PARIS — “Go ahead, feel them!” gallerist Lê Thiên-Bảo encouraged visitors to her booth at Asia Now fair. Emboldened by her enthusiasm, I broke the well-worn rule of not touching artworks and caressed the fleshy ceramics of Vietnamese artist Hà My Nguyễn. Inside the grand halls of La Monnaie de Paris, just steps from the Louvre, the fair’s mood remained undisturbed by the museum’s recent brazen heist, which has shaken the country. The crowd — international, multicultural, and sharply focused — reinforced the fair’s boutique reputation.
Running until October 26, and now in its 11th edition under the title GROW, Asia NOW brings together close to 70 galleries from 28 territories across Asia. The fair prides itself on a program curated in collaboration with institutions and curators from across the continent, such as the Lahore Biennale Foundation and COLOMBOSCOPE. It features installations and performances (mostly staged in the courtyards of La Monnaie), as well as children’s workshops and conversations.
Visitors to the courtyard at the fair (photo Eurídice Arratia/Hyperallergic)
After dropping into a talk between curator Sofía Lanusse, artist Sajid Wajid Shaikh, and gallerist Sahil Arora on emerging voices from South Asia, I made my way to Arora’s Method Art Space booth from Mumbai. A newcomer to the fair, Arora presented Indian and Pakistani artists under the banner We Were Always Neighbors. “Because of the political situation in India, we cannot show Pakistani artists in India, and vice versa in Pakistan,” he explained. “Paris is a good neutral ground for us to do so. People have been very curious about the presentation, and we’ve had conversations with a pretty mixed, cosmopolitan audience.”
Interconnected by open-air courtyards, the fair is pleasant to navigate. Crossing the central court — partly overtaken by Lebanese artist Pascal Hachem’s “Threaded Whole” (2025), a grand assemblage of wooden furniture neatly sliced into cross-sections, later to be animated by dancers — I made my way toward the two tents housing around 30 galleries. This area includes a section entitled Now On, a grouping of galleries founded after 2015, where one could find plenty of prêt-à-porter works — small, pleasant pieces that filled the space without quite changing it. Though the layout and signage made it difficult to tell which artworks belonged to which stands at times, it did come with an upside. It encouraged impromptu conversations between visitors and gallerists — with even a few artists lending a hand — who seemed genuinely glad to talk.
Installation of work by Sumakshi Singh (courtesy 193 Gallery)
Architecturally, the galleries housed on the first floor fared better, benefiting from a clearer layout and the wow effect of their sumptuous, historical environs. The view of the Seine from the windows warded off the fair numbness that so often sets in amid endless rows of booths in enclosed spaces. Installed along the palatial staircase leading to the upper level is “I Will Never, I Also Like Ever” (2024) a two-channel video installation of levitating bodies by Sarah Brahim, while “Topographies of Belonging, Homeskins I to V” (2025) — a grouping of monumental columns made of burnt sand and paper fabric by Muhannad Shono — hung from the ceiling. The two Saudi Arabian artists are part of a section curated by Arnaud Morand that reflects the fair’s strong focus on West Asia this year.
Highlights were to be found upstairs, too. Practically facing each other were the booths of Esther Schipper gallery, with a striking, color-saturated multimedia solo presentation by Cemile Sahin; Carlier Gebauer gallery, offering an elegant pairing of Egyptian artist Iman Issa and Filipino artist Maria Taniguchi; and Kaikai Kiki gallery from Tokyo, showing a series of delicate, small paintings depicting scenes of everyday life in Japan by Iori Nagashima. Nearby, the Madrid-based Sabrina Amrani Gallery captivated me with a tightly curated booth that introduced me to a few artists I’ll be keeping an eye on, including Manal Al Dowayan’s delicate yet politically charged acrylic contour paintings of women’s bodies, and Jong Oh’s ethereal spatial constructions that seemed to float in midair.
Ceramics by Hà My Nguyễn (photo Eurídice Arratia/Hyperallergic)
I continued through the lateral salons and came across a standout at the booth for Seoul’s Arario Gallery. A highlight was “Lottery Village” (1998) by Kim Soun-Gui, a pioneering Korean-born, Paris-based artist, comprised of a charming doll-sized city built from cardboard, every façade painstakingly papered with discarded, brightly colored lottery tickets. (The work itself was much stronger than the accompanying overexplanatory press release, which framed it as a critique of capitalism — a claim as flimsy as the cardboard of the village.)
Gallerist Sahil Arora (photo Eurídice Arratia/Hyperallergic)
As a whole, the fair had more of a soft hum than a buzz, though conversations with gallerists suggested otherwise. “The fair has been very successful for us,” Sabrina Amrani, a seasoned participant, enthused. “We’ve sold works to a Malaysian foundation, a Swiss foundation, a Belgian foundation, and to collectors from Australia and Jakarta.”
After hours of weaving through booths; trading impressions with artists, visitors, and gallerists; and listening on panels, it was time to leave. Near the door, I ran into Anissa Touati, one of the curators, whose earlier remark over coffee came to mind: “It’s a fair, it’s a festival, it’s a bank of ideas.”
View of the tents from the first floor (photo Eurídice Arratia/Hyperallergic)
Curators Anissa Touati and Shwetal Patel (photo Eurídice Arratia/Hyperallergic)
Sabrina Amrani gallery’s booth (photo courtesy Sabrina Amrani)
Installation view of work by Muhannad Shono (courtesy Asia NOW)
Arario Gallery booth with Kim Soun-Gui, “Lottery Village” (1999) (photo courtesy Arario Gallery)
