An unprecedented rate of urbanization over the last fifty years has caused more than half of the world’s megacities—with populations of ten million or more—to arise in Asia. This compact and dynamically designed book introduces the work of several artists from the megacities of Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Delhi, and Mumbai who are fueling their practices with materials found in those places and responding with large, immersive sculptures indelibly marked by their urban contexts. Like the cities in which they were conceived, the towering accumulations of stainless steel vessels, plastic wares, discarded architectural elements, grocery products, and other found objects by artists Hema Upadhyay, Ai Weiwei, Subodh Gupta, Choi Jeong Hwa, Asim Waqif, Aaditi Joshi, Yin Xiuzhen, Hu Xiangcheng, Song Dong, Han Seok Hyun, and the collective flyingCity dazzle us with their sheer mass and strange transformative power, and envelop us in complex global issues of migration, consumption, sustainability, and cultural heritage.  

About the Authors

Al Miner is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Laura Weinstein is Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.