Continuing the auction-house craze for digital collectibles, on September 6 Sotheby’s revealed a new collaboration with director Wong Kar-wai. At the Modern Art Evening Sale on October 9 in Hong Kong, the famed Hong Kong director will sell previously unreleased footage from the first production day of his award-winning 2000 film In the Mood for Love in the form of an NFT. Titled In The Mood For Love – Day One and running 91 seconds, the clips portray stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as characters different from those in the film. Also on the block will be Leslie Cheung’s yellow jacket, worn by the late legendary actor in Wong’s film Happy Together (1997). To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Wong’s production house, Jet Tone Films, a sale on October 10 will feature 30 collectibles chosen by Wong, including film props, costumes, posters, photographs, and box sets.

The Zürich-based Roswitha Haftmann Foundation has awarded its 20th annual prize to Turkish artist Gülsün Karamustafa in recognition of her over four-decade-long career. Through paintings, installations, videos, and performance works, Karamustafa has explored social issues including the effects of Turkey’s rapid urbanization, internal and regional migration, and prevailing gender disparities. Born in Ankara in 1946 and a graduate of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in 1969, Karamustafa was imprisoned for a period after the 1971 military coup d’état and denied a passport for 16 years. Her works have been collected by London’s Tate Modern; New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne; Istanbul’s Arter; among other museums. Established in 2001, the prize was founded by the Swiss gallerist Roswitha Haftmann to honor a living artist who “has created an oeuvre of outstanding quality.” Recent winners include Valie Export, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Hans Haacke.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize named Cao Fei as the winner of its 2021 edition for her 2020 Serpentine Gallery exhibition “Blueprints,” centered around a augmented-reality work and her sci-fi film Nova (2019). The award comes with a cash prize of GBP 30,000 (USD 41,550) and is hosted by The Photographers’ Gallery in London. Cao, born in 1978, and active on the international art scene for nearly 20 years, was described by curator Anna Dannemann as “one of the most innovative and exciting young Chinese artists to have emerged on the international scene.” An exhibition of works by all the shortlisted artists—Poulomi Basu, Alejandro Cartagena, Zineb Sedira, and Cao—runs through September 26.

On September 2, New York- and Brussels-based Gladstone Gallery announced their expansion to Seoul. While the official opening date and details of the building are yet to be confirmed, the gallery space will be located in the upmarket retail district of Gangnam. The Seoul branch will be led by HeeJin Park, who was previously the director of Kukje Gallery from 2016 to 2020, and has been working for Gladstone since last year. On July 29, Gladstone Gallery also revealed their plan to open an office in Los Angeles.

The 12th edition of the Taipei Biennial, “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet,” which opened in late 2020, will open at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, and be on view from November 6 to April 4, 2022. The cross-continental collaboration was proposed by Centre Pompidou-Metz to the Biennial’s curators, philosopher Bruno Latour and independent curator Martin Guinard, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), and made possible with the support from the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan and Centre Culturel de Taiwan à Paris. The 2020 Taipei Biennial received 150,000 visitors in Taiwan, as travel restrictions prevented international audiences from attending. 

The board of directors for Vancouver’s Centre A named Henry Heng Lu as its executive director and curator and Ellie Chung as gallery manager. Lu joined Centre A in 2019 as curator and has been serving as the interim executive director. Chung is a community-oriented art educator and administrator, with a background in both the cultural sector and community services. Established in 1999 in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Centre A is a leading public art gallery for contemporary Asian and Asian diasporic arts and culture.

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