May 19–Jul 22

Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

With pluralism taking center stage in postmodern thought, categorization in contemporary visual culture has become virtually impossible. Jumping off this premise, “The Charismatic Rebirth of Yore,” presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, examines the overlaps between art, design and craft, in an exhibition featuring the works of 14 international art and design practitioners. Interdisciplinary creations by artist and costume designer Tricia Flanagan and Hong Kong fashion designer Koyo William Cheung will reflect on regional craft traditions, while Taiwanese artists such as Wei-Lin Yang and Jun T. Lai will dig into prehistoric culture, antiques and native textile designs, using them as inspiration for contemporary creations. 

Jun 1–Sep 17

The Rubin Museum of Art, New York

The ongoing three-part exhibition “A Lost Future,” which began late in February, and showcases the works of Shezad Dawood, the Otolith Group and Matti Braun, will highlight the Turner Prize-nominated Otolith Group’s moving image works for the next three months. Adding to the main exhibition, which examines the history and future of the Bengal region through sculpture, painting, as well as VR, the Otolith Group’s featured film focuses on the efforts of Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel laureate and Bengali poet and artist who pioneered the notable visual art institution Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, India. Also on view will be a selection of the art collective’s earlier works, including Otolith III (2009), which delves into the unexplored potential of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s unmade film, The Alien. 

Jun 1–Jan 6, 2019

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris retraces a thread in the development of modern art through a grand retrospective of modernist Chinese ink master Zao Wou-ki (1920–2013). Taking its title from a quote by Belgian-born poet, writer and painter Henri Michaux—one of Zao’s earliest artistic influencers—“Space is Silence” will feature 40 large-scale oil and ink paintings, showcasing Zao’s experimental techniques and multiplicity of styles, which he developed through his peripatetic journey across Hangzhou, Paris and New York since 1948. Highlights will include a set of ink paintings from 2006, which have never been publicly presented.

Jun 9–Sep 19

Various Locations, Yinchuan

Headed by Marco Scotini, who also serves as the artistic director of Milan’s FM Centre for Contemporary Art, the second Yinchuan Biennale, “Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge,” digs into the region’s Silk Road history to investigate Northwestern China as a potential site of ecological harmony and equilibrium. Tackling issues of bionomics, agriculture, symbiosis and the coexistence of minority communities, the biennale will probe the idea of environmental sustainability through the works of 90 artists from some 30 regions. Participating artists include Goa-based artist Nikhil Chopra, Indonesian artist Arahmaiani, South Korean artist Kimsooja and Cambodian artist Leang Seckon.

Jun 13–Nov 1

Museum Tinguely, Basel

Exploring the boundaries between memory, death and erasure, Museum Tinguely will have a solo show presenting Indian photographer Gauri Gill’s ongoing series, “Traces” (1999– ). Culled from the trove of images from a larger project titled “Notes from the Desert” (1999– ), the exhibition will focus on an archive of black-and-white photographs documenting the handmade graves of marginalized and rural communities of Western Rajasthan, India. Gill captures the tenderness of these burial sites—clusters of stones, clay fragments, hand-inscribed headstones and personal items—of both Muslim and Hindu faith, that were created at the fringes of society, bearing witness to the private monumuments of loss that inevitably, with time, will erode, and be reabsorbed into the arid plains of Western India.