In Asian Artist for Sale, Ho Bin Kim presents himself as a literal commodity, embodying the way the Western art world romanticizes, fetishizes, and ultimately commercializes Asian artists without engaging in genuine cultural understanding. The exhibition operates as both a biting satire and a critique of the transactional nature of contemporary art markets, where identity can be packaged, marketed, and consumed.

    At the center of the exhibition is Kim himself—on display as a product, a spectacle designed to meet the expectations imposed on Asian artists. Alongside his own presence, the exhibition features a marketplace of personal artifacts, including his passports, childhood Hello Kitty walkie-talkie, and other intimate objects that are stripped of their original meaning and transformed into commodities for Western consumption. Each item, marked with a price tag, plays with the idea that an artist’s biography and cultural background can be monetized as “authentic” Asian art.

    The installation blurs the lines between performance, institutional critique, and self-exploitation. Visitors are invited to engage with the work as consumers—able to place bids, negotiate, or even attempt to “purchase” the artist himself. The absurdity of the transactional process forces audiences to confront their complicity in the commodification of identity.

    By positioning himself as a product, Kim highlights the paradox Asian artists face: the expectation to produce work that fits into a predefined Western narrative of “Asian-ness” while simultaneously being reduced to an exoticized subject. Asian Artist for Sale does not merely critique the art world—it exposes how systems of colonialism, capitalism, and cultural tourism continue to shape the visibility and reception of non-Western artists.

  At its core, Asian Artist for Sale asks: Who decides the value of an artist’s identity? How does the market dictate which cultural expressions are seen as legitimate? And what happens when an artist fully embraces, exaggerates, and subverts the expectations imposed upon them?