OPPORTUNITY

Based in Hong Kong, Zoher Abdoolcarim was appointed as Asia Editor, TIME International, in June 2008 overseeing TIME’s award-winning Asia edition. Prior to this role, he was a senior editor at TIME Asia, a position he held since 2002 where he helped shape all aspects of TIME’s coverage of Asia. His cover stories include a June 2007 article on the 10th anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, a November 2011 lead essay comparing China and India, and a prologue on India ahead of its landmark May 2014 elections. Zoher also writes commentary on Asian affairs for TIME.

Prior to joining TIME Asia, Zoher was managing editor of Asiaweek and an editor at Singapore-owned Asian Business. Over the course of his career, Zoher has been a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, with reporting assignments in the Philippines, India, Brunei and Hong Kong. He has been involved in watershed Asia stories including the Ninoy Aquino assassination, the ousters of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and former Indonesian President Suharto, the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, Hong Kong’s handover to China, the Asian financial crisis and the continuing impact of the rise of China on the region and the world.

Over the years, Zoher has interviewed many of Asia’s leaders. An ethnic Indian born and raised in Hong Kong, Zoher is a fluent Cantonese speaker and a British national. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Chan Yuk Keung obtained his BA degree from the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the US in the 80’s, he then joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1989 and taught there for over 25 years. Chan has participated in over 100 exhibitions, among which are “The 51st  Venice Biennale” and “The 2nd  Asia Pacific Art Triennial”. Chan was the chief editor for “Hong Kong Visual Art Yearbook” for several years, now the board member of ParaSite Art Space, Hong Kong Institute of Aesthetic Education; advisor of Asian Art Archive and Yale-China Association. His research interests are Hong Kong Art, Mixed Media and Public Art.

Senior Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Since 2013, Clément Chéroux has served as Chief Curator of the Department of Photography for the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and joined that museum as Curator of Photography in 2007. Prior to that, he lectured on the history of photography at the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, the University of Paris III and the University of Lausanne, and served as executive editor of the magazine Études Photographiques published by the Société Française de photographie. Chéroux has also served as an independent curator. As author or editor, Chéroux has published more than 40 books and catalogs on photography and its history.

Chéroux earned a PhD in Art History from the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, an MA in Aesthetics, Technology and Artistic Creation from the University of Paris VIII and a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles. He was a visiting research fellow in the Art History Department at Princeton University and a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum Photography Department.

Chéroux was awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (Knight) for the exhibition, Edvard Munch, the Modern Eye, the Nadar Award for Photography Book of the Year for La subversion des images, surréalism, photographie, film (with Quentin Bajac) and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (with Andreas Fischer).

May Fung created over 10 short experimental films between 1977 and 1985 and over 20 video works from 1986 onwards. She subsequently created video installations and pioneered  video art in theatre. Fung is passionate about the development of visual and performing arts, and received a fellowship from the Asian Culture Council for researching video art in New York in 1994. In 1999 Fung was awarded the Hong Kong Arts Development Council “Arts Development Scholarship” for video installation art. She has been an assessor and juror for various video and film festivals/exhibition in Hong Kong, and is now an examiner and advisor to the Home Affairs Bureau and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.  Fung is also the Chair of Art & Culture Outreach, a non-profit charitable arts organisation in Hong Kong and the honorary treasurer of Fresh Wave Film Festival Limited.

Yumi Goto is an independent photography curator, editor, researcher, consultant, educator and publisher who focuses on the development of cultural exchanges that transcend borders.

She collaborates with local and international artists who live and work in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, current social problems, human rights abuses and women’s issues. She often works with human rights advocates, international and local NGOs, humanitarian organizations and as well as being involved as a nominator and juror for the international photographic organizations, festivals and events.
She is now based in Tokyo and also a co-founder and curator for the Reminders Photography Stronghold which is a curated membership gallery space in Tokyo enabling a wide range of photographic activities.

Kevin WY Lee is a photographer and creative director based in Singapore. He participates vigorously in photography and art across the region as a practitioner, curator, producer and editor. In 2010, he founded Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA), an influential platform for Photography & Visual Arts in Asia. Kevin has been a curator and nominator for various festivals and programs, including the Angkor Photo Festival, Prix Pictet Award and PhotoQuai Biennale. He has also served as a jury for international competitions including the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards, Singapore Creative Circle Awards, and Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards. Most recently, he authored the photobook Suddenly The Grass Became Greener.

Lives in Hong Kong
Born Munich, Germany

The focus of the German photographer Michael Wolf’s work is life in mega cities. Many of his projects document the architecture as well as the vernacular culture of metropolises. Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 where he worked for 8 years as contract photographer for Stern magazine.  Since 2001, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, many of which have been published as books .

Wolf’s work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for Architecture, the Sao Paulo Biennial for Architecture,  Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tampere, Finland, Museum for Work in Hamburg, Germany, Kestner Museum, Hannover, Germany, Folkwang Museum, Germany, the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum Folkwang, Essen, M+ Museum, Hong Kong, the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt, and the Heritage Museum, HK.

He has won first prize in the World Press Photo Award Competition on two occasions (2005 & 2010) and an honorable mention (2011). In 2010 and 2016, Wolf was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize.

