The Autumn issue of ArtReview Asia considers what happens when cultural heritage comes under threat. Bangkok-based writer Max Crosbie-Jones’s investigates the long history of the looting and restitution of cultural artefacts in Southeast Asia, and Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan considers the future of the medium in the wake of ever tighter government censorship in India and the rise in proscriptive identity politics in academia. Elsewhere in the issue, Korean director Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, 2003 and The Handmaiden, 2016) departs from the world of filmmaking, offering a sneak-peek into his latest series of photography. Columns include examinations of the way in which even India’s weather cycles have been co-opted into its politics; recently rediscovered comic-strip archives in Thailand reveal an alternative history of politics there; the shift of blue-chip international galleries from Hong Kong to Seoul; and the farcical runup to the Tokyo Olympics.
