The Nomadic Artist in the Chinese Diasporas

Moderator: Filippo Grassi

Filippo Grassi is a PhD student in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at UMD where he studies modern and contemporary Chinese art under the mentorship of Professor Jason Kuo. Filippo holds a  Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Chinese Language and Culture from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
His research focuses on issues of personal and collective identity in contemporary Chinese art. Filippo is also interested in digital humanities and studies how web technologies can be utilized in art history education.

2:00-2:03 PM Thursday April 18 EST / 11:00-11:03 AM California / 7:00-7:03 PM London / 2:00-2:03 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 4:00-4:03 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Welcome
Karin Zitzewitz, Professor and Chair, Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland

2:03-2:05 PM Thursday April 18 EST / 11:03-11:05 AM California / 7:03-7:05 PM London / 2:03-2:05 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 4:03-4:05 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Opening Remarks
Jason Kuo, Professor, Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland

2:05-2:35 PM EST / 11:05-11:35 AM California / 7:05-7:35 PM London / 2:05-2:35 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 4:05-4:35 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Paul Gladston, Chinese Contemporary Ink Art and the Changing Conditions of International Relocation since the 1980s: Song Ling and Xiao Lu in the People’s Republic of China and Australia 
Abstract

Dr. Paul Gladston is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, and a distinguished affiliate fellow of the UK-China Humanities Alliance, Tsinghua University. He is co-editor of the book series Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics, and was founding principal editor of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. His recent book-length publications include the monograph Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity (2019), and the collected editions Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China (2021), and China and Translation Studies (2023). He was an academic adviser to Art of Change: New Directions from China (Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London 2012), and has co-curated several exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art, including ‘New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou’ (Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham 2015), ‘Dis-Continuing Traditions: Contemporary Video Art from China’ (Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 2021), and ‘Enchanted Realities: Tan Lijie – Selected Works 2013-2022’ (Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 2023).

2:35-3:05 PM EST / 11:35 AM-12:05 PM California / 7:35-8:05 PM London / 2:35-3:05 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 4:35-5:05 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Eleanor Stoltzfus, Temporary Durations: The Liminality of Tehching Hsieh’s Performances
Abstract

Dr. Eleanor Stoltzfus earned her PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation focused on Bauhaus photography and New Womanhood in Weimar Germany. She has worked in curatorial roles at the Worcester Art Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, and Grey Art Gallery, NYU. Her research centers on the intersection of art and politics in interwar Germany, architectural utopianism, and issues of spectatorship in early twentieth-century photography, film, and stage design. 

3:05-3:35 PM EST / 12:05-12:35 PM California / 8:05-8:35 PM London / 3:05-3:35 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 5:05-5:35 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Lydia Ohl, East, West, and Nowhere: Cai Guo-Qiang’s Evolving Journey through Seen and Unseen Worlds
Abstract

Lydia Ohl is an independent researcher and archivist. She is a PhD Candidate at The Courtauld Institute of Art in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art with an MA in Medieval Art. From 2013-2022, she was the Head of Archives for artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who is the subject of her forthcoming dissertation “Cai Guo-Qiang and the Art of Catastrophe: Responses to Global Catastrophe from Olympiad to Pandemic.” Currently, Lydia is consulting for artist Robert Wilson in the development of the Library of Inspiration, an experimental dual digital and physical program for research in the arts and humanities.

3:35-4:05 PM EST / 12:35-1:05 PM California / 8:35-9:05 PM London / 3:35-4:05 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 5:35-6:05 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

Nan Zhong, Revisiting Cang Jie: Huang Yao’s Character Paintings (Wen Zi Hua 文字画) in Malaysia
Abstract

Nan Zhong is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned his M.A degree in East Asian Languages and Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. His research interests are focused on Chinese calligraphy and painting from the late Imperial period to the Republican era. Currently, he is working on his doctoral dissertation, which explores the development of overseas calligraphy and the impact of geopolitics. Nan also has a strong interest in museum work and has previously interned at institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the University of Maryland Art Gallery, and the National Museum of Asian Art.

4:05-5:00 PM Thursday April 18 EST / 1:05-2:00 PM California / 9:05-10:00 PM London / 4:05-5:00 AM Friday April 19 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 6:05-7:00 AM Friday April 19 Sydney

A Question and Answer period will follow the presentation of the session's papers.

