East of West, West of East: Why Asia NOW 2025 Is the Art Fair Rewriting the Map
Alessandro
Art fairs come and go, but Asia NOW arrives like a spark — five days at the Monnaie de Paris (October 22–26, 2025) where an exhibition becomes a festival of ideas, encounters, and seductions. Instead of hushed reverence, you’ll find collectors and curators in animated dialogue, glass in hand, minds open. In this charged atmosphere, the world’s cultural compass doesn’t just spin — it shifts.
Asia NOW began a decade ago as a platform for contemporary Asian art. Today it’s something richer: a living atlas of plural “Asias,” drawing connections between Lahore and AlUla, Seoul and Sharjah, Colombo and Paris. This year’s theme—“Grow”—isn’t a slogan; it’s an invitation to witness how perceptions take root and transform our sense of the world. In a time of rigid categories and algorithmic echo chambers, the fair offers fertile ground for curiosity.
Asia Without Borders, Masculinity Without Labels
For the modern, globally minded man, there’s a resonance here. The fair’s programming reflects a shift away from monolithic notions of culture, identity, even masculinity. What was once called the “Middle East” is now West Asia—center stage rather than periphery. Artists like Saudi Arabia’s Ahaad Alamoudi explore heritage and futurity through light and sound, while Lebanese artist Pascal Hachem turns memory into performance. Pakistani artists convene under the banner Of Mountains and Seas to rethink climate and tradition as intertwined legacies. This isn’t “Asian art” as a category; it’s Asia as methodology—a way of moving through the world that prizes connection over division.
This speaks directly to a new breed of male collector and cultural traveler: less about conquest, more about conversation; less about acquisition, more about attunement. The same instinct that draws you to Japanese selvedge denim or a handmade Turkish shaving brush—quality, story, craft—is at play here on a global scale.
A Festival of Senses and Ideas
Asia NOW’s offerings read like a wishlist for the cosmopolitan weekend. Performances range from Indonesian artist Mella Jaarsma’s costume installations to live Sufi music blending tar, daf, guitar, and harp. Cinema NOW, a new screening program, curates moving-image works exploring displacement, belonging, and the question “If not here, then where?”—a timely counterpoint to the instant gratification of streaming platforms.
Even craft is reimagined: finalists of the LOEWE Craft Prize present textiles and embroideries that trace mythology, diaspora, and queer identity. It’s luxury with meaning—art you can feel in your hands as much as in your head.
A Third Space for a Third Act
One of this year’s most anticipated additions is The Third Space, a curatorial playground for hybrid, collaborative projects. Think Mumbai meets Los Angeles meets Seoul, kaftan-shaped sound installations, self-taught Indonesian painters, and works that echo inheritance, memory, and delicate resonance. Inspired by theorist Homi Bhabha, it’s a section that redefines what happens when cultures intersect—not just art as object, but art as experiment, conversation, and catalyst.
Why It Matters Now
We’re living in a post-Western moment where traditional centers of taste are decentered and hybrid voices rise. Asia NOW captures that energy without turning it into spectacle. It’s not about mega-museums or state-funded showpieces; it’s about the porous, the emergent, the in-between—the same spaces where real innovation, and real intimacy, occur.
For the GUS reader—the man who’s as curious about the art scene in Lahore as he is about the latest electric roadster—Asia NOW is a microcosm of a lifestyle lived with intention. It’s a reminder that being worldly today isn’t about ticking destinations off a list, but about cultivating affective communities: friendships, solidarities, and shared feelings that transcend geography.
So pack lightly. Bring your curiosity. In Paris this October, Asia NOW isn’t just an art fair. It’s a map you’ll want to get lost in.
Monnaie de Paris, 11 Quai de Conti, 6th arrondissement, Paris
