• Alighiero Boetti
• Kimsooja
• Beatriz Milhazes
• Ernesto Neto
• Damian Ortega
• Gabriel Orozco
• Vik Muniz
• Raghubir Singh

• NS Harsha
• Chris Ofili
• Adriana Varejao
• Tiago Carneiro
• Gabriel Kuri
• Imran Qureshi
• Bulent Sangar
• Simon Patterson

• Jun Nguyen-Hatushsiba
• Ghada Amer
• Seydou Keita
• Ahlam Shbili
• Enrique Mehnides
• Francis Alys
• Guillermo Kutca
• Los Carpinteroa

• Fiona Tan
• Steve Curry
• Tania Brugrera
• Dr. Lakra
• David Hammons
• Alejandra Icaza

Alighiero Boetti Mappa del Mundo 1998 embroidered tapestry 117.5cm x 226cm

Alighiero Boetti's art has embraced all forms of culture, media, linguistics, music and crafts in a wide range of media including, notably, tapestry and ball-point pen drawings. From his beginnings in Turin in 1960s, Boetti perceived a symbolic and poetic meaning in humble everyday material. Alongside his fellow members of the Arte Povera movement, Boetti re-invigorated the Italian artistic production in the 1960s and 1970s and investigated universal matters such as space, language and self-identity.

Also in the collection; Untitled 1988 embroidered tapestry 115cm x 112cm

Radically, in 1971, he left for Afghanistan and started a continuous collaboration with the local weavers to produce embroidered tapestries. Boetti, intending to recover manual handicraft skills, considered his work as a combined effort, with the artist as a referential person. The series of tapestry Maps represents a seminal production in his oeuvre. His 1969 Planisfero Politico in which Boetti drew directly onto an ordinary map of the world, filling the territory of each state with its corresponding flag, anticipated the series. The Afghan and Pakistani weavers were left free to elaborate the background and their colourful design is deceptively simple, as they address issues such as territory, frontier and national identity. They also brilliantly illustrate the geo-political changes of the last thirty years, and especially before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kimsooja, A Needle Woman, Mexico City - Cairo - Lagos - London, 2000-2001

Kimsooja, a Korean artist born in Taegu in 1957 who now lives and works in New York, has produced performance videos in major capital cities of the World including Tokyo, Mexico, Lagos, Cairo, London, New York, Shanghai and Delhi. She has also set-up textile installations that work around the term 'Bottari'; a bundle wrapped with Korean traditional bedcovers and used for carrying household belongings.

Cities on the Move -11633 miles Bottari Truck, 1998. The Bottari Truck, loaded with these multicoloured bundles, is more than a lavishly ornamented vehicle. It is a concept that illustrates Kimsooja's fascination for textile and it also represents an allegory of her perpetual wanderings and of her nomadic spirit.

Beatriz Milhazes Leme 2002 acrylic on canvas 190cm x 200cm

Beatriz Milhazes's exuberant style features intermingling layers of concentric patterns, circles in circles, floral emblems, rosettes and symbols. The extraordinarily smooth surface of her paintings is rendered through her technique of painting onto plastic sheeting, transferring the image onto the canvas and then peeling off the plastic.

Such works as 'Tempo de Verão' (Summer Time) is a lively contemporary interpretation of the South-American Baroque tradition of extravagant ornament. Underlying the fact that it is handmade, each form is surprisingly integrated into an overall design and a coherent flux of colour.

Also in the collection; Tempo de Verão 1999, O Mar 1996, Leme 1993, O Rapaz 2002.

This `structured jumble' is reminiscent of Samba Schools performances during Carnival, embodying a certain idea of `Living in Rio', in which chaos is somehow disciplined and uniformed. Milhazes, who once said that 'without colour, the image does not occur', is a modern disciple of the Art of Matisse and, through her painstaking collage technique, one of the rare artists to successfully bring together a sense of earnestness and decoration.

