Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art : Cultural Diversity and Tradition

This is the first edited collection to critically address in its entirety questions related to the displaying of Chinese contemporary art. It includes chapters by scholars and cultural workers from diverse backgrounds involved in the interpretation of artistic as well as curatorial discourses and practices. Each of those chapters gives a detailed account of a particular, socio-culturally informed, approach to the making and showing of Chinese art - including in relation to queer identities, transculturality, the use of social media, artivism, social engagement, institutional critique, and neo-Confucian aesthetics. Together they present a vital intervention with established curatorship amidst the intensely interconnected and increasingly multi-polar cultural conditionalities of early 21st-century contemporaneity. Paul Gladston is Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. 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. Johnson Tsong-zung Chang is a curator, director of the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, and guest professor at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Jason Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, US Introduction References Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Inside/Outside the Yellow Box: Toward a Poly/Cacophonic Displaying of (Chinese) Contemporary Art Introduction The Yellow Box European/American Sublimity and Chinese Confucian-Literati Culture Conclusion References Visual Display and Aesthetic Transformation in China’s Three Cosmological Realms Introduction The Earth Sky-Heaven The Human Conclusion Collecting and Exhibiting Global Contemporary Chinese Ink Art: Zheng Chongbin’s Pictorial and Digital Ink Works in Western Art Institutional Contexts Introduction Internationalising Chinese Ink Art: The Case-Study of Zheng Chongbin’s Unfolding Landscape and Chimeric Landscape Collecting Contemporary Ink Art in the West: The Case of Zheng’s Works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Exhibiting Contemporary Ink Art in the West: The Case of Zheng’s Exhibitions in Berlin, Venice and Chicago Conclusion References Queerness as Masquerading: Displaying Queer Art in Contemporary China Introduction Queer Art as Worldmaking Difference-Gender: Queer Chinese Art in Museum Settings New China, New Marriage: Queer Performance Art on the Street Conclusion References Institutionalized Socially Engaged Art: The Qingtian Plan and Rural Reconstruction Introduction Rural Reconstruction Through Art Qu Yan and the Qingtian Plan The Qingtian Paradigm: Revitalizing Local Folk Customs with Contemporary Art Working with/in Institutions Mass Participation: A Method of Institutionalized Socially Engaged Art Conclusion References Pharmakon—Online and Offline: Art as Togetherness and Being Apart in the Hong Kong SAR Introduction Pharmakon: Social Media as Problem and/or Tool Online/Offline Education in Hong Kong Online/Offline Participatory Art in Hong Kong Conclusion References Curating Human Togetherness: Artivism and the Remaking of People and Place in Mainland China Introduction—Art in Action Socially Engaged Curation—A New Frontier Wang Nanming and Curating Art in Residential Communities Zuo Jing and Curating Arts-Based Rural Reconstruction Zheng Hongbin, Xi-San Film Studio, and Art as Journalism Conclusion References Writing ‘New’ History: Investigating the Anxiety of Taiwan’s Cultural Identity Through Three Exhibitions at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum Introduction Museums and the Construction of National Identity and Remembering The Secret South: From Cold War Perspective to Global South (2020) Worldward: The Transformative Force of Art in Taiwan’s New Cultural Movement (2021) The Wild Eighties: Dawn of a Transdisciplinary Taiwan (2022/12/03–2023/02/26) Art, Memory, and De-Sinicization References Index