Christie’s Night Market Sale Highlights API and POC Artists

Christie’s is partnering with the nonprofit Civil Art for an exhibition and philanthropic auction, Night Market, that will open for online bidding on July 22 and stay live through August 2. The show at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries and the sale (which is expected to realize more than $200,000) will feature the work of thirty-four artists from Asian and Pacific Islander (API) and POC communities. Highlights include a new work, En El Mercado De La Esquina (estimate: $12,000-18,000), by rising star Bony Ramirez, currently the subject of a solo show at the Newark Art Museum, and a small painting, Soccer at the Park (estimate $2,000-3,000), by Tidawhitney Lek, who just had a show at Sidecar led by Night Gallery founder Davida Nemeroff. Proceeds will go to the artists, Civil Art and Apex for Youth.

Amanda Ba, in her curatorial statement, explains that “Night markets are comforting, yet mysterious places where deep history rubs against a blissfully ignorant present. They simultaneously promise an exciting sheen of convenient modernity and nostalgia for a less regulated, more free-for-all past. At the night market, the tensions between modernity and tradition, the culturally authentic and the kitschy, evaporate like sweat into the warm summer air.”

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The sale and exhibition also include pieces by other sought-after and emerging names like Scott Khan, Liu Bolin, Asif Hoque, Shyama Golden, Sung Hwa Kim, Sarah Lee, Brian Calvin, Brittney Leeanne Williams, Cheyenne Julien, Mark Yang, Greg Ito, Yuri Yuan, Ho Jae Kim, Jin Jeong, Johnny Le, Liang Fu, Liu Bolin x Annie Leibovitz and more. On loan for the exhibition are a stunning painting by Dominique Fung, Bone Holding Fan (2021) and works by pioneer Asian artists, including a lithograph, Church of Light, by Hiroshi Sugimoto and a photograph by Chinese artist Zhang Huan, 1/2 (Meat and Text).

“Art is a medium for storytelling as it amplifies complexity and diversity and fights simplification,” said Ho Jae Kim, an artist and the co-founder and CEO of Civil Art, in a statement. Civil Art was launched in 2022 by four co-founders who shared the dream of utilizing art, creativity and social engagement to empower underrepresented Asian and Pacific Islander communities. The organization encourages institutional recognition while acknowledging and working to preserve the diversity in the spectrum of API identities. “With care and commitment, art can become an effective tool that can help make cultural history and nuanced experiences of the Asian Pacific Islander community accessible through experiential and educational engagement.“

The exhibition is a continuation of Christie’s partnership with Civil Art, which initially began in the summer of 2022 with “At the Table,” a private selling show amplifying artistic voices of the Asian diaspora, initially conceived amid rising cases of xenophobia heightened during the pandemic.