Dedicated to presenting large-scale sculpture, installation, and performance works by artists from around the world, Encounters presents artworks that transcend the traditional art fair booth.
This year, Encounters takes the Five Elements, from traditional Asian cosmology, as its starting point, organizing sections along four aisles, each dedicated to one element—Ether, Water, Fire, and Earth—to spark conversations of diverse value and contemporary realities.
Curated by a Curatorial Group of four Asia-based curators. Led and advised by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, alongside Isabella Tam, Curator of Visual Art at M+, Alia Swastika, a curator, researcher, and writer based in Jakarta; Hirokazu Tokuyama, Senior Curator of the Mori Art Museum.
An exhibition space hosts a cave-like ritual where people gather to simply take in the light. It is the most primitive form of cinema back when stories were imagined from a blaze. The work is a reflection of Apichatpong’s ’Home’ in Mae Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand. The place is surrounded by insects, heat and smoke during March. It is also right next to the army camp. Since the coup d'état in May 2014, the military junta has silenced critics by force and intimidation. In this home-cave, the heat is both comfortable and threatening. A fireball is an organic-like machine with phantom fans to blow away the heat and, at the same time, rouse the fire, which is impossible to put out even in dreams.