Chen introduces ‘From Socialist Realism to Reconstructing Realities: April Photo Society, 1976–1988’, a project that analyses the history and work of the April Photo Society across the first decade of China’s reform era. This research, which is also being developed into an exhibition project on this seminal photo group, is part of a broader study examining the transition in Chinese photography from the Socialist Realism of the Maoist era to the humanistic concerns of the 1980s.
Lu presents ‘Post-Sense Sensibility and Art for Sale: 1999 and Beyond’, a research project that takes two 1999 art exhibitions ‘Post-Sense Sensibility’ and ‘Art for Sale’ as case studies to reconstruct the development of contemporary art in Mainland China during the late 1990s. Lu examines how the two exhibitions influenced participating artists and raised fundamental questions around contemporary Chinese art during a period of rising commodification.
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2016 is now open for application. Click here for details.
Chen Shuxia is a PhD candidate at the Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University, with a research focus on Chinese photography and its aesthetic transformation in the 1980s. Chen holds an MA in Art History from the University of Sydney; and an MA in Studio Art from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.
Lu Mingjun received a PhD in History from Sichuan University in 2011. He is currently Associate Professor and Postgraduate Tutor in Fine Arts at the Arts College of Sichuan University; and Art Director of Surplus Space. Lu’s research interests include history of modern and contemporary Chinese art, and art historiography in Europe and the US since the 1960s. His academic essays have been published in Literature & Art Studies, Art Research, Twenty-first Century, Art Criticism in Taiwan, and Frontiers. His recent books include Writing and Narrating of Vision: The Vision of History and Theory (2013); Visual Cognition and Art History: Michel Foucault, Hubert Damisch, Jonathan Crary (2014); and On Meta-Painting: An Art Institution and Cognition of Universality (2015).
