Join us for a thought-provoking seminar exploring how art and China since 2008 has navigated the complex intersections of cultural identity, technological innovation, and global migration.
This dynamic panel discussion brings together distinguished speakers who will examine how artists are redefining what it means to create “Chinese art” in an era of transnational mobility and digital connectivity. The dialogue will explore how cultural boundaries blur as artists move fluidly between physical and virtual spaces, challenging us to rethink fixed notions of identity and belonging.
The guests will share insights from their research on creators who operate in spaces of negotiation and translation—where new forms of artistic expression emerge from diasporic experiences, digital communities, and global economic networks. These perspectives illuminate both China's transformations and our shared global condition, revealing how contemporary artworks serve as complex mirrors reflecting China to itself and to the world, while also reflecting the world back to China.
The seminar offers a preview of the ambitious project "Stay Connected: Art and China Since 2008" at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong—a two chapters, panoramic exhibition featuring over 70 artists whose works reflect China's evolving role in global cultural discourse. The exhibition series is accompanied by screenings, curator conversations, and a complementary, research-based publication produced with Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong).
Join us as we map the fluid territories where art, identity, and technology converge, creating new frameworks for understanding our interconnected world.
Speakers
Professor Jiang Jiehong
Professor Jiang Jiehong is Director of the Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts Asia, Birmingham City University, and Principal Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Intellect). Jiang has curated many international exhibitions including the Guangzhou Triennial: The Unseen (2012), the Asia Triennial Manchester: Harmonious Society (2014),and the First Thailand Biennale: Edge of the Wonderland (2018–19). Jiang’s recent book publications include The Art of Contemporary China (2021) and The Conformed Body: Contemporary Art in China (2024). He is currently working on a book project, The Art of Contemporary Japan, to be published by Thames and Hudson.
Ying Kwok
Ying Kwok is the Senior Curator at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Prior to her role at Tai Kwun, she worked as an independent curator 2013–2021. Throughout her career, Kwok has worked with a diverse range of art and cultural institutions locally and internationally, from artists’ initiatives to art festivals, public museums and the commercial sector. She continuously synthesises different art forms in contemporary visual art, from site-specific commissions and performances to film and video.
Kwok’s past roles include: Guest Curator for the 5th Audemars Piguet Art Commission: The moon is leaving us by Phoebe Hui, and was the Festival Director of Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2020, Curator for Contagious Cities: Far Away, Too Close for Tai Kwun Contemporary and Wellcome Trust, the Lead Curator of LOOK International Photography Festival 2017, and Curator at M+ for Samson Young: Songs for Disaster Relief as Hong Kong presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale. Before embarking on her freelancing career, Kwok was the curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, UK, between 2006 and 2012. In 2014, Kwok was awarded the Asia Cultural Council Fellowship. She is an international fellow in the Clore Leadership Programme 2018/19.
Professor Gerda Wielander
Professor Gerda Wielander, who will chair the discussion, is Director of Westminster's Contemporary China Centre, editor of the cultural china book series, and president of the British Association for Chinese Studies.
Location
Fyvie Hall, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, W1B 2HW
About the exhibition
Stay Connected: Art and China Since 2008, a panoramic exhibition comprising two chapters. Curated by Dr. Pi Li, Head of Art, and Ying Kwok, Senior Curator, Stay Connected presents artists who explore changes in the social realities of twenty-first-century China and the wider world. The exhibitions will be on view across three floors of the JC Contemporary galleries at Tai Kwun in Hong Kong.
Beginning with Stay Connected: Navigating the Cloud (26 Sep 2025 to 4 Jan 2026) and continuing in Stay Connected: Supplying the Globe (27 Feb to 31 May 2026), the two chapters are framed through the lenses of digital technology and the manufacturing supply chain, respectively, to portray the diversity of current artistic practices.
The first chapter, Stay Connected: Navigating the Cloud, focuses on the transformations in contemporary art practices and in society brought on by the spread of the internet and digital technologies. Chapter two, Stay Connected: Supplying the Globe, re-examines China’s role as the world’s centre for production and logistics through contemporary perspectives on the environment, labour, social status and community relationships.
About the publication
Produced in collaboration with Asia Art Archive, this volume features essays by 15 curators, researchers, and writers, who explore themes such as ‘Internet and Technologies’, ‘Frontiers’, ‘Histories’, ‘Labour’, ‘Surviving’, ‘Geoscape’, ‘Diasporas’, ‘Other Energies’, and ‘Self-Organisation’. The publication will present significant artworks, research papers, and related documentation about 21st-century artists working in China and internationally. It aims to serve as a resource for understanding a new chapter in global art history, as artists increasingly shed nationalist labels and engage with their peers on an international stage.
