Asymmetry’s Fellowship Programmes embed curators in prominent institutions in the UK and across Europe, sharpening their skills and expanding their networks, whilst enabling the institutions to gain from the Fellows’ specific expertise and perspectives to further contextualise curatorial knowledge about Greater Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art and culture.

Asymmetry offers a range of bespoke professional development programmes with select art spaces and collection-based institutions. In art spaces, curators will apply experimentation and exploration to a variety of curatorial and managerial responsibilities including project research and curatorial writing, planning, commissioning, and audience development.

In collection-based institutions, curators will enhance vital skills such as exhibition research, collection care, documentation, interpretation, loan management and project planning. Additionally, they will contribute to the scholarship of objects within the collections. Asymmetry Fellows form part of Asymmetry’s vital network of curators who guide the foundation’s ongoing work.

New Placement
EUGENE CHEUNG RECEIVES CURATORIAL FELLOWSHIP
Whitechapel Gallery, London

New Placement
RACHEL WANG RECEIVES CURATORIAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
Chisenhale Gallery, London

Scholarships

Asymmetry’s Scholarship Programmes understand the fundamental importance of higher education and develop a new generation of cultural thinkers to expand how Greater Chinese and Sinophone culture is represented globally. Shaping the future of curatorial, art historical and museum studies and working towards a more inclusive and diverse landscape is an essential and integral goal of Asymmetry’s Scholarship Programmes.

Scholars have access to fully funded academic programmes at select educational institutions, along with strategic support and public programming opportunities with Asymmetry and its partners to translate research into action. Asymmetry Scholars form part of Asymmetry’s vital network of academics who guide the foundation’s ongoing work.

New Placement
JASON WEE RECEIVES PHD SCHOLARSHIP 2023
Goldsmiths, University of London

Public Programming

Asymmetry’s Public Programming engages both art professionals and general audiences through specially tailored, thought-provoking projects and events. In partnership with major institutions, Asymmetry hosts and facilitates panel discussions, seminars, and symposia that align with its activities, as well as its mission to promote Greater Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art in a global context. Often these programmes involve current and previous participants in Asymmetry’s Curatorial Fellowship and Scholarship Programmes, alongside global thinkers on art and culture. Asymmetry also produces programming for the digital space that widens perspectives through writing, documentary films and other media.

The Asymmetry International Symposium 2023

We are thrilled to announce that the Asymmetry International Symposium 2023 will take place on Friday, 1 December. Following the successful launch of the Asymmetry Lecture Series at the Courtauld Institute of Art earlier this year, this annual conference, titled Energies of Attachment: Mapping Intimacy across Art, Science, and Ecology, will be an important occasion and point of academic exchange aimed at expanding global dialogues and conversations surrounding the Sinophone landscape to wider audiences.

FREE ENTRY, BOOK YOUR TICKET HERE

Asymmetry is a London-based independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to nurturing curatorial practice and disseminating knowledge about Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art.

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Directors
Strategic Advisors
Committee Members
Trustees
Partnerships
Contact
Newsletter

Directors

Yan Du, Founder and Director

For the past 13 years, Yan has been engaged in the art world as a collector and patron. Through these activities, as well as her own experience studying art, she has come to recognise how the advancement of curatorial practices is under-supported yet essential to the arts eco-system. She envisioned Asymmetry Art Foundation as a hub for curatorial practices in and about Asia, provoking cultural dialogue, facilitating radical intellectual ideas, and supporting the professional development of curators at different stages of their careers.

Yan is particularly committed to widening the understanding of contemporary Asian art through her professional work with Asymmetry and also through her art collection, which is personal and completely separate from the foundation. Yan’s collection focuses on works that spark transnational conversations between Western and Asian cultures, reflecting our current zeitgeist that engages with social phenomena, such as globalisation, identity, gender, post-feminist and post-internet generations and art.

Yan is an avid yet discreet supporter of many institutions and initiatives in Asia such as UCCA and M+, and internationally such as Whitechapel Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery, to name a few.

Across all of her endeavours, Yan aspires to create more visibility, shift perspectives and broaden the historical and contemporary constructs through which art from and about Asia is appreciated.

Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt, Director

Dedicated to creating cutting-edge opportunities, Michèle develops and oversees projects and operations at Asymmetry Art Foundation with integrity and curiosity.

Due to her multicultural background which exposed her to Chinese and international contemporary art early on, Michèle is passionate about Asymmetry’s mission to work across cultures and join academic and artistic resources and practices in innovative ways.

Prior to working at Asymmetry, Michèle headed up Gallery Weekend Beijing as Exhibition Director to create and lead the artistic and cultural programme and worked at Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich with a focus on exhibition projects between and across Europe and China.

