AIR

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.

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.

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).

Lives and works in the UK and internationally. Louise Clements is Artistic Director of QUAD (www.derbyquad.co.uk), a centre for contemporary art, film and new technologies, since 2001, and co-founder and Artistic Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival (www.formatfestival.com) in Derby, UK, since 2004. Since 1998 as an independent curator she has initiated many commissions, publications, mass participation, art, film and photography exhibitions. Louise was recently awarded the Milapfest Fellowship 2013 and the Blow-up Fellowship India 2012. She was guest curator at Habitat Centre and Haus Khas BlowUp (Delhi, India 2012); Dong Gang Photography Festival (South Korea, 2013); Dali International Photography Festival (China, 2013); Noorderlicht 20/20 (Groningen, Netherlands, 2013); Photoquai Biennale (Paris, 2015); Christophe Guye 2020vision (Switzerland 2015); Hamburg Phototriennale Container City (Germany, 2015); Venice Biennale, the Leisure Principle EM15 (2015). She regularly writes about contemporary art for books and magazines, guest Editor for Archivo(Portugal), OjodePez(Italy), HijackedIII(Australia), PhotoCinema(uk), South Korean Photography Magazine. Editor at Large for 1000 Words www.1000wordsmag.com . She is an international photography juror, portfolio reviewer, workshop leader, speaker and nominator throughout Europe, America and Asia.

Jehan Chu is an Art Advisor and publisher of the ‘Art Guides’ series of iPhone apps with over 12 years of industry experience. Formerly with Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, and Head of Client Development in Asia, he left in 2008 to start Vermillion Art Collections, a specialized art advisory working with private and corporate art collectors. He now sits on the Board of Directors of Para/Site Art Space and the HK Ambassadors of Design, and is a member of the Asia Art Archive Collector’s Circle steering committee. Jehan also authored the ‘Collectionist’ column for Time Out Magazine and has lectured on collecting art for the Asia Art Forum, ArtHK International Art Fair, as well as major banks and associations. Jehan is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and holds a degree in International Relations and East Asian Studies, as well as instruction certification in Visual Thinking Strategies.

Christopher Phillips has been the curator at the International Center of Photography in New York City since 2000. He has organized numerous exhibitions of historic and contemporary photography. In 2004, he and Wu Hung organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China.” He has curated subsequent exhibitions exploring contemporary Asian photography, including “Atta Kim: On-Air” (2006), “Shanghai Kaleidoscope” (2008), “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan” (2008), “H20: Art on the Horizon of Nature” (2010), and “Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide” (2011). His publications include Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings 1913-1940. He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, where he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Photo by Albrecht Tübke

Ooi is the CEO of fine jewelry ecommerce site, Plukka.com, which launched in December 2011. Plukka sells jewelry under its own brand name, designed by either Ooi or her design team.

Before Plukka, Ooi was the CEO of Clean Air Network (CAN), an environmental NGO based in Hong Kong that focuses on air pollution and public health, from 2009 to 2011. Ooi founded Clean Air Network with Christine Loh, a well-known Asian environmentalist. At CAN, Ooi took the approach of trying to influence government policymaking on air quality issues by working closely with business interests. In addition, Ooi conducted many consumer-style campaigns including a petition sign-up campaign through more than 200 restaurants and gyms, (BBC), the creation of a spoof advertisement for canned oxygen which garnered widespread international attention (NY Times), and Asia’s first environmental art exhibition and auction (NY Times), the Clean Air Auction. Ooi and Loh were nominated to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential in 2011, for their work on the environment. (Time)

Before CAN, Ooi was the Creative Director of Shanghai Tang for seven years and largely credited with the turnaround of the Chinese luxury brand owned by the Richemont Group.

Ooi frequently speaks and comments on a wide variety of topics, including politics, creativity and consumerism, in addition to blogging about her experiences as an internet CEO at motherplukka.tumblr.com. Complementing her interests in business, environmentalism and tech, Ooi founded a leading Asian contemporary art gallery, Ooi Botos, and is presently the goodwill ambassador for the Multitude Foundation, a non-profit Asian art prize.

Ooi moved to Hong Kong from New York City in 1994, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was born in Singapore and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio before attending Columbia University, where she received a B.A.