From Art

Asian New Zealand contemporary art and visual culture

Artist John Young Zerunge. Image courtesy of John Young Studio

In conversation with John Young Zerunge

AMY WENG | John Young Zerunge is an Australian-Chinese artist and one of the co-founders and founding president of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. An initiative formed by the Asian Australian Artists’ Association in 1996, 4A has become a leading art institution in Australia, encouraging dialogue on Asian and Australian cultural relations, and…

Te Tiriti o Waitangi – an unmet challenge

AMY WENG | In trying to trace a collective history, I’ve come to the realisation that ours is a lot more incidental- filled with stops and starts- a non-linear digression through over a century and a half of co-habitation, but not necessarily of occupation. Where Asian New Zealanders have a stake in the political and public…

In conversation with Vera Mey

AMY WENG | Vera Mey is an independent curator. The following is a except of a conversation between Mey and HAINAMANA editor Amy Weng. Here, they talk umbrella identities and redefining a position of alterity…

Xin Cheng, found in the Kobe mountains, Japan, 2016

I AM…

XIN CHENG | Early 2015, I performed for MAU/Lemi Ponifasio’s I AM at Aotea Centre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. It was an intense and transformative experience. For a start, I was grateful for having been included as a volunteer, despite being an amateur to the world of performance (I had only started getting my toes wet…

Notes from the third space

Notes towards a third space: On a prevailing easterly wind

AMY WENG | In 1992, on the corner of Wellesley and Kitchener Street, on the southern facade of what was then the Old Art Gallery, a lighted window containing an ink painted backdrop and elongated rosary was installed. Four calligraphic characters were painted on its face, and this window changed- illuminating and dimming according to the hour of the day…