Curating the Digital Expanded (2023) 🔗🔗🔗
A special issue co-edited by UNArt (Shanghai) and OnCurating (Zurich), supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.
The bilingual issue “Curating the Digital Expanded,” co-edited by UNArt and OnCurating, revisits OnCurating‘s Issue 45, originally published in April 2020. The original issue presented various perspectives on how the processes of art creation and curation are influenced by contemporary digital networks and the growing use of digital technologies in Europe. I had served as an editor for the online bilingual journal UNArt2020 (published by the UNArt Center) since the fall of 2020. In the winter of 2021, I connected the journal with OnCurating, and applied for the “To-gather” grant by Pro Helvetia, proposing a three-year interdisciplinary project between the two organizations. Between January 2022 and September 2023, I led a working group to produce and edit the first collaborative issue.
Games-in-Residence (2023) 🔗🔗🔗
An alternative exhibition that showcased 4 local indie games across the city of Shenzhen in 6 internet cafes.
YouXi DimSum (2023) 🔗🔗🔗
A pop-up exhibition/game night at the alternative space LIKELIKE in Pittsburgh.
By presenting six selected games that were developed by Chinese designers, YouXi Dimsum destructs the stereotypical formulas and shows checkpoints scattered in a culture complex, rendering a more complete interpretation of Chinese Games from perspectives of mythology, spatial cognition, pictographic and symbolic narratives, and rhetoric, etc. At the same time, we acknowledge that this is not an exhibition representing Chinese games as a category or regional circle. Rather we want to highlight that they come together as a dim sum banquet and a collage that provides a rich yet non-exhaustive vertical slice of the fussy virtual cake known as “Chinese Games.”
Gtopia: Game Site (2021) 🔗🔗🔗
An archive show about the creating and developing of 19 indie games, as well as the people and companies behind-the-scenes.
As an interactive media, video games have transformed the binary code of 0 and 1 into a fascinating world through the engine, text, sound, performance, graphics, touch, and other technologies and human creativity.
In “Gtopia: Game Site,” we choose 19 indie games that lead experiments and breakthroughs in these creative aspects to dissect the integral games in time and space: In time, we step back to the beginning when game artists and designers had nothing but whimsical ideas in their brains, and see how they went through the steps of prototyping, iteration, testing, user generation, and so on, and gather sand into a tower; In space, we split up the architectures, characters, arts, animations, texts, narratives, levels, and subsystems of the game, and use the microscope of systems theory to see how each part of the final giant apparatus looks like and the tensions and buffers within it.
《绯色畔上的谜思》The Enigmas at Red Point (2020)
A Project with NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship
A series of game nights I curated based on a board game I created. Through the process of each game, players together build up a fictional community and co-create a narrative of the story with my prompt.
These activities along with the game are being fiscally sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts.
《模因混流仪》Memetic Hybrid-Fluid App. (2020)
An online exhibition prototype
Through the female spectacles provided by Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg’s Manifesto and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, the online exhibition questions demographic commonalities and surveys the mechanism of social media users’ fluctuating cyberpsychology.
To mirror the chimera-like relationships’ formation through daily acting, this exhibition is staged on a fictive SNS platform where artworks are tweeted on the wall.
The audience log into this twilight zone in “drag” developed on the setup interface that I designed. Exposed to the scripted interactions, users would bear the “female experience” and unintentionally cumulate their “anxiety level points” on an embedded calculator.
《传染恐惧》Contagion Fear (2020)
An exhibition proposal for apexart’s 2020-2021 Open Call , Shenzhen, China
Contagion Fear is an proposed exhibition that I submitted apexart’s 2020-2021 International Open Call, which was ranked as the 12th placement among 400 exhibition proposals.
The proposed exhibition explores the comparability between two pandemics in China, SARS and COVID-19, and two award-winning sci-fi horrors, Severance and Waste Tide, that unfold the epizootic effects of globalization. It attempts to unravel the collective confusion caused by the contagion and rethink the subsequent fear we share. This exhibition surveys the various forms and metaphors of contagion, examining the socio psychological factors behind and analyzing the rhetoric and manifestations of the act of spreading.
《集忆信物》Collecting Mementoes: In the Absence of the Monument (2018)
An exhibition proposal for Spare Space, Shanghai, China
Collecting Mementoes: In the Absence of the Monument is an proposed exhibition that I co-curated with Mengni Zhang and submitted to the 2nd “Micro-Curatorial Project” by Fy Foundation, which was then shortlisted.
The proposed exhibition tries to examine alternative counter-monuments which register the ethnic change and to oppose authorities who influence the historical narrative of the place. A finished monument in positive form may seal up memory into a pedestal, while an unfinished memorial process can foster memory and envision the future. How better to mark a variation than by another variation?
《嵌入算法》Embedded Algorithm (2017)
An exhibition proposal for apexart’s 2018-2019 Open Call , New York, NY
Embedded Algorithm is an proposed exhibition that I submitted to apexart’s Open Call for 2018-19, which was ranked as the 10th placement among 509 exhibition proposals participated from 71 countries and read by over 300 jurors.
Inspired by the principles of user driven development, the proposed exhibition questions the intention of the algorithms that are coded into our daily lives. Do they use truly human-centered rules or are they new ways of manipulation that dominate the public with consumerism? Should we follow trends or remain skeptical of them? Do the algorists become more powerful during the process of empowering users to co-create? The five artists listed in the proposal all leverage embedded algorithms in their art practices to respond to such questions. Coming from different backgrounds, these artists examine the validity of user-oriented products and the algorithmic techniques effects on†our lives from layers of visual art, design thinking, robot ethics, digital sociology, and divination.
