VISION
MISSION: Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF), formerly Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), connects Asia-based and Asian diaspora artists, curators, and cultural practitioners in the United States and worldwide to collaborate and exchange ideas. Through initiatives and gatherings shaped by lived experience, ACAF centers Asia's artistic practices, histories, and knowledge traditions in conversation with diverse artistic communities across cultures, disciplines, and geographies.
BRIEF HISTORY: Established in New York in 2001 as Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), the organization was founded to heighten awareness and visibility of contemporary art practices from Asia. It realized this mission by bringing museums, galleries, and cultural institutions together to present exhibitions and public programs across New York. From 2001 to 2018, ACAW collaborated annually with more than 60 partner museums, galleries, and cultural institutions and presented the work of more than 3,000 established and emerging artists. It also foregrounded voices often overlooked within global art discourse, particularly from Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In 2019, the organization changed its name to Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF) to reflect nearly two decades of curatorial evolution and a changing arts landscape.
VISION: Today, Asia Contemporary Art Forum advances its mission through year-round initiatives. FIELD MEETING is a nomadic forum that convenes artists and curators around questions of place, spirituality, lived experience, and creative process. TALKING PEERS supports artist-led dialogue, shared learning, and peer exchange. ARTS FOR AFGHANISTAN supports Afghan artists and cultural practitioners through mentorship, visibility, and international engagement. Together, these initiatives strengthen shared learning, sustain creative exchange, and build meaningful connections among artists, cultural practitioners, and the broader public.
Past ACAW Editions—including exhibitions, performances, forums, participating institutions, galleries, and artists—are archived at acaw.info.
Consortium Partners—A diverse group of visionary figures from leading galleries, museums, and grassroots arts organizations. For a full list of ACAC members, click HERE
CURRENT TEAM
Leeza Ahmady
Director & Curator
Cloris He
Website Design & Curatorial Associate
Tanasia LaBrew
Website Design & Curatorial Fellow
David Pae
Social Media & Curatorial Fellow
(2001—Present)
BOARD + COLLABORATORS
Director & Curator
Asia Contemporary Art Forum (New York)
Leeza Ahmady
Leeza Ahmady (New York) is a curator and writer whose work positions contemporary art as a site of communal ritual, spiritual inquiry, and cultural exchange. From 2021 to 2026, she served as Founding Director of Programs at the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts (FSA), where she developed residencies, performances, retreats, and scholarly initiatives on contemporary art and sacred transcendence. Since 2005, she has led Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW), now Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF), advancing artistic exchange, mentorship, and collaboration across Asia, the United States, and beyond. Ahmady’s foundational research on post-Soviet Central Asia’s return to pre-Communist nomadic and Islamic identities informed presentations at the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, Asia Art Archive, and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and Kabul. She has also contributed to exhibitions and public programs at the Guggenheim, MoMA, Asia Society, The Met, The Morgan Library & Museum, Art Basel, and the Queens Museum. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications, catalogs, and monographs.
Independent Curator and Writer
(Chicago)
Megha Ralapati
Megha Ralapati is an independent curator, writer, and arts leader specializing in artist mobility, dynamic program development, and collaborative projects. She currently leads the Chicago grantmaking strategy for the Terra Foundation for American Art, building on more than a decade of developing international residency and exchange programs at Hyde Park Art Center. Previously, she was Director of Bose Pacia in New York, a gallery specializing in contemporary South Asian art. She holds an MA in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from Columbia University. Ralapati also serves on the boards of Artist Communities Alliance and Enrich Chicago.
Artist, Writer, & Educator
(New York)
Christopher K. Ho
Christopher K. Ho is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator whose work explores history, architecture, identity, and systems of power through sculpture, installation, and socially engaged practice. Born in Hong Kong and based between Hong Kong and New York, he recently served as Executive Director of Asia Art Archive, where he led the organization during a period of institutional growth, including the expansion of its public library and programs. He has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Bronx Museum, Para Site, Storm King Art Center, MASS MoCA, the Queens Museum, and the Busan Biennale. He co-edited Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts.
