Elisabetta Marabotto of Saffronart on the Guggenheim Museum’s recent acquisition of an artwork by Tayeba Begum Lipi

London: From February 22, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will host the exhibition ‘No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia’, featuring works by 22 artists from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. This is the inaugural exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, which after New York will be travelling to Singapore and Hong Kong. All the works featuring in the show have been acquired by the museum and will become part of its permanent collection.

Among the 22 artists featured is Tayeba Begum Lipi, one of Bangladesh’s leading contemporary artists, whose work is critically acclaimed both nationally and internationally. She was one of the five artists chosen to represent Bangladesh in the country’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and in April 2012 she also participated in the inaugural Dhaka Art Summit. Through her work, Lipi explores the feminist issues of marginality and representation of the female body. She strives to understand why the notion of beauty is largely determined by heterosexual male sensibilities. This concept is often illustrated through the use of razor blades as one of her main materials.

Lipi’s ‘Love Bed’ which was exhibited at the Dhaka Art Summit last year has been chosen for the Guggenheim’s collection.

We are currently featuring one of the artist’s works on on The Story by Saffronart, in the Bangladesh focused collection, Tastemaker: Nadia Samdani. So, if you want to follow the Guggenheim’s steps in starting a collection of contemporary South Asian art, simply click here.

More information on the Guggenheim exhibition can be found on the museum website and in this article.