In soaring tribute to political opacity and greed, North Korean construction projects proliferate across Africa.

As the repression of the Cultural Revolution and the post-Tiananmen years gave way to the economic boom of the 2000s, Mao Xuhui’s paintings shifted from emotional expressionism to an embrace of iconographic repetition.

When does a random snapshot of one’s everyday surroundings transgress another’s privacy? An Iraqi-American artist’s challenging performances examine issues of remote surveillance, the power of online communities and the devastation of war. 

In clear hopes of familiarizing the world with the basics of Arabic, West Asia’s first major modern Arab art museum has been simply named “Mathaf,” the Arabic word for “museum.” Originally conceived in 2003, the space opened its doors to the public on December 30, 2010, in Qatar’s capital, Doha. 

For her first solo exhibition at Project 88, New Delhi-based Pakistani artist Bani Abidi reflected on the idea of migration by peering into the processes by which it is achieved. Comprising a 12-minute video and three photographic series, “Section Yellow” situated itself at the visa office, a place where nationality determines mobility. 

The clash between Louis XIV-era gaudy gilt décor and the saccharine pop of Takashi Murakami’s notoriously audacious patterned personages made one’s teeth ache. 

It is difficult to gauge whether Ai Weiwei anticipated the initial impact of the large-scale commission Sunflower Seeds (2010) in the gray volume of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. 

Elad Lassry’s past year included solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Kunsthalle Zurich, a place in the annual “New Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and nomination for the 2011 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. 

Out in Chofu, a quiet suburb 30 minutes west of Tokyo’s buzzing center in Shinjuku, Tomoo Gokita is leading me to his studio, hidden down a warren of rickety wooden houses and scruffy vegetable patches.