Artist & Independent Curator
Director of Operations, apexart (New York)
Maryam Ghoreishi
Maryam Ghoreishi is an independent curator and artist based in Brooklyn. Her curatorial practice explores art as a space for care, solidarity, and collective exchange through collaborative, context-responsive projects. She has curated exhibitions at Penumbra Foundation, The Bridge and Tunnel Gallery, Twelve Gates Arts, and the Center for Book Arts, and co-curated the FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections pop-up exhibitions. Since 2023, she has collaborated with Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF) on its Arts for Afghanistan initiative, supporting artists in Afghanistan and across the diaspora. She received her M.A. in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.
Founder & Director
Ink Studio (Beijing)
Craig L. Yee
Craig L. Yee is the Founding Director of Ink Studio, a Beijing-based gallery and experimental platform dedicated to contemporary Chinese ink art. His curatorial and scholarly work focuses on the history, theory, and evolving practice of Chinese ink painting, exploring its relevance within contemporary art. A longtime collaborator, Consortium Partner, and Advisory Board member of Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF), he has contributed to FIELD MEETING and other ACAF initiatives. He has taught and lectured internationally on Chinese ink art, curatorial practice, and arts management, and holds degrees from Stanford University, including an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Artist, Writer, & Filmmaker
(New York)
Mariam Ghani
Mariam Ghani's work explores the intersections of language, war, migration, memory, and history. Working across film, installation, photography, and public projects, she is known for her investigations of archives and cultural memory, including her work with the Afghan Films archive and the critically acclaimed documentary What We Left Unfinished (2019). Her work has been presented internationally at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the New Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dOCUMENTA (13), and the Sharjah Biennial, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the St. Louis Art Museum, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Schneider Museum of Art, and the Queens Museum. A founding collaborator of Asia Contemporary Art Forum's (ACAF) Arts for Afghanistan initiative, Ghani has helped shape efforts supporting Afghan artists and cultural practitioners. She teaches film and video at Bennington College.
Leadership Coach, Hypnotherapist
Music Producer (New York)
Junod Etienne
Junod Etienne has been presenting self-development workshops for over 15 years through his practice, “Coaching the Inside”, created to help individuals worldwide regain control of their lives, resolve conflicts, and achieve their true goals. He is a Certified Professional Hypnotist based in New York. Junod has written and produced music for major labels, television, films, and documentaries, earning two gold and one platinum RIAA awards as a musician, composer, and producer. He also served as Director of Outreach at the Institute for Hermetic Philosophy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people raise their level of consciousness in life.
Artist & Writer
(Tehran, Amsterdam, Berlin)
Sam Samiee
Sam Samiee is an Iranian painter, essayist, and educator based between Berlin and Tehran. His interdisciplinary practice explores Persian poetry, the Islamic tradition of adab, psychoanalysis, and art history through painting, installation, and writing. He has exhibited internationally at the Berlin Biennale, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Manchester Art Gallery, Art Basel Hong Kong, and Liste Art Fair.
Head Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs,
Noguchi Museum (New York)
Hitomi Iwasaki
Hitomi Iwasaki is Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Noguchi Museum. She joined the museum in 2025 after nearly three decades at Queens Museum, where she most recently served as Director of Exhibitions and Head Curator. Recognized for her cross-disciplinary approach to contemporary art, she has organized landmark exhibitions including Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, Christine Sun Kim: Time Owes Me Rest Again, and Aki Sasamoto: Point Reflection.
Artist & Faculty Member, School of Visual Arts (SVA)
Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), (Baltimore)
Yam Chew Oh
Yam Chew Oh is a Singaporean multidisciplinary artist and educator based between Baltimore and New York. His work explores notions of self, family, and circumstance through abstraction, language, and everyday materials, drawing on his formative years in multicultural Singapore and his experiences living abroad. He is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts, where he received his MFA in Fine Arts, and has exhibited throughout the United States, Asia, and Australia.
Digital Media Specialist & Cultural Communicator
(Shanghai & Hong Kong)
Cloris He
Cloris is a digital media specialist and cultural communicator based between Shanghai and Hong Kong. Working as a bridge between complex curatorial strategies and broader publics, her practice focuses on translating nuanced artistic ideas into accessible, high-impact digital narratives. She has spearheaded social media initiatives for public museums in Hong Kong and designed bespoke websites and digital platforms for independent art institutions across Hong
Kong and the United States. Through cross-platform content systems, creator collaborations, and strategic digital outreach, Cloris aims to democratize art engagement and expand global access to contemporary Asian art.