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  • University of New South Wales and University of Maryland Symposium | Rethinking the Curation of Chinese Contemporary Art

University of New South Wales and University of Maryland Symposium | Rethinking the Curation of Chinese Contemporary Art

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Toward “post-West” artworlds, political economies, spatial practices, and historiographies

 Installation shot, The Yellow Box: Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting in Taiwan, Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2005).

Image: Installation shot, The Yellow Box: Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting in Taiwan, Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2005).

Since the end of the 1980s, contemporary art produced by artists of Chinese cultural identity has been exhibited internationally in accordance with Westernised curatorial discourses and practices associated with the White Cube and its postmodernist/contemporary variants. This symposium will intervene critically with those discourses and practices by exploring the possibility of alternative approaches to the curation of a culturally Chinese contemporary art.

The symposium will bring together scholars as well as critics, artists, curators, and architects/designers who will be invited to respond critically to the symposium’s theme with reference to their particular professional experiences and concerns. In addition to presentations by the symposium’s convenors and invited speakers, ample time will be given for collective discussion and responses to audience questions. The convenors will seek to publish a peer-reviewed edited collection related to the theme of the symposium.

Join us for a one-day online international symposium/scholarly gathering jointly organized by the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA and the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is essential. For further information contact: Paul Gladston at p.gladston@unsw.edu.au


To read the full symposium abstract, and for a more detailed version of the agenda, click the link below:

Abstract & Agenda - Rethinking Curation Symposium 2021


This event is a partnership between

UNSW Symposium Logos

Agenda

NB The symposium takes place online across differing timezones. The symposium starts at 3.00pm, 28 April EDT in the US and ‘simultaneously’ at 5.00am, 29 April AEST in Australia. Timings for both zones are given below. If you are joining the symposium from another timezone please take account of the relevant time difference.


3. 00 -3.15 p.m / 5.00 - 5.15 a.m   Welcome and Introduction
Jason Kuo and Paul Gladston, with Lynne Howarth-Gladston and Alec Tzannes.

3.15 - 3.30 p.m / 5.15 - 5.30 a.m    Keynote Address
by Chang Tsong-Zung (Johnson CHANG), Director, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong.
三才的展示:天地人- Heaven Human Earth: Chinese Display in the Three Cosmological Realms.

 

Panel 1 - Trans-Cultural Discourses
Moderated by Jane DeBevoise, Chair of the Board of Directors of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and New York

4.00 - 4.30 p.m / 6.00 - 6.30 a.m   Paper 1 - “World-Making: Staging Contemporary Chinese Art in a Global Context”
Alexandra Munroe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE

4.30 - 5.00 p.m / 6.30 - 7.00 a.m   Paper 2 - “Thinking (and Practice In-/) Outside the (Yellow) Box: toward the curation of an artistic-cultural poly/cacophony”
Lynne Howarth-Gladston, independent artist and curator, and Paul Gladston, Judith Neilson Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 

 

Panel 2 - Spatial Practices

5.15 - 5.45 p.m / 7.15 - 7.45 a.m   Paper 1 - “Exploring Dangrove: what does the design and use of a storage facility for contemporary Chinese art suggest for future curatorial practice?”
Alec Tzannes, Professor Emeritus of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

5.45 - 6.15 p.m. / 7.45 - 8.15 a.m   Paper 2 - “Curating East Asian Art and Artefacts: cultural symbiosis and translation, past and present”
Jackie Menzies, Curator Emerita of Asian Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

 

Panel 3 - Social Engagements
Moderator: Hongwei Bao, University of Nottingham, UK         

6.45 - 7.15 p.m / 8.45 - 9.15 a.m   Paper 1 - “Curating Human Togetherness: artivism and the remaking of people and place in contemporary mainland China”
Meiqin Wang, California State University, Northridge, CA, US

7.15 - 7.45 p.m / 9.15 - 9.45 a.m   Paper 2 - “Socially-engaged Contemporary Art in Rural Hong Kong”
Frank Vigneron, Chairperson and Professor, Fine Arts Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK, with the artists Natalie LO Lai LAI and Monti LAI

 

8.00 - 8.30 p.m / 10.00 - 10.30 a.m  Concluding paper - “Curated Cultures”
David Joselit, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, US

8.30 - 9.00 p.m / 10.30 - 11.00 a.m  Plenary

9.00 p.m / 11.00 a.m                         Close


About our Speakers

Johnson Chang profile web

Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang), Director, Hanart TZ Gallery Hong Kong (Keynote)

Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang) is a curator, director of the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, and guest professor at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. He was curator of the major international exhibitions “China’s New Art Post-1989” (1993-1997), Chinese participation at the São Paulo Biennale (1994) and Venice Biennale (1995), and the Hong Kong pavilion at the São Paulo Biennale (1996) and Venice Biennale (2001).

