Postal: Centre for the Study of Democracy,
University of Westminster,
32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW
email: hill.cai@gmail.com

Dr. Katie Hill is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Art at CSD. She is currently developing the Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture Project, a new resource base that will comprise a website, a bibliographic database, and an archive of all aspects of visual culture in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Chinese diaspora. This initiative will build on the Chinese Poster Collection at CSD (of which Dr Hill is in charge), a collection of more than 600 posters from China, 500 of which are available online (see below). Dr Hill completed a DPhil in Contemporary Chinese art at Sussex University. Her thesis examined the relocation of Chinese artists who moved out of China in the 1980s to work internationally and their collision with the international art world in Britain and elsewhere. She has worked in numerous areas of Chinese art, including as a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sotheby's Institute, and the British Museum. Dr Hill has contributed reviews and articles to various journals, including Third Text and New Formations. She is actively involved in art projects such as the short film Two Artists Piss on Duchamp's Urinal (made for Dazed & Confused and FilmFour). Her current research interests include the male body in Contemporary Chinese performance art; nationalism and narcissism in contemporary Chinese art; and the cultural and political relations between China and the 'West'.

Full CV in PDF

Research

Research Interests

Contemporary Chinese art since 1960s, contemporary exhibitions of Chinese art; Chinese artists in the international diaspora, performance art and the body in art; strategies and politics of curating ‘Chinese’ art; propaganda posters, twentieth century China and photography power and money in the art world. Feminism in art, visual culture and spectatorship, transnational art and post-colonialism. Criticism and curating in the Chinese art world.

Current Research

She is currently writing a book on Visual Modernity in China since the early twentieth century (Lund Humphries 2009). I am also developing three monographs: Zhao Bandi, the Gao Brothers and Zhang Xiaogang. Two of these are visual collections of work, the third, a retrospective study of the artist’s work.

She is curating a group show called English Lounge for Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing in 2008. I am also developing a research network on contemporary Asian art in China, Japan, Korea and India and developing academic links with Chinese institutions for student and staff exchange with Westminster University.

She is a member of the editorial board of Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and a consultant lecturer for Sotheby’s Institute.

Chinese Poster Collection

The University of Westminster Chinese Poster Collection is a unique archival collection of some five hundred posters spanning the period between the late 1960s and the late 1980s. John Gittings, then Senior Lecturer of the Chinese Section, began the collection in 1979 as the China Visual Arts Project for research and teaching purposes. Over the years it grew, with the contributions of other colleagues, students and friends who studied and travelled in China. Anna Merton was appointed as Researcher in charge of organisation and conservation of the collection. In 1979, a first exhibition entitled Popular Political Culture in China was held in the Regent Street building of the PCL. Another New Year Picture Exhibition of the collection's New Year pictures (nianhua) was held in February 1981. (read more)

To access the University of Westminster CHINESE POSTER COLLECTION website, click.

Recent and Forthcoming Talks

• October 2008, Art Insight Art Markets Seminar Asian House
• November 2008, SOAS Lecture on the evolution of the Chinese art world
• December 2008, seminar at Westminster China Media Centre on Art and Corruption in China
• January 2009, invited talk to accompany Soya Sauce Ketchup Fight by Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, University of Essex
• January 2009, Panel discussion at LTB Foundation, London, on 'Politics of Expression in Contemporary Chinese Art'

Publications

‘Objects in space, time and history’, for Varvara Shavrova: Untouched, book essay for monograph of photographs Beijing and Ireland. Exhibition held by Zenith Culture International, Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City, March 2008. Published by Timezone 8, Beijing.

‘Figures of Modernity in Post-Realist Chinese art’. Catalogue essay, China macht Druck. Zeitgenössische Chinesische Druckgrafik 26.01.2008 - 06.04.2008 Bietigheim-Bissingen City Gallery, Germany.

'Why the manic grin? Hysterical bodies: Contemporary art as male trauma in Post Cultural Revolution China', chapter in edited volume: Joshua Jiang, (ed.) Burden or Legacy, From the Cultural Revolution to Contemporary Art in China. Hong Kong University Press, 2007

Editor and co-author, Mad For Real. Artists monograph showing the work of Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, Carrots Press, 2005.

Editor and compiler, The Political Body. Posters from the People's Republic of China in the 1960s and 1970s, exhibition catalogue. 2004

'Britain s first View of China', review in China Now, p.38, no.143, Winter 1992/93.

Translation: Nan Fang, 'Beautiful Landscape', in Abandoned Wine. Chinese Writing Today. 2, Wellsweep Press (London, 1996).

' Zhao Bandi, the Real and the Unreal.'  Exchange of Earth, July 1st, 1997. Review, Third Text, (October, 1997).

'Locating the work of Pamela Leung', New Formations, Special issue edited by Harriet Evans, 2000.

'Uncooperative acts', Tank Magazine, Jan, 2001.

The Image of Modern China, Lund Humphries, forthcoming 2009. 