Moderator: Belinda Qian He

Dr. Belinda Qian He is an assistant professor in East Asian Cinema & Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining the UMD faculty, she worked as a CCS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and taught global film and media at the University of Oklahoma and University of Washington, Seattle. Her work lies at the intersection of film & media studies, Asian studies, and legal humanities, exploring the role of film, photography, video, and other emergent media in policing, punishing, and justice making. She co-edited two special issues on “A Deep Focus on Global Chinese Cinephilia” for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. As a collaborator since 2020, she has contributed to the Global Cinema collection of the Media History Digital Library at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently working on her  book, Expose and Punish: Trial by Moving Images in Chinese Revolutionary Times.

5:00-5:30 PM EST / 2:00-2:30 PM California / 10:00-10:30 PM London / 5:00-5:30 AM Friday April 26 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 7:00-7:30 AM Friday April 26 Sydney

Wenny Teo, Nothing to See Here: Chinese Diasporic Artists and the White Monochrome in 1960s and 70s Britain
Abstract

Dr. Wenny Teo is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, specializing in China and the Sinophone world. Prior to joining the Courtauld, she worked in curatorial roles at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, and Tate Modern, London. Her research centers on the politics and poetics of infrastructure in China and along the ‘New Silk Road,’ as well as on art histories of Chinese immigration in the UK. She is currently working on a monograph on the work of three Chinese diasporic artists who lived and worked in the UK from the 1950s to the 1990s: Li Yuan-Chia, Richard Show-Yu Lin, and Kim Lim. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and Oxford Art Journal, and convenes the Asymmetry Art Foundation Chinese and Sinophone art program at The Courtauld Institute of Art. 

5:30-6:00 PM EST / 2:30-3:00 PM California / 10:30-11:00 PM London / 5:30-6:00 AM Friday April 26 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 7:30-8:00 AM Friday April 26 Sydney

Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, Between Worlds: Hong Xian’s Transformational Ink Painting
Abstract

Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres is a PhD Candidate in Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the University of California, San Diego, with a specialization in Chinese modern and contemporary art history. Beres is currently completing her dissertation on the reinventions and transformations of antiquity in mixed-media paintings of the late Qing. Beres is also a curator and cultural worker who is broadly interested in the transnational, cross-geographic flows of visual culture that characterize the global art world. She has curated more than thirty exhibition projects for museums and institutions around the world, such as the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery, the Pagoda Paris in France, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, and more.

6:00-6:30 PM EST / 3:00-3:30 PM California / 11:00-11:30 PM London / 6:00-6:30 AM Friday April 26 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 8:00-8:30 AM Friday April 26 Sydney

Dorothy Moss, Hung Liu: A Resident Alien in 1989
Abstract

Dr. Dorothy Moss is the Founding Director of the Hung Liu Estate. From 2011-2023, Moss held the position of curator of painting and sculpture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG). During her tenure at the Smithsonian, she was a leader of the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative, serving as coordinating curator of the Initiative from 2018-2021. Moss initiated the NPG's first performance art series, where she commissioned performances by renowned artists including Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, and Jame Luna. Her recent projects include the exhibition and book Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands (Yale University Press, 2021) and The Obama Portraits (Princeton University Press, 2020). In 2022 Moss received the Smithsonian Secretary's Prize for Excellence in Research for Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands. She earned a Master's degree in Art History at Williams College and a PhD in Art History at the University of Delaware.

6:30-7:00 PM EST / 3:30-4:00 PM California / 11:30 PM-12:00 AM (next day) London / 6:30-7:00 AM Friday April 26 Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 8:30-9:00 AM Friday April 26 Sydney

Yu-chieh Li, South-ism and Decolonial Discourses at Museums in Taiwan
Abstract

Dr. Yu-chieh Li teaches courses on the histories and theories of modern and contemporary art in a global context at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She holds a PhD in East Asian Art History and an MA in European Art History from Heidelberg University, Germany. Prior to joining Lingnan University, she was the inaugural Judith Neilson Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Art at University of New South Wales, Sydney (2018-2020). She has also held research positions at the Tate Research Centre: Asia, London (2017-2018), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013-2015). Her research engages with aesthetics of performance art in Asia, art historiography emerging from decolonial struggles, and socially engaged practices and curation resisting neoliberal globalization. Currently, she is working on a book project examining artistic autonomy in postsocialist China. She has served as co-editor of Xu Bing: Beyond the Book from the Sky (with Sarah E. Fraser, Springer, 2020), and Visual Representations of the Cold War and Postcolonial Struggles (with Midori Yamamura, Routledge, 2021).

7:00-8:00 PM EST / 4:00-5:00 PM California / 12:00-1:00 AM (next day) London / 7:00-8:00 AM (next day) Hong Kong/Taipei/Singapore / 9:00-10:00 AM (next day) Sydney

A Question and Answer period will follow the presentation of the session's papers.