Yu Jianrong 于建嵘　has never received formal art training before he started painting portraits of Chinese petitioners. Look at what he is now doing!

Picture credit: Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报

As a sociologist, he comes into contact with many petitioners. He'd initially commissioned artists to do a series of 10 portraits using photographs. After rejecting their work for being too unimaginative　(匠气 jiangqi), he picked up the brush and did it himself.

Where Three Dreams Cross

• Exhibition of images from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
• Includes images from the first Indian-run photographic studios in the 19th century, social realism and reportage photography from the 1940s, the documentation of key political moments, amateur photography from the 1960s, and street photography from the 1970s.
• Images from private family archives, galleries, individuals and works by leading contemporary artistes
  

Date: 21 Jan - 1 Apr, 2010
Venue: Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK

[Picture credits: Rashid Talukdar (top) and Mohammad Ali Selim]

Did you know that the UK is home to one of the biggest Himalayan diaspora communities outside of South Asia?

Event: Himalaya Film and Cultural Festival
Date: 28 Jan - 12 Feb 2010
Venue: Various; UK

Shown below: Frozen, a film that will be screened during the festival.

Film synopsis: Shot in the icy Winter of Ladakh, in India’s far north, Frozen is the story of a small family left without a mother. In debt and with few sources of income, Karma has difficulty supporting his two children Lasya and Chomo. Their lives become even more difficult when the army sets up camp a stone’s throw from their house.