Emerging Artists in Asia by Ka

Even as times change, most of the world's population seems to hate freedom. They are afraid to behave freely, contrary to their own daily claims of rights to and hopes for freedom. To put it plainly, Mineki Murata's performance is an attempt to examine whether or not the primitive and fundamental desire of human beings to be free can be expressed in art works. photo by Shinya kigure The Japanese artist’s drawings are traces of his art performance. His honesty, majesty and delicacy are imprinted in these works. He has showed us how to cut a thick dictionary into pieces with a ballpoint pen. He says this was “because I have feelings of inferiority towards words.” But in all honesty, I don’t believe his claim. I suppose that he has hated words. His weapons against them are his well-built body and a cheap ballpoint pen. Thick dictionaries aren't the only things Murata destroys. He preys on a variety of things, such as a switched-on TV receiver, and a thick veneer board us...

In the summer of 2018, I attended the Koganecho Bazaar, an art festival in Yokohama, Japan, and was introduced to the work of the artist “Speak Cryptic”. At first glance his work intrigued me. A majority of his work were drawings of men depicted in black and white tones. The drawings are only of men with deep carvings in their bodies. These are characteristic of the males in the Malay tribe to which he belongs, a minority in Singapore. He draws inspiration from his friends, using a variety of themes from everyday life, from broken hearts to the setbacks unemployed people face.  His unusual artist name, Speak Cryptic, was created while he was an art student and tagged his unique moniker on street pillars and graffitied throughout the city of Singapore. These pieces caught the attention of a Singaporean art scholar, and landed his artwork in an exhibition at a local museum. Later, he exhibited in France and Japan, and this quirky name gradually became known to a wide audience. ...