Three Contested Sites - Looking Into The Future Through Exhibition History
Project Timeline & Partner Institutions
Since the launching of Three Contested Sites at the beginning of the year, five researchers, Wing Chan (London-Hong Kong), Nie Xiaoyi (Mainland China), Kanokwan Trakulyingcharoen (Bangkok), Yueni Zhong (Berlin), Qiuzi Guo (Berlin), and guest research assistant Zhang Jun (Paris), have been conducting extensive documentary research and interviews on the complex itineraries, character trajectories, and work-medium contexts of the three exhibition series China Avant-Garde, Half of the Sky, and Cities on the Move.
Through monthly online meetings, the team has shared its thoughts and findings from visits to local institutions, interviews with curators, artists and participants, and intensive readings of archival documents in search of mutual understanding and ways of coexisting in a divided world that reach beyond pandemic segmentations. The team believes that revisiting concepts that marked the decade between 1993 and 2003, such as "Contemporary Chinese Art," "Avant-Garde," "Half of the Sky," "Internationalism-New Internationalism,” may help us to understand how these concepts failed to capture the present contestations. The research introduces decentralized and relational perspectives into the study of exhibition history: examining the exhibitions under specific frameworks and individual interactions actively constructed by artists and curators while presenting institutional history, cultural diplomacy, leftist thinking, global women's movements, among other macro perspectives in order to dissolve the dualistic structures and rhetoric ghosts of the Cold War.
Beyond the central figures and events, we also note the important roles technological factors such as the advent of e-mail and the popularity of international delivery services have played in facilitating the global flow of contemporary art—As some artworks were lost in multiple and accelerating itineraries, the strong desire for communication from countries, institutions, or individuals during a period of globalized optimism spurred on a large number of multi-directional, inadvertent, or intentional mistranslations and misunderstandings. These exhibitions were destined to be sites of contact and controversy, as well as starting points for resonance and hope.
Project Timeline:
In response to the recent withdrawal of the Times Art Center Berlin space and the demands of research breadth, depth, and content relevance, we have made the following adjustments:
September 2022: Institutional research, documentary and archival research, field visits and interviews will be largely completed.
December 2022: The first phase of research results will be shared in the form of a "Para-curatorial Symposium.”
First half of 2023: Website construction and commission projects will be launched, and various online and offline collaborations with partner institutions will be promoted.
Second half of 2023: The exhibition will be presented at the Times Museum in Guangzhou.
2024: Completion of website construction and launch of project publications
*Precise information and details are subject to subsequent official announcements from the Times Museum and Times Art Center Berlin.
Partner Institutions:
Within only half a year, we have gain substantial support from the following partner institutions, and we look forward to our future collaborations:
Asian Art Archive (Hong Kong)
Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation founded in 2000 with one of the most valuable growing collections of material on the recent history of art from Asia, freely available from our website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through research, residency, and educational programmes.
Afterall (London)
Afterall focuses its research activities on the value of contemporary art and its relation to wider society. It specialises in 3 registers of art production and reception: the individual work; its exhibition or public display; and its dialogue with social, political and theoretical contexts. Based at Central Saint Martins, the research centre works with partners across 3 continents to deepen this enquiry and make it available through publications, digital access, conferences, screenings and talks.
Documenta Institut (Kassel)
The documenta Institut is being established in cooperation between the State of Hesse, the City of Kassel, the documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, and the University of Kassel together with the Kunsthochschule and with financial support for the construction project provided by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. As part of the development of the documenta Institut, three tenure-track professor- ships in the departments of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Architecture, Urban Planning, Landscape Planning and Social Sciences have been appointed with funding from the state of Hesse.
Ocula Magazine (Media Partner)
Exclusive conversations with leading artists, curators and collectors, plus in-depth reports on current exhibitions and art events around the world.
What are the “three contested sites”?
China Avant-Garde was an important group debut of contemporary Chinese art outside China in 1993. Curated by Andreas Schmid, Hans van Dijk and Jochen Noth, the exhibition was held in January 1993 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. The exhibition featured 16 artists including Wang Guangyi, Huang Yong Ping, Geng Jianyi and Zhang Peili, and toured to Rotterdam, Oxford, Odense, and Hildesheim between 1993 and 1994.
In response to the absence of female artists in the Kunstmuseum Bonn exhibition China!, and at the initiative of local feminist activists, Marianne Pitzen, the director of the Bonn Women's Museum, invited Berlin artist Ping Qiu and artist-organizer Chris Werner to curate an exhibition of 22 women artists from China, Taiwan, and overseas in the group exhibition Half of the Sky. The exhibition took place in Bonn, Offenburg, and Kleinsassen between 1998 and 1999.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru with the participation of more than 60 artists and architects, Cities on The Move was driven by the dramatic changes and flows in Asian cities. The exhibition toured Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Fredensborg, London, and Bangkok from 1997 to 2000.