Michèle graduated from the University of Zurich in History of Art and English Studies and earned a postgraduate degree in History of Art with a focus in Contemporary Chinese Art and Geopolitics from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Strategic Advisors

Aaron Cezar, Strategic Advisor

Aaron Cezar is the founding Director of Delfina Foundation, where he curates and develops its interrelated programme of residencies, exhibitions and public platforms.

Aaron has curated external exhibitions, performances and programmes at Hayward Gallery Project Space, SongEun Artspace, and as part of the official public programme of the 58th Venice Biennale of Art. He has written for The Art Newspaper, Harper’s Bazaar, and ArtAsiaPacific, among others.

Aaron is Advisor-at-large at Art Jameel, one of Delfina Foundation’s strategic partners, and he has been appointed to numerous boards, committees and advisory groups. He graduated from Princeton University with a first degree in Economics and a certificate in Dance and Theatre. He earned a postgraduate degree in the Creative & Cultural Industries from King’s College London. In June 2017, he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Arts, London.

Kwanyi Pan, Strategic Advisor

Kwanyi Pan is a Beijing-based art consultant who has extensively worked across the institutional, academic and commercial art sectors. Besides working closely with established Asian art collections, Kwanyi has also co-developed contemporary art collections and private art foundations, including Pond Society and Asymmetry Art Foundation, and coordinates major institutional exhibitions across Asia.

Previously, she has worked as deputy editor-in-chief of Leap art magazine, operations director at Long March Space in Beijing and Northeast Asian art specialist for Artco Monthly magazine. Further, she has assisted during various exhibition developments at MoMA PS1 in NYC and worked at Nanjo and Associates in Tokyo.

Kwanyi received her undergraduate degree in Aesthetics and Art History from Keio University, Tokyo, and her Master’s degree in Creative Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Committee Members

Pi Li, Committee Member

Pi Li is the Sigg Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, M+, a visual culture museum in Hong Kong, and previously served as the deputy executive director of the art administration department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA, 2001-2012).

Exhibitions Pi Li curated include Right is Wrong: Four Decades of Chinese Art in M+ Sigg Collection at Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and Bildmuseet in Umea in 2015 and 2014; Under Construction at Tokyo Opera Museum in 2002; Moist: Asia-Pacific Media Art at the Beijing Millennium Monument Art Museum in 2002; Image is Power at He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen in 2002; and Fantasy Zone at Art Museum of DongA Daily in 2001 and Beijing Modern Art Center in 2002. Pi Li was the curator of Media City Seoul in 2006 and has furthermore served as curator for Allôrs la Chine at Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003 and the Shanghai Bienniale in 2002.

Recent publications include From Action to Concept (2015) and Farewell to Moralism (2018). Pi Li earned his PhD degree in history of art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Lu Jie, Committee Member

Lu Jie is the initiator and chief curator of Long March Project, and founder of Long March Space. Lu Jie holds a BFA from the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and an MA from the Creative Curating Program at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Since the late 1980s, Lu Jie has been carrying out his practice on art criticism, editing and curating. He has written and edited various art catalogues and art historical publications and curated a variety of Chinese contemporary art exhibitions throughout his career that spans three decades. From 2002 onwards, Lu Jie has been concentrating his efforts on cultivating the ongoing Long March Project that follows the route of the historic Long March (1934-1935) across China. Later, he founded Long March Space in 798 Art District in Beijing, one of China’s leading art galleries for exhibitions, publications, research and educational programs, playing a vital role in pursuing new avenues of production, discourse and promotion of contemporary art in China.

Trustees

Yi Luo, Trustee

Yi is the co-founder and CEO of Eunice, a risk management platform in the digital asset space. She has a strong background in the technology field. Her previous fintech venture, FreeUp, had a successful exit in 2019. Additionally, she has experience in venture capital funds, and her early career was in the creative industry. Yi was honoured as one of the ‘Most Influential Women in UK Tech’ by Computer Weekly.

Philip Philippou, Trustee

Philip is a long-time advocate of Himalayan art, having travelled extensively between Europe and Asia, assisting in the development and creation of Tibetan Buddhist centres in the West.

In 2006, Philip helped create one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist centres of learning in the West, built accordingly to authentic craftsmanship and traditions of sacred Himalayan architecture. More recently, in 2016, he helped found an innovative hospice/assisted living facility founded on spiritual and humanistic principles, close to Berlin, Germany. In relation to these activities, he has served on boards of multiple charities and foundations in the UK, Europe and overseas.

Philip graduated from the London School of Economics with a BSc in Geography. Following his studies, he developed an abiding interest in Buddhist philosophy and Himalayan culture, prompting him to volunteer for a prominent non-profit Buddhist organisation. It was here that he developed a deep appreciation and interest for Himalayan art, culture and Buddhist philosophy.