Conference Papers

Depictions of the Face in Chinese Posters: from the 1950s to the 1980s. International Symposium, Face and Place. Visibility and Invisibility in Chinese Propaganda Posters, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, 25-26 October 2007

Goutong and gemenr: male communication in Chinese contemporary art, British Association of Chinese Studies, Annual Conference, January 2004

Panel Chair, organising committee: Language Text and Medium in Contemporary Chinese Art, at international conference Chinese Arts in the International Arena, British Museum, April, 2002

Masculinity and oppression in contemporary Chinese art. The need for a non-redemptive feminist critique of a macho post-Maoist domain, panel on contemporary Chinese art: International Convention for Asian Scholars, Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands, June, 1998.

Introspection, retrospection and narcissism. Chinese male nude performance art in the 1980s and 1990s, for panel: Questioning the Paradigm of Race Identity, AAH Annual Conference, April 1998, University of Plymouth at Exeter.

The emergence of Postmodernism in China during the 1980s. Huang Yongping and the Xiamen Dada, ‘Tradition and Innovation, Twentieth Century Chinese Painting’, conference, British Museum, September, 1996.

Curatorial Vita 1999-2008

2008

‘Objects in space, time and history’, for Varvara Shavrova: Untouched, book essay for monograph of photographs Beijing and Ireland. Exhibition held by Zenith Culture International, Beijing Museum of Imperial City.

ChinaMacht Druck. ‘Figures of Modernity in Post-Realist Chinese art’. Catalogue essay, exhibition of contemporary Chinese prints, Städtiche Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany

Wu Gaozhong, solo exhibition Zhendai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (forthcoming), curatorial essay and conceptual guidance

‘Cultural Value in Contemporary Chinese Design’, Two Cities Gallery, Shanghai:, March 17 2008

2007

Legacy, contemporary photographic works from China, Rossi and Rossi, London. Curated exhibition and accompanying written materials for group show featuring Wu Gaozhong, Bai Yiluo, Huang Yan, Mad For Real, Beijing East Village Collective, Sheng Qi ((19 April-25 May, 2007).

Weng Fen – ‘My Olympics. On your marks, get set GO!’ Catalogue essay for My Olympics. New works by Weng Fen (Weng Peijun), Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing: sculpture, installation, light-box photographs, video and photographic works.

Talk: ‘The Real, The Unreal and the Sublime: Contemporary Chinese Photography’, Tate Liverpool 2007.

Speaker, Festival of Europe: ‘Europe, Land of the Setting Sun?’ Contemporary Chinese art panel, Louise T Blouin Foundation, London.

Speaker and panelist, 'Contemporary Chinese Art: a marketing analysis' study-day, Sotheby's Institute.

2005

Mad For Real, monograph editor and curator, ‘Madness, duplicity and reality’, monograph essay

Cai Yuan and JJ Xi (ISBN 0 9551074 07)

2004

The Political Body. Posters from the People’s Republic of China in the 1960s and 1970s.  Exhibition and catalogue, curated exhibition and accompanying materials, showing 32 posters from the University of Westminster’s Chinese Poster Collection

Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Oriental Museum, Durham, Bath Museum of East Asian Art and Union College Schenectady, NY, USA

Happy and Glorious, Co-curator solo exhibition of Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, Manchester Chinese Arts Centre, installation, performance and photographic works. 

Alive Alive Oh! Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, Performance/Photography Installation, Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, curatorial concept and texts.

2000

Stop for a Minute, Dazed and Confused

One-minute film of Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal, film director and texts.

Two Artists series: series of London-based performances by Cai Yuan and JJ Xi (aka Mad For Real) (1999-2000)

1999

Mad For Real, Soya Sauce and Ketchup Fight, Fordham Gallery, London, concept and accompanying texts.

Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, Jumping on Tracey Emin’s Bed, Turner Prize exhibition, textual material and preview.

1997

Zhao Bandi, the Real and the Unreal. Exchange of Earth, July 1st, 1997. Review, Third Text, (October, 1997)

Films

Director: Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal, ‘Stop for a minute’ film project commissioned by FilmFour and Dazed & Confused, 2000, see http://www.stopforaminute.com/

Research Collaboration with Hu Jie and Ai Xiaoming, Painting for the Revolution, documentary film about the Chinese Huxian Peasant Painting movement in the early 1970s, 2005.

Teaching

Contribute four sessions on MAIS cultural studies and Chinese societies since 2003: Said's Orientalism and beyond, Ethnicities in China, Visual Culture, Postcolonial writing.

Visits to collection ongoing on appointment since 2002 (students from Leeds, and regular annual sessions with students from various institutions, eg. Sotheby's Institute, Birkbeck, the British Museum.

Supervision of two PhD students, since 2003. Natalie Wong works on ‘The new Visual Discourse of Cultural Revolution imagery’. Felix Schoeber works on 'Entering the Biennials Game, Art and the Institution in Taiwan and China since the First Shanghai Biennale'.

Marker, essays, MA International Studies: Problems and Perspectives, Chinese Societies, Chinese Film and Media, dissertations

Internal PhD examiner: Xiaopei He, Asian Studies, Aids in China, 2006, Alessandra Aresu, Asian Studies, Sex education in contemporary China (2006), Claudia Clare, Media Art Design, Shattered, ceramics practice-based PhD (May/June 2007)

MA dissertations: Mai Kimura, Kawaii Culture in Japan , Pamela Throop, Representing Africans in Chinese Political posters, Nedim Assam, IR, Turkish Religion and Democracy

External Examiner for the Bolton University/Dalian Medical University MA in Photojournalism, documentary and travel photography