If Chinese contemporary artists have ascended meteorically in the art market, they have also left lasting fissures in their wake.

Following last year’s bloodless coup, Thailand’s interim government announced that it would unshackle the media from controls imposed by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as part of its stated mission to “restore democracy.” But new instances of censorship have generated controversy this year.

In an act that shocked many in the Lebanese art scene, Beirut contemporary art gallery Espace SD closed its doors in April after eight years of operation and nearly 100 exhibitions.

Following the opening of the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006, doubters questioned whether the equatorial city-state was committed to continuing the high-profile international art event or supporting local art infrastructure.

Early in his career, the Mumbai-based artist Jitish Kallat began “copyrighting” his work, signing his canvases with a dated, encircled “c” alongside the titles and a varying combination of his initials and name. 

With his 1998 move to New York, Zhang Huan became a standard-bearer for China’s contemporary art awakening. China’s past and present realities reverberated through images that were—for a Western audience hungry for insight—abstract yet legible, conceptually nuanced yet physically compelling. 

Internationally celebrated for his stained-glass soccer goalie nets, monumental steel Gothic trucks and tractors and sophisticated Cloaca digestive tract machines that turn food into excrement, Belgium-born Wim Delvoye became a part-time resident of China in 2004 when he rented a farm to tattoo pigs.

The physical and psychological effect of inflicted violence is a recurring theme in Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto’s varied paintings, installations and performances.

This spring, Australian artist David Noonan had his first showing in France at Palais de Tokyo, a cavernous, open and fluid espace brut in the center of Paris. 

Hema Upadhyay is among the most celebrated young contemporary artists in India. 

Although Kimsooja began her artistic practice in Korea in the 1980s, it was not until the early 1990s that the rest of the world started paying attention to her work.