Ernesto Neto Delicious Delicious Delicious 2000 silvermarker ink on paper 94cm x 63cm

Ernesto Neto is renowned for his translucent environment-sculptures made of stocking material and filled with spices, pigment or sand from Ipanema Beach. His work generally involves an interactive participation from the viewers who, through smell, vision and touch, are offered a unique sensorial experience. In Neto's art, the object and subject are interconnected. His biomorphic and aromatic structures mutate and the material they are made of often exudes in the surrounding space. The sculptures have a life of their own, reminiscent of a body's energy and movement. In the past Neto has thrown his sculptures onto paper on the floor to produce an image-print of the impact. His drawings, which are conceived in the same technique, render the ephemeral sensuality of his creations

Also in the collection; Tres Queridinhas, Duas, O Desenho da Foto, Queda 2000 pigment on paper (polyptic 4 drawings) each 64cm x 94cm and A vida no Canto 2000 silvermarker ink on paper 94cm x 63cm

With modest materials in surprising combinations, he creates significant objects that celebrate the discarded and mundane in contemporary life. In Paris, he found the cylinder-shaped tiles covering the walls of the Havre-Caumartin subway station to be the perfect matrix for a series of large- scale drawings. Paying homage to the Surrealist Frottage technique of rubbing a surface such as a parquet floor or a table through a piece of paper to give birth to a chance-based works, Orozco employed the tiles as the medium for a completely accidental yet monumental composition. Orozco also uses photography both to document his work and as finished product. A series of snapshots relate his fortuitous encounters and interventions as he travelled. Pictures such as 'Camino a Mahaballipuram' (The Road to Mahabalipuram), in which a cyclist is almost entirely wrapped in the bundle he carries, are cheerful and humoristic yet point to questions of commodity culture, industrial production and environmental damage

Damian Ortega Accion 2000 cement, mosaic tiles & toy cars dimensions variable

Damian Ortega belongs to the category of self-taught artists. He left school at 16 to become a newspaper cartoonist, which, in Mexico, is a most respected endeavour. He learned from both this activity and the overwhelming legacy of Mexican artists such as Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera who fused their art with fierce political propaganda. Ortega's work embraces a whole range of media and always connects everyday life objects and situations with a taste for visual and language puns.

Also in the collection; America, Nuevo Orden 1996 6 c-prints each 51cm x 61cm

A contemporary of fellow Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, with whom he shares the appeal for playfulness and satire, Ortega adds a twist of his own: a strong political comment and a rejection of US culture and its language. In 'America, Nuevo Orden' (America, New Order), he metaphorically disconnects and dissolves the US battery through a puzzle of bricks. In 'Accion' (Action), he materializes a political motto into an imaginary and miniaturised urban landscape.

Gabriel Orozco Havre Caumartin no.4; 10; 22 1999 rubbing on Japanese paper each 203cm x 101.5cm

Gabriel Orozco, the most renowned of the young Mexican artists, has built over the last ten years, an eclectic body of works that poetically addresses our relationships to common objects and events. Orozco frequently works with man-made and natural objects together, playing on the meaning of each against the other and forcing us to re-examine everyday interactions. His playful and unexpected surreal inventions usually confront our notion of what art is.

Also in the collection; Camino a Mahaballipuram 1997 Iris print 50cm x 100cm

Vik Muniz Pictures of Colour (after G. Richter) 2001 cibachrome print 125.3cm x 171cm

Believing that our perception and knowledge of the world, of its history and its art history is based on reproductions and representations, Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines sculpture, drawing and photography to question both our customary apprehension of works of art and our ability to differentiate fact from fiction. Muniz' photographic compositions are genuine trompe l'oeils that can be a portrait, a landscape, a still-life, or an iconic image from history or art history. His unique technique features a range of unorthodox materials such as wire, granulated sugar, cotton, chocolate syrup, tomato sauce, thread or dust.

Also in the collection; Pictures of Colour (after Y. Klein) 2001 cibachrome print 125.3cm x 171cm and Pictures of Colour (after M. Rothko) 2001 c-print 186cm x 250cm; Pantheon 1, American Men (Andy Warhol), 2001, cibachrome print 153 x 123cm

In his recent 'Pictures of Colour' Muniz has re-composed paintings by very carefully chosen modern masters, from Claude Monet to Mark Rothko, who all experimented on perception and colour structure. The works of the series are composed with partially creased Pantone colour samples and then photographed and re-scaled in standardised sizes. These pictures of pictures of pictures, referring to original works as varied as a colourful landscape by Monet or a blue monochrome by Yves Klein, deconstruct the original paintings into colour sequences made of industrial tints. The series does not only embody Muniz' extraordinary technical skills but also his fascination with representation rather than the objects themselves.