《浮游》Fuyou: staying drifting – A Solo Exhibition by Senbo Yang (2017)
Co-Curators: Zi Gu, Jing Li, Ruixuan Li | October 21 – 29, 2017 | BIGGERCODE Gallery, 472 Broome St, New York City, NY, 10012
Fuyou: staying drifting examines a cultural nomad’s life, one that is both physically and metaphorically unstable. Resulting from his residency at I-Park Foundation, Inc. Fuyou is the first solo exhibition of Berkeley-based Chinese artist, Senbo Yang (b. 1990). Featuring more than ten installations and mixed media works, the exhibition explores tranquility in the face of precariousness through the artist’s multiple encounters with the same model of IKEA bed across time and space.
Placing the bed in unstable environments is a poetic abstraction of Yang’s state of constant flux during times of vagabondage. Through a landscape architectural lens, the bed became a register and metric of natural phenomena. When phenomena such as light and shadow, clouds and rain, wind and fog came into contact with the bed, all of these conditions were made more tangible.
The title of the exhibition, “Fuyou,” is derived from a line of a poem by Chinese poet Su Shi: “[Live like] mayflies thrown between heaven and earth, [like] infinitesimal grains in the vast sea.” Drifting and mayflies (insects that are believed to be born in the morning and die before sunset) are homophones, both pronounced as fuyouin Chinese. The works touch upon a philosophical question: Is drifting an ephemeral or everlasting status?
Please see the artist Senbo Yang’s artworks at his website. The original press release is here.
As a co-curator, I worked with the artist to organize all the potential discourses that can be derived from the exhibition, wrote up the curatorial statement and artist statement for this solo exhibition, and distributed the press release to the media.
Art, Science and Innovation: a Neural Connection (2016)
an art salon and pop-up gallery Hosted by Essinova and sponsored by SAP AppHaus
Essinova proudly presented “Art, Science and Innovation: a Neural Connection”, the inaugural edition of its interdisciplinary salon series and a pop up gallery. The event featured the latest artworks of Dr. Greg Dunn, the world’s foremost neuroscientist-artist.
Void California: 1975 – 1989 (2016)
MA Thesis Exhibition, Curatorial Practice 2016, California College of the Arts
“Void California” surveys punk-inflected media that emerged from California sub- cultures in the late 1970s and 1980s. Encompassing zines, photography, collage, video montage, documentary film, and sound collage, the exhibition presents its artists and musicians as subcultural anthropologists, documenting a world at the brink of disaster.
《当我们想起宇宙》The Cosmos Comes to Our Mind (2015)
Exhibition Proposal for Kramlich’s Collection
This is an exhibition proposal that I independently made for Kramlich Family Collection’s inaugural exhibition in their private museum in Napa Valley, California. The choice of artworks is based on Kramlich’s media art collection.
The Cosmos Comes to Our Mind intends to offer viewers a space and an opportunity to rethink their own world views. The specially designed interior and the selected 13 media artworks from 7 brilliant artists provided by the Kramlich Family Collection offer visitors a moment to discover the relationship between the world and themselves. The artworks are ordered in a logic as “Environment – Deep Inside,” and the main exhibition room functions as an ecosystem that transforms macrocosm to microcosm and presenting this uncanny process.
Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible? (2014)
Collaborated by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Guangdong Times Museum, and Kadist Art Foundation.
I contributed to this exhibition as a curatorial intern. My responsibilities include coordinating with the artists and curators, installing the artworks, assisting an artist in his performance at the opening, and purchasing equipment, etc.
Robert Zhao Renhui: Flies Prefer Yellow (2014)
Robert Zhao Renhui’s first solo show in United States, presented by Kadist Art Foundation.
Resulting from his three-month residency at Kadist Art Foundation, Flies Prefer Yellow is the North American debut exhibition of Singapore-based artist, Robert Zhao Renhui. Featuring installation and photographic works, the exhibition explores boundaries, systems, neuroses, and control through the artist’s encounters with one of the most inconspicuous insect species on earth–flies.
I assisted the artist in researching materials and making the installations for this exhibition.
《疫年日志》A Journal of the Plague Year (2015)
A tour exhibition from Para Site, Hong Kong., curated by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero, presented by Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab.
A Journal of the Plague Year was first shown at Para Site, Hong Kong during the summer of 2013. Conceived as a touring exhibition, its center of gravity shifts under the influence of magnetic forces in each location on its itinerary. Nevertheless, each iteration departs from and remains strongly connected to an exploration of the events that affected Hong Kong in the spring of 2003: the most significant airborne epidemic in recent years–the SARS crisis–coupled with the tragic death of pop figure and pan-Asian icon Leslie Cheung.
I assisted the exhibition in researching historical archives, searching for and collecting objects that were displayed in the show, purchasing installation materials, translating the press-release, and distributing it to the press.
Spectrum Art Auction 2015
For over ten years, the Spectrum Annual Gala has been a gathering of community members, civic leaders, artists, art collectors and mental health professionals who support Access Institute – San Francisco’s Mental Health Safety Net. Spectrum Art Auction 2015 was Access Institute’s most successful fundraiser to date. We raised over $70,000 on the evening which includes auction sales of 50 artists’ diverse works, tickets at the door and fund-a-need. The funds went directly to Access Institute’s program, providing a mental health safety net in San Francisco and healing minds and strengthening the Bay Area community.
I was one of the art curators of this project. I found artists, collected the artworks, organized the installation materials, and gave a curator’s tour to the donors.
Alone Together or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Socialized Isolation (2015)
A special evening presented by the 2016 Curatorial Practice Class.
I was a co-curator of this event. I brought one artist to conduct a performance in the “Inside Space.” The artist made face-to-face interactions with visitors. She counts the number reacting to the change of light projected on her body. The hidden factor is that the artist switches the loop of her repetitions in response to the viewer’s particular reaction to the piece.