The Winter issue of ArtReview Asia looks to artists who engage with the past in order to figure out how we got to the present – and how the present is continually reshaped by the decisions we make based on lessons from the past. Tyler Coburn traces how three Japanese artists revisit early encounters between Japan and foreign powers to expose enduring imperialist narratives, racial hierarchies and cultural translations that continue to shape Japan's society today; Illaria Maria Sala considers how Singapore has employed botanical diplomacy and made orchids a tool of foreign policy; Connie Zheng's map-based works are examined, by Max Crosbie-Jones as speculative, research-driven tools that challenge received narratives of migration, labour and environmental history; Lai Fei explores Peng Zuqiang’s moving-image practice, which presents as a delicate negotiation between language, memory and emotion, and probes what resists articulation within China’s fraught political and affective landscape; and The Vishnudharmottara, presented in Stella Kramrisch’s translation with annotations by Mark Rappolt, reconsiders one of the earliest textual systems for understanding image-making. Plus opinions, reviews and more.