Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai

Ishara Art Foundation was founded in 2019 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to presenting contemporary art of South Asia. Located in Dubai, the Foundation supports emerging and established practices that advance critical dialogue and explore global interconnections.

Guided by a research-led approach, Ishara realises its mission through exhibitions, onsite and online programmes, education initiatives and collaborations in the UAE and internationally. The Foundation facilitates exchange between South Asian and international artistic networks that include museums, foundations, institutions, galleries and individuals.

The Ishara logo, a synthesis of a square and circle, is based on an ideogram by Zarina to convey the word ’آسمان’ (‘Aasman’), sky. It forms one of 36 images from ‘Home is a Foreign Place’ (1999), a work in the collection of Ishara’s Founder and Chairperson, Smita Prabhakar. Ishara signifies a gesture, a signal or a hint, and is a word common to several languages including Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Swahili and Urdu. Ishara is ever grateful for the generosity extended by Zarina and her family to use the ideogram in the Foundation’s logo.

Ishara Art Foundation is presented in partnership with Alserkal.

Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA

The Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, or M HKA for short, stands as a premier institution in the realm of contemporary fine art and visual culture. Deeply rooted in the Antwerp avant-garde, with a strong international connection.

The M HKA broadens your view. With large-scale exhibitions and intimate presentations, from established artists and up-and-coming talent. Experience film, performance and artist talks. Attend creative workshops and partake in custom-tailored tours.

The collection includes regional and international contemporary art from the 1960s avant-garde to the present. Showcasing prominent works by key artists such as Gordon-Matta Clark, Panamarenko, and Otobong Nkanga. Alongside premier ensembles from various corners of the globe. The M HKA focuses on Eurasia, considering it as a multipolar space with a diverse array of cultures, encompassing both Europe and Asia.

Researchers contextualise contemporary artistic practices. The M HKA documents artworks, studies artistic developments, and facilitates academic research. The Centre for Art Archives Flanders (CKV) within the M HKA oversees, manages, and opens up significant art archives, sharing its expertise with the arts community.

Explore and browse through art publications in the library and reading room. Savour the view of the Scheldt River from the rooftop terrace of the M HKAFE museum café, surrounded by artworks by James Turrell and Keith Haring. The M HKA also extends its operations outdoors. The Cinema, situated within the arts house The Studio, showcases high-profile films that are often overlooked. Additionally, the M HKA manages Panamarenko’s house and studio. Through its engagement, the M HKA plays a pivotal role in defining the character of Antwerp South, a vibrant artistic neighbourhood brimming with studios, art galleries, welcoming restaurants, and the newly inaugurated Zuidpark.

Close by are the Antwerp Museum of Photography (FOMU), the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), and the promenade along the newly constructed Scheldt quays.

The M HKA, like its sister organisation the KMSKA, is a cultural heritage institution of the Flemish Community.

deCentral

At deCentral we want to challenge assumptions. What does it mean to be about something? To be from somewhere? What does it mean to understand that one person’s centre may be another person’s periphery?

We want to ask such questions with our creative community across Thailand, to respectfully examine the multiplicity of perspectives in contemporary life, to know that our opinions greatly differ across the world, based on context and lived experience.

We invite our local creative community to join us on a journey in learning how to be interdisciplinary in engagement, experimental in ethos, innovative in approach, with an understanding that artistic value is in how we address the realities facing our world today.

At deCentral, we want to curate exhibitions, commission artworks, offer learning programs and cross-industry collaborations. We want to provide opportunities for makers to be ambitious with their ideas knowing that this means being open to things we have not yet considered. deCentral aims to deliver integrated programs, sharing the brilliance of Thailand’s diverse artistic communities around the country, seeking a broader cultural landscape of exchange at home and abroad.

deCentral is an initiative of Central Group and is registered as a ‘social enterprise’. All profit generated supports the ongoing program costs of deCentral.

Para Site

Para Site champions original developments in contemporary art by centering artistic voices and innovations. Collaborating closely with practitioners from both local and international contexts, Para Site enables new works, initiatives, and ideas to come into being. Placing an emphasis on inclusiveness and independent thought, Para Site has developed a strong reputation for giving milestone opportunities to a myriad of artists and curators, many of whom go on to develop significant careers in contemporary art. Through producing benchmark exhibitions, commissioning transformative works, and cultivating new talent, we emphasise contemporary art’s ability to reshape our understanding of society. Since its founding in 1996 by seven Hong Kong-based artists as an alternative space, Para Site has mounted over 300 exhibitions locally and globally, hosted over 87 international residents, and delivered over 1,000 public programmes.

All of Para Site’s programmes are free and accessible to the public.

Artspace

Artspace is one of the leading institutions for the production and presentation of contemporary art in the Asia Pacific. Our expansive, multi-platform approach to programming includes new commissions, exhibitions, performances, studio residencies, publishing, public programs, learning and outreach initiatives, and advocacy. Artspace is where artists of all generations test new ideas and shape public conversation. Embracing risk, experimentation, collaboration and advocacy, Artspace’s mission is to enhance our culture and support community vibrancy through a deeper engagement with contemporary art.

Han Nefkens Foundation

Founded in 2009 by Dutch writer and collector Han Nefkens and directed by Hilde Teerlinck, the Han Nefkens Foundation focuses on grants and commissions that support the production of video art. Nefkens, who trained as a journalist in the US and France, working for more than a decade as a radio correspondent in Mexico, turned to collecting contemporary art after encountering the immersive video installations of Pipilotti Rist. Nefkens’s philanthropic activities in art, funded with family money (his father was an architect who later turned to commercial real estate development), have consistently had a public dimension; he began purchasing works in 2000, with the aim from the start of acquiring artworks for museums. His H+F Collection, featuring a range of media, began making long-term loans and eventual bequests to museums across Europe.

He also began the ArtAids Foundation in 2006, commissioning artists to make work that helped to raise awareness and support those living with HIV and AIDS. (Nefkens himself found out he was HIV-positive in 1987.) Both these organisations have since made way for the activities of the Han Nefkens Foundation, which in the past has additionally supported fiction writers, but currently focuses exclusively on video art. The foundation acts as a funder of and mediator for art institutions producing new work, while neither collecting nor owning any of the resulting artworks itself. (Nefkens is instead perhaps a collector of conversations and connections: the foundation observes, but does not vote, on artist selection panels.) The organisation works with a set of partner institutions who, in the case of the foundation’s grants, have committed to exhibiting the new work; and in the case of co-commissions, to the work becoming part of the institutions’ collections.