［PRESS RELEASE］

21 July 2015 | 7-8 pm

Venue: A Space Asia Art Archive 10/F, Hollywood Centre 233 Hollywood Road Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

http://www.aaa.org.hk/Programme/Details/671

Research on how contemporary Chinese art gained international exposure has typically focused on East-West interactions including contact with Chinese artists in New York or Paris, the role of Euro-American collectors, or exhibitions like the Venice Biennale. Instead, this talk considers Japan as a significant site for early presentations of contemporary Chinese art.

Recent fieldwork interviews alongside art writing from 1989–1993 reveal that Japan offered opportunities for Chinese artists and curators to experiment with new modes of practice that enlarged the scope of Chinese art. This led to the appearance of bold new works from a rapidly emerging China holding symbolic relevance for some in Japan at a time when the country was reconsidering its role in the region. Through the introduction of artists, galleries, exhibitions, writers, and collaborators who supported contemporary Chinese art and artists in Japan, the talk shares research on what sort of works were presented, and how they were understood.

Olivier Krischer is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at the Australian National University, Canberra. His current research concerns twentieth-century China-Japan relations through art, and networks of creative activism in East Asia. Krischer is co-editor of Asia Through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders (2013), and has lectured at the University of Tsukuba, Japan; and University of Sydney, Australia.

This project is supported by the Joint Research Grant initiated by Asia Art Archive and New York Museum of Modern Art’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (MoMA C-MAP).