Xia Yanguo

Xia Yanguo © Foto: Xia Yanguo Xia Yanguo Foto: Xia Yanguo
Xia Yanguo is an independent curator and the founder of de Art Center, a Beijing non-profit art space. He studied Art History at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, and has worked as an editor and columnist for art magazines and fashion media. Previously, he worked as an art director at the Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing.  In addition, he was a visiting curator at Pro Helvetia, Switzerland, and has been a visiting researcher at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, as well as having been invited to give academic lectures and take part in dialogues at a number of universities in China and abroad. His curatorial practice centres on the interaction between contemporary art and its social context while emphasising research on local artists. In recent years, he has expanded his activities to include the presentation of historical documents in Asia, and the promotion of artistic communication and exchange between Asia and the international art world. He has also taken an interest in the role of non-profit organisations in China.
 
  • Tao Hui, The Tangible Ones, 2018 © Tao Hui

    Tao Hui, The Tangible Ones, 2018

  • Enoch Cheng, Cocktail, 2019 © Enoch Cheng

    Enoch Cheng, Cocktail, 2019

  • Ming Wong, Hand in Hand, 2019 © Ming Wong

    Ming Wong, Hand in Hand, 2019

  • Wang Chong, Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going 2.0, 2019 © Wang Chong

    Wang Chong, Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going 2.0, 2019

 

“Assemblage”
—A research project on migration in relation to China

The migration phenomenon is reflected in two aspects in China: urban and rural population movement within the country, and flow between its immigrant and its Chinese populations. In Assemblage, Xia Yanguo invites five artists—Enoch Cheng, Hao Jingban, Ming Wong, Tao Hui, and Wang Chong—to think about these two aspects separately. Their works address the ’new collective‘ phenomenon of immigration: that is, how immigrants are affected at various levels in their local life; how they play the role of ’influencers‘; how their identity with neighbors has, quietly, changed. The structural status of immigrants is an important topic in this exhibition, as is the relationship between new identity cognition and the local environment.
 
Assemblage will be first presented, in June 2019, in de Art Center Beijing and Goethe-Institut Beijing, before coming to the project exhibition in Asia Culture Center, Gwangju. Ming Wong and Enoch Cheng's new film works will also be presented in the Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival 2019.