The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2018 grantees

Asia Art Archive (AAA) announces the 2018 grantees of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant. The grant offers grantees one-year fellowships to conduct research on AAA’s Collection and develop historical research projects on topics relating to contemporary art in Chinese communities worldwide.

Awarded Research Proposals 2018

Major Grant
Zhuang Wubin, “Resurfacing Hong Kong in Southeast Asia: Circulations of Photography from the 1930s to the Handover” 
Zhang’s research examines the historical connections between Hong Kong and Southeast Asia from the 1930s to the Handover in 1997. It focuses on the circulations of photography across the region as a means to rethink the histories, cultures, and politics of Hong Kong. As a hub for the publication and distribution of cultural materials for Chinese communities across Southeast Asia in the colonial era, the city hosts significant collections for the study of photography in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Southeast Asia, where the idea of “Chineseness” has been shaped.

Secondary Grants
Deng Liwen, “Southerness as Method: From Southern Artists Salon to Theatre 44”
Deng’s project utilises AAA’s Materials of the Future Archive and examines the influence of the Southern Artists Salon in the south today. Deng investigates the link between the Southern Artists Salon in 1986 and Theatre 44 in recent years, the way artists from the two groups address their locality against the global and the broader context of contemporary art in China, and how the idea of “southerness” has been configured and reconfigured in the global cultural, geopolitical landscape.

Zeng Qunkai, “Sensation, Modern, and Oasis: From Twelve Men Exhibition to Restart Exhibition in Xinjiang from 1987 to 2002”
Zeng’s project investigates various works and activities of two pivotal exhibitions across this particular period in Xinjiang, which exhibit a trajectory of preparation, germination, peak, and a turn afterwards. A historical area of multi-cultural collisions and assimilations, Zeng traces the inspirations for art in Xinjiang in terms of public value, visual transformations, and sociopolitical concepts from Central China as well as Central Asia.

Biographies

Zhuang Wubin is a writer, curator, and artist based in Singapore. He is currently a part-time lecturer in the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University. Zhuang’s published books include Shifting Currents (2018) and Photography in Southeast Asia (2016). Zhuang Wubin is a recipient of a research grant from Prince Claus Fund, The Netherlands (2010), and the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship, Singapore (2017). He has been invited to two residency programmes at Asia Art Archive—the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project in 2018, and a Research Residency supported by Spring Workshop in 2015.

Deng Liwen is a PhD researcher on Chinese contemporary art for ChinaCreative Project, University of Amsterdam. Deng has written for The Newsletter, LEAP, Art Forum, The Art Newspaper, and Phoenix Art. Her research on art of the south motivates a number of presentations and talks, including “Critical Public Spaces in the City: Social Practices Growing or Roaming in Guangzhou” (University of Amsterdam, 2018) and “Art’s Social Practice in Pearl River Delta: from Residents Forum to Theatre 44” (Shanghai, 2017).

Zeng Qunkai is an artist, critic, and curator active in Xinjiang. He curated Scattered into the Enlightenment (2013) and The Narrator of the “Yi” Field (2010), and co-curated the exhibition Pink Public Opinion: Contemporary Art Exhibition of Chinese Female Artists. As an artist, Zeng’s works have been selected in major national art exhibitions. His essay “Parallel Geography and Parallel Experiment: Art Historical Norms and Experiments in Art Ecology of Xinjiang” was selected in the 34th World Congress of Art History.

Jury
Peggy Wang, Assistant Professor, Art History and Asian Studies at Bowdoin College in Maine, US
Huang Chien-Hung, Associate Professor of Art Theory, Taipei National University of the Arts
John Tain, Head of Research, Asia Art Archive
Anthony Yung, Researcher, Asia Art Archive