From its historical roots to the most recent digital innovations, Mangasia is the first exhibition to present an overview of Asian comic history, highlighting key creators, characters, magazines, graphic novels and multimedia, as well as the creative processes that underlie their production.
Curated by Paul Gravett with a team of more than twenty advisors, Mangasia surveys the entire realm of the new comics continent from which the exhibition takes it title. It features artwork from Japan, North and South Korea, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines and Singapore, as well as from emerging comics cultures in Bhutan, Cambodia, East Timor, Mongolia and Vietnam.
Thematic sections contrast the diversity of fantastical folklore, real history and daring experimentation in comics from across the whole region, and traces the impact of printed comics on live-action and animated film and television, music, games, fashion and contemporary art.
Mangasia also presents a focus on the expanding opportunities created by rapid technological innovations, to reveal how 21st-century artists are using digital tools and online delivery to transform the creation and consumption of comics.