He has published more than 32 photo books including More HK Informal Seating Arrangements (Peperoni Press, 2015,) HK Umbrella (Peperoni Press, 2015,) HK Flora (Peperoni Press, 2014,)  HK Trilogy (Peperoni Press, 2013,)  Small God Big City (Hong Kong University Press, 2013,) Bottrop Ebel 1976 (Peperoni Press, 2012,) Tokyo  Compression Three (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2012,) Architecture of Density (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2012,)  Hong Kong Corner Houses  (Hong Kong University Press, 2011,)  Portraits (Superlabo, Japan, 2011,)  Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2011,)  Real Fake Art   (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2011,)  FY (Peperoni Press, 2010,) A Series of Unfortunate Events. (Peperoni Press, 2010,) Tokyo  Compression (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2010,) Hongkong Inside Outside (Asia One/Peperoni Press, 2009,) The Transparent City (Aperture, 2008,) and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002).

Lisa Botos is a cultural producer, curator and photo editor. Based in Singapore, she founded Botos., an arts-related, project-orientated initiative with a focus on advisory, curatorial projects and publishing. In 2008 she co-founded Ooi Botos, a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong. Prior, Lisa was Picture Editor for Time magazine in Asia. With her team and international photographers, they developed award-winning commissions. Lisa served as an international curator for the Vladivostok Biennale of Visual Arts 2013 and as an advisor for Photo Shanghai. She was an editorial ambassador for Punctum, a pan-Asian photography journal.

An advisor to the WMA Masters from 2011-2016, she counselled on the development and management of the awards program. Lisa is a 2015 Fellow of the University of Hong Kong-Clore Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme, an associate curator for Artist Pension Trust (APT), a consultant for the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP) and on the board of The VII Foundation.

Abby Chen is currently the Curator and Artistic Director at the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. She initiated the Xian Rui/Fresharp Artist Excellence Series since 2008, the first of its kind in the country supporting mid-career artists of Chinese descent in US. In 2009, she launched Present Tense Biennial. In 2010, she organized Gender Identity Symposium, a multi-city forum in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, followed by the 2011 exhibition WOMEN我們 (Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami). Her most recent project is the social practice based experiment in San Francisco neighborhood with Keywords School and Social Botany, led by artist Xu Tan with support from San Francisco Art Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.

Her other curatorial ventures include Moment For Ink, challenging nationalism and sexism in traditional Chinese Painting. The exhibition opened in various sites including Asian Art Museum, San Francisco State University, and traveled to Zhejiang Art Museum in China. She has curated or had loan her exhibition to Yerba Buena Center For the Arts and Museum of Chinese in America in New York. Beginning in 2009, she also led and managed San Francisco Public Art Initiative of Arts-in-Storefront and Central Subway Temporary Public Art for Stockton Station, as well as Culture Mapping, to investigate arts in immigrant neighborhood and advocate for city funding on underserved communities.

In 2012, Abby Chen was Summer Scholar from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She graduates with Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts.

Fung Ho-yin has pursued professional education and training in photography and different areas of design in Hong Kong and UK. He is now working as Assistant Professor at the School of Design of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Creating art via alternative photographic processes is his specialism. He has been exhibiting locally and internationally, including Australia, Japan, UK, USA, France, Thailand and China. He held his first solo exhibition of Gum Prints in UK in 2007. He was selected as finalists of National Prints Exhibition (China), International Competition – Printmaking (Philadelphia, USA), and The International Print & Drawing Exhibition (Thailand). His works have been acquired and collected by The Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and museums in China including Shenzhou Print Museum of Sichuan, Gwei Yang Art Museum, Qingdao Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art and the Shenzhen University.

Ho-yin was elected into the Executive Committee of The Hong Kong Graphics Society from 2001 to 2009. He also co-founded the only open print art studio in Hong Kong in 2000 – The Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP), an open printshop to promote visual arts with an emphasis on image making and to provide art services to the public, including the annual Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiesta.

Kalero has a Media Communication degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Former resident at Benetton’s Fabrica (Italy). Founder of the OjodePez magazine (Spain), co-founder of Invaliden1 Galerie (Berlin), of the art magazine The World According To (Berlin), and the pan-Asian photography magazine, Punctum (India). He directed the Ojodepez Photo Meeting Barcelona. For three years he was the art director of the GetxoPhoto Festival (Bilbao). At the present is part of the team developing an online platform for new media called SCREEN. He has been part of the WYNG Photo Award jury team for the past three years (Hong Kong). He was the Artistic Director for the 4th and 5th Biennial PhotoQuai, held at the Museum Quai Branly (Paris). Cofounder of photo festival, GoaPhoto (Panajim, India). He has been teaching at the Joop Swart Masterclass 2014. In 2015, he was invited by the Armenian government to make a collective exhibition on Genocide, on the occasion of the 100 years of the Armenian Genocide. Also in the same year, he was the chairman of the World Pride Award Jury (Amsterdam).

Christine Loh has a long interest and association with the arts. She sat onthe boards of the Hong Kong Festival Fringe, Hong Kong Arts Centre and Chung Ying Theatre Company in the 1980s, was instrumental in the formation of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in her role as a legislator in the 1990s, including serving as its first vice-chairperson. She is a private collector and a published author of many works on a variety of subjects.

Loh is a lawyer by training and a commodities trader by profession. She was a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (1992-1997 and 1998-2000), the co-founder and CEO of the non-profit think tank, Civic Exchange (2000-2012) and the former Under Secretary for the Environment (2012-2017). She was also a founder director of WYNG Foundation. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a director of the Robert HN Ho Family Foundation.