Raghubir Singh Monsoon Rains, Monghyr, Bihar, 1967 1967 chromogenic print 24.5cm x 37cm

India is Raghubir Singh's subject, and in years of shooting it he has adeptly maneuvered between the imposing vista and the close-up. After several sumptuous collections of individual aspects of his homeland, from the splendour of ancient Varanasi to the hustle-bustle of modern Bombay. Singh's India is multihued in ways that seem uniquely Indian. It's a land that can be coaxed into posing for the alert artist, or offer itself in a frenzy of disorganization, as in Singh's portrait of Hindu holy men observing the Kumbh Mela festival in the city of Allahab.

Also in the collection; Man Diving, Ganges flood, Benares, Uttar Pradesh 1985 chromogenic print 24.5cm x 37cm and Bullocks for sale, Pushkar Fair, Rajasthan 1974 chromogenic print 24.5cm x 37cm

Japan may be the most aesthetic country on film: the rooftop patterns, the sculpted eyes of a Japanese child. The eyes of an Indian youth flash with an almost frightening glimpse of humanity. Serious Indian photography may always be a colossal clash between aesthetics and subject matter, but what amazing sparks find their way to the negative.

NS Harsha The Last Dance 2000 watercolour on paper

NS Harsha makes drawings that cover a whole spectrum of Indian life from Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist images to Bollywood. On first glance they are delicate and precise illustrations with references to Indian Miniaturist painting. On further inspection however, they often have a multi-layered narrative that questions tradition and history with wit and irreverence.

In 2000 Harsha took part in a residency and group exhibition at Beaconsfield Gallery in London Contemporary Indian Drawing. During his stay the artist made drawings in response to Company Paintings - now in the Victoria and Albert Museum - that were commissioned to record wildlife in India in the Eighteenth century. These works on paper portray a complex British Indian history with humour and intrigue.

Also in the collection; The Sheep Eaters, Guards for Gods, Decrypting the Whispers, William Fullerton Treated by a Local Doctor, 2x Untitled all 2000 watercolour on paper

Chris Ofili 'Afro Apparition' 2003 mixed media.

From April 2004, British artist Chris Ofili has been represented in the Monsoon Art Collection with 'Afro Apparition' (2003) - a key work from his presentation at the British Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennial.

Nominated to represent Britain at the famous Venetian art exhibition, Ofili created a new body of work, a series of large painted portraits of 'afro lovers'. The paintings are composed of multiple layers of oil paint, acrylic paint, glitter, resin, map pins and sit on two elephant dung balls, showing in excessively luscious materials the world of two lovers in a tropical paradise. There is a retro feel about the two figures; wearing shiny disco suits, bow ties and bouffant hair-dos. But their romance is not just representative of 'afro love' and the 70s rhetoric of black empowerment - the two figures also play on the story of Adam and Eve and in the painting we see are transported to the seductive environment of the garden of Eden.

The palette that makes up this series of paintings is composed of green, red and black and follows the scheme of Marcus Garvey's 1920 Pan African Flag. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and introduced the Pan African Flag as a uniting symbol of the black race. The colours according to Garvey had special significance; Red symbolized the 'colour of the blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty', black, 'the colour of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong;, and green for 'the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland.'

Chris Ofili said in a recent interview with curator Thelma Golden:
I am interested in paradise or the promised land as this kind of idea of redemption or being liberated. This is why I attached my thinking about this to Marcus Garvey's ideas, because he had this semi-religious way of approaching things. The idea of being contained in some way and that it is possible through belief, help, and friendship to liberate yourself and go to another place where you are accepted. That is what painting can be about. That through making paintings you get to go to a better place; you get to be a better painter."

David Hammons African-American Flag 1990 cotton print

This seminal work is also part of the Monsoon Art Collection. This work was first seen at Hammons' New York retrospective in 1990. A simple cotton American flag dyed in the Pan African colours, black, red and green was flown outside the PS1 Museum causing great controversy. Hammons sought to reinsert black identity in the nation's revered banner."