His curatorial work in China includes co-curator of the third Guangzhou Triennial (2008), “Farewell to Post-Colonialism” and co-curator of the Shanghai Biennale (2012), “Re-Start.” Among the cultural projects initiated by Chang are the “West Heavens” series of Indian-Chinese art and intellectual exchanges launched at the Shanghai Biennale (2010), and the “Inter-Asia School” forums of Asian modern thought launched at the Shanghai Biennale (2012). His current research includes the “Yellow Box,” a series of projects about Chinese aesthetic spaces and contemporary art practice (initiated in 2004), and an exploration of traditional artistic practices within the “Yaji Garden” as a space for “elegant gatherings” among dynastic-imperial China’s administrative class known as the Literati. Another research project, “Jia Li Hall” (initiated in 2012) concerns Confucian rites and aesthetics. An App on the re-making of the classical Confucian Rite of Archery will be available to the public at the end of 2020.

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David Joselit

David Joselit, Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University

David Joselit is Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, US.  He is the author of five books, including Feedback: Television Against Democracy and After Art. Joselit is an editor of the journal October,  and writes frequently about contemporary art and visual culture.

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Alexandra Munroe

Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Alexandra Munroe is an award-winning curator, Asia scholar, and author focusing on art, culture, and institutional global strategy. She is the Senior Curator of Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, US, where she has led the Guggenheim's Asian Art Initiative since its founding in 2006.

Since 2018, she has served as Director, Curatorial Affairs, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.  Munroe has worked on over forty exhibitions and is recognized for her pioneering scholarship on artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Daido Moriyama, Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Mu Xin, and Yoko Ono, among others, and for bringing such historic avant-garde movements as Gutai, Mono-ha, Japanese otaku culture, and Chinese conceptual art to international attention. Her project Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994) is recognized for initiating the field of postwar Japanese art history in North America. Recently, Munroe was lead curator of the Guggenheim’s exhibition, ‘Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World’ (New York, NY, US) which The New York Times named as one of the top 10 exhibitions of 2017, and Artnews named as one of the top 25 most influential shows of the decade. Munroe received the 2017 Japan Foundation Award and the 2018 Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award, both bestowed by the government of Japan.

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Natalie Lo Lai

Natalie Lo Lai

Natalie Lo Lai is based in Hong Kong. A former travel journalist, Lai is interested in the development and the construction of nature. She is a learner at the collective organic farm Sangwoodgoon (Hong Kong) where she also explores, as an artist and a Hongkonger, the lifestyle of “Half-Farming, Half-X,” a practice that seeks alternatives and autonomy.

Lai finds her interests in food, farming, fermentation, slow-driving, surveillance, and meditation. For her, mixing multiple media includes moving image, photography, and installation. Her works are collected by the Sigg Collection and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, CA, US.

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Monti Lai

Monti Wai-yi Lai 

Monti Wai-yi Lai is an environmental artist and a farmer recognized for works that reflect on the relationship between art and the environment. Lai received her MFA from Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, majoring in Environmental Art. Her artworks range from site-specific environmental installations to drawings and participatory art. She set up the Farmside Art Research Lab in Hong Kong to explore her agroecological concerns through artisan farming practice.

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Jackie Menzies

Jackie Menzies OAM, Curator Emerita of Asian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales 

Jackie Menzies OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) is Curator Emerita of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney, Australia. As Head of Asian Art at the AGNSW between 1980 and 2012, Menzies was responsible for numerous Asian acquisitions, publications, and exhibitions.

Her major exhibitions for the gallery include ‘Buddha, Radiant Awakening’ (2001), and ‘Goddess, Divine Energy’ (2006). The publication accompanying the latter was awarded the Art Association of Australia and the New Zealand prize for ‘best large catalogue’ (2007). Menzies was responsible for the layout and installation of two Asian extensions at the AGNSW, one in 1990 and the other in 2003.

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Frank Vigneron

Frank Vigneron, Professor and Chair of the Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Frank Vigneron is Professor and current Chair of the Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong SAR. He received a Ph.D. in Chinese Art History from the Paris VII University in France, a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Paris IV Sorbonne University in France, and a Doctor of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

He has lived in Hong Kong since 1990, and joined the Department of Fine Arts, CUHK, HK, in 2004. Vigneron’s research focus is on the history of Chinese painting from the eighteenth century onward, and on different aspects of contemporary Chinese art seen in a global context.

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Meiqin Wang

Meiqin Wang

Meiqin Wang received a Ph.D. in Art History from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, NY, US, and is currently a professor of the Art Department at California State University Northridge, CA, US.

She researches contemporary art from China in the context of commercialization, globalization, and urbanization of the Chinese world, and has written on topics such as artist villages and cultural industries, art and urbanization, and socially engaged art. Wang’s major publications include two research monographs, Urbanization and Contemporary Chinese Art (2015), Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below (2019), and a co-edited volume, Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China (2018). 

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Hongwei Bao

Hongwei Bao, Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham (Moderator)

Hongwei Bao is an Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he also directs the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies. He is the author of the monographs Queer Comrades, Queer China and Queer Media in China.   

