artist Rana Dasgupta made his debut on the international cultural scene in 2005 with his first novel, Tokyo Cancelled. This “story cycle” of post-modern folktales explored the ruptures, dislocations, multiplicities, and yearnings of our globalized times, with […]
Public Action Art and Performative Interventions in the Chinese Public Sphere: an article by Maya Kóvskaya
If the expansion of the public sphere in Western history was transformative and essential in the creation of democratic, participatory polities, the character and role of the public sphere under socialism (from the former Soviet Union, to Eastern Europe, to China, North Korea and Cuba) has been radically different. In all these places, the power […]
Contributor Bios for Issue 2 Winter 2010
Issue 2 Winter 2010 TAO AIMIN is known for her anthropological works made from the washboards of rural woman. Over the years she has collected thousands of these boards, recording the stories and faces of the women whose hands wore these boards down through the recursive repetition of monotonous labor. Creating installations and experimental ink […]
PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE: Dialogical Space & Multiple Modernities in Asian Contemporary Art curated by Maya Kóvskaya
CARBON excerpts from Rana Dasgupta’s photography series LIU LI TUN photography by RongRong and inri THE WALKING THE CABBAGE PROJECT (2000-2010) photography and performance art by Han Bing COMMUNIST LATENTO installation and text-based work from Raqs Media Collective NATURALISATION exploring what it means to be British/Chinese, this series by Anthony Key uses food and other […]
MAYDAY Magazine: Issue 2 Winter 2010
ART curated by Maya Kóvskaya PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE: Dialogical Space & Multiple Modernities in Asian Contemporary Art ART NONFICTION Maya Kóvskaya Public Action Art and Performative Interventions in the Chinese Public Sphere ART NONFICTION William Hurst (performance photography by Han Bing) ORPHANS OF PROGRESS: Workers and Political Discourse in Post-Socialist China ART […]