Museum Collection Series, Asia Society Museum
Overview
Assisted the Communications team in researching and scripting 'Museum Collection Highlights' for public engagement, including curated picks from the Rockefeller Collection featured on official social media channels.
Role
Scriptwriter
Content
Digital Content for Social Platforms
August 2025, Hong Lei
Hong Lei’s 1998 photograph “After the Song Dynasty Zhao Ji ‘Loquat and Bird’” reimagines a classical bird-and-flower painting as both homage and social critique. Known for his highly saturated colors and symbol-laden photographs of still lifes and landscapes that draws inspiration from traditional Chinese art, Hong often stages beauty in decay to reflect on cultural loss. This photograph is modeled after a painting by Emperor Huizong of Song-dynasty (r. 1100–1126, the Zhao Ji in the title), known for his bird-and-flower paintings and stylized calligraphy. Such decorative genre paintings reached its height of popularity among the literati around the time of Huizong’s reign, a period when the most coveted works of porcelain, painting, calligraphy, and poetry flourished for generations to come. Here, the central character—the bird—is shown lifeless. Like much of Hong’s work, the image is steeped in melancholia over the erosion of traditional Chinese values and aesthetics in the face of globalization. His practice exemplifies a melancholic response to the West’s growing influence and a longing for the cultural legacy of the past.
Hong Lei. After the Song Dynasty Zhao Ji "Loquat and Bird," 1998. Chromogenic print. H. 24 x W. 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm). Asia Society, New York: Anonymous Gift, 2008.8.
July 2025, Christine Ay Tjoe
Christine Ay Tjoe’s 2016 diptych “Greed” and “Greed 2” rendered in oil on canvas, exemplifies her emotionally charged approach to abstraction. Trained in drypoint etching at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Ay Tjoe brings a printmaker’s sensitivity to line and texture across her broader practice that includes painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Her layered strokes, smudges, and gestural marks evoke an inner psychological dimension—raw, and deeply introspective.
Ay Tjoe draws on the natural environment of her native Bandung—its tangle of roots, moss, and organic decay—to explore universal themes of existential tension and spiritual imbalance. In “Greed” and “Greed 2”, expanses of untreated canvas contrast with dense passages of colors, in an environment of controlled chaos. Her intuitive and spontaneous process of working on several paintings at once, and reference to natural growth, suggest a world familiar yet fragmented. This web of deliberate, dancing shapes also invites the viewer to engage in surprise discoveries of flora and fauna in silhouettes.
Christine Ay Tjoe’s first solo exhibition in the US, “Covered and Cover”, with a new body of work, is on view through August 16 at White Cube New York. Additionally, Ay Tjoe’s work “Blue Cryptobiosis #10” (2021) is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Modern and Contemporary wing, presenting a unique opportunity for New York public to see different series of her work in New York this summer.
“Greed” and “Greed 2”, 2016. Oil on canvas. Diptych: H. 78 3/4 x W. 133 7/8 in. (200 x 340 cm), Asia Society, New York: Gift of Sohat Chairil and Prasodjo Winarko, 2017.6a,b. Photo © White Cube (George Darrell); Digital Image © Christine Ay Tjoe.
June 2025, Patty Chang “In Love”
Artist Patty Chang’s 2001 work “In Love” is a two-channel video installation that projects side by side intimate moments she shares with her mother and father. Known for her provocative and emotionally charged performances on video that often show the female body (including her own) in intimate acts such as kissing and breast milk pumping, here she stages herself kissing each of her parents. By simulating what seem like a taboo, “In Love” challenges viewers to reconsider the boundaries of familial connection and the emotional labor embedded in shared experience. The work exemplifies Chang’s bold and unflinching approach to examining relationships and emotional vulnerability.
As we celebrate Father’s Day today, it’s a moment to reflect on the bonds that shape us—whether with fathers, father figures, caregivers, or others who have held similar roles in our lives. These familial relationships take many forms and can carry a range of emotions for us. Across cultures, while Father’s Day might not be celebrated at the same time of year, this day is often marked with shared meals, thoughtful gestures, or moments of connection. “In Love”, though unconventional, reminds us that intimacy within our family, whether those we were born into or those that we choose to create, can be complex, tender, and deeply human.
Credit: Stills from Patty Chang "In Love", 2001. Two-channel video with sound. Duration: 3 minutes, 28 seconds. Edition 4 of 5. Asia Society, New York: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold and Ruth Newman, 2011.11. Photo courtesy of the artist.