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Jane DeBevoise

Jane DeBevoise, Chair of the Board of Directors of Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong and New York (Moderator)

Jane DeBevoise is Chair of the Board of Directors of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and New York. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in 2002, Dr. DeBevoise was Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum, responsible for museum operations and exhibitions globally. She joined the Museum in 1996 as Project Director of China: 5000 Years, a large-scale exhibition of traditional and modern Chinese art that was presented in 1998 at the Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao.

Prior to 1996, Ms. DeBevoise was Managing Director at Bankers Trust Company where she worked for 14 years in New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and London. Dr. DeBevoise has a BA from Tufts University, an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D from The University of Hong Kong, all in art history. DeBevoise was appointed by the Home Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong Government to the Committee for Museums (2004-2007) and to the Museums Advisory Group for the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District (2006–2007). She is a Trustee of Asian Cultural Council. She is author of the monograph Between State and Market: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Post-Mao Era (2014).

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Mag Yao

Yung-Wen (Mag) Yao, Assistant Professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at Tatung University, Taipei, Taiwan

Yung-Wen (Mag) Yao is an Assistant Professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at Tatung University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on relationships between contemporary art and Chinese soft power. Yung-Wen (Mag) Yao is an Assistant Professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at Tatung University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on relationships between contemporary art and Chinese soft power. 

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Symposium Convenors

Paul Gladston

Paul Gladston, Inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales

Paul Gladston is inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He was previously Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Critical Theory, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, and inaugural Head of the School of International Communications and Director of the Institute of Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.

He has written extensively about contemporary art in and from the People’s Republic of China and the Asia-Pacific region with particular reference to the concerns of critical theory. His recent book-length publications include Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity (2019), and Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History (2014); the latter received “best publication,” Awards of Art China (2015). Gladston was an academic adviser to the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Art of Change: New Directions from China,’ Hayward Gallery-Southbank Centre, London, UK (2012). He is currently co-editor of the peer reviewed book series Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan) and was inaugural principal editor of the peer reviewed Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art (2013-2017).

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Lynne Howarth-Gladston

Lynne Howarth-Gladston

Lynne Howarth-Gladston is an artist, curator, and scholar. She has exhibited her painting internationally, including in the People’s Republic of China, the UK, and Australia, and was lead curator of the exhibition ‘New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou,’ Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK (2015), which critically adapted modes of display proposed by the Yellow Box.

She is also co-curator, with Paul Gladston, of the exhibition ‘Dis-/Continuing Traditions: Contemporary Video Art from China,’ Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (2021). Howarth-Gladston has published numerous articles on Chinese contemporary art and aesthetics, including two on the Yellow Box, co-authored with Paul Gladston. Her Ph.D. thesis is the first to engage critically with the work of the nineteenth-century botanical illustrator and traveller, Marianne North. Howarth-Gladston was an expert contributor to the BBC4 documentary, Kew’s Forgotten Queen: The Life of Marianne North (2016).

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Jason Kuo

Jason Kuo, Professor of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland

Jason Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, US. He has taught at the National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan), Williams College (Williamstown, MA, US), and Yale University (New Haven, CT, US). He was a Fellow at the Freer Gallery (D.C., US), a Stoddard Fellow at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI, US), and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY, US), and has received grants from the J. D. Rockefeller III Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation.

He is the author and editor of numerous publications, including Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted (2013), The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), and The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch’ing (2016). He is also the curator of numerous exhibitions, among them, The Inner Landscape: The Films and Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), and Lo Ch’ing: A Contemporary Chinese Poet-Painter (2018).

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Alex Tzannes

Alec Tzannes AM, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales

Alec Tzannes AM is Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is also founding director of the Sydney-based architecture and urban design practice, Tzannes, the work of which is recognized by more than 100 local, state, national, and international awards.

Tzannes was honored by the Hellenic Union of Eptanisians for his contributions to architecture and higher education (2019), awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Institute of Architects (2018), and made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant services to architecture (2014). From 2014 to 2018, Tzannes led the design of ‘Dangrove,’ a building housing the Judith Neilson collection that explores in-practice spatial and experiential techniques related to the exhibiting of culturally Chinese contemporary art.

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Asia Society Australia proudly supports this symposium.

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Event Details

Online
Thu 29 Apr 2021
5 - 11 a.m.
Sydney Time
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Register Now
20210429T050000 20210429T110000 Australia/Sydney Asia Society: University of New South Wales and University of Maryland Symposium | Rethinking the Curation of Chinese Contemporary Art The University of Maryland and the University of New South Wales present a one-day online international symposium exploring the curation of Chinese contemporary art.

For event details visit https://asiasociety.org/australia/events/university-new-south-wales-and-university-maryland-symposium-rethinking-curation
For event details visit https://asiasociety.org/australia/events/university-new-south-wales-and-university-maryland-symposium-rethinking-curation

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