Curating Contemporary Chinese Ink Art
What is it about?
The paper looks at two pioneering exhibitions of contemporary Chinese ink art, held in China and the USA - the Third Chengdu Biennale (2007) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China (2013-2014). By taking these two exhibitions and their curatorial approaches as case-studies, the paper questions how contemporary Chinese ink art can be presented as the globally-resonating art form and why doing so is significant.
Why is it important?
The paper sheds light on a broader important institutional momentum at the turn of the 2010s, when curators of contemporary Chinese ink art started emphasising not only ink’s cultural uniqueness, but also its transcultural applicability. This applies not only to museums and non-profit galleries, but also international auction houses and commercial galleries, such as Christie’s (Hong Kong and New York) or the Saatchi Gallery (London). Hence, for the first time within the context of the new century, contemporary Chinese ink works received a geographically widespread spotlight of attention under a dual label of the indigenous and the international.