I traveled to India in December for the fourth time within a few years because the country still holds so much for me to learn and discover. Of course, I am interested in the contemporary art production, so I visited the Kochi Biennale in Fort Kochi on the coast of the Arabian Sea in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Like all other Indian and international colleagues, artists, and art lovers, I had arrived on schedule for the opening. Only, nothing was ready on time, and literally in the last minute, the opening was postponed from the beginning of December to just before Christmas…

Last November I visited Vietnam for the first time. The occasion of my trip was the book launch of Don’t call it art! Contemporary Art in Vietnam, 1993–1999, edited by my German artist friend Veronika Radulovic and the current director of Museum Rietberg in Zürich, Annette Bhagwati (published by Kerber Verlag, 2021) who introduce us to a number of ground-breaking contemporary artists in Vietnam, such as Truong Tan, Nguyen Quang Huy, and others. To the best of my knowledge, I had organized the first exhibition of Vietnamese art in Germany back in 1996, featuring the then young artist Truong Tan at Kunsthalle Bielefeld