Librarians-in-Residence
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
16.09.2023
Public Programming
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
06.08.2023
Public Programming
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
27.07.2023
Public Programming
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
22.07.2023
Public Programming
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
15.07.2023
Public Programming
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive
08.07.2023
Fellowships
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.
Librarians-in-Residence
We are pleased to announce our brand-new Librarians-in-Residence series, with the inaugural edition commencing this spring. Grounded in the physical library space at Asymmetry HQ in East London, the Librarians-in-Residence program will seek to expand Asymmetry’s library in ways that further engage the Sinophone community in London and internationally.
In the six-month residency running from March to September 2023, our inaugural librarians, London-based writer-curator Alvin Li and New York-based artist-educator Chang Yuchen, will engage the multivalent practices of the library through a series of public programmes, spanning the collection, reading, discussion, publication, and community of printed matters and thoughts. Together they seek to investigate the social, economic, affective and political dimensions of the library—at once a space of knowledge acquisition, public gathering, and private contemplation.
Documentary Film
We are pleased to announce the production of a feature length documentary film that is centred around the experiences of different generations of Greater Chinese and Sinophone artists and their artistic practices amidst waves of social change, to explore and reflect on the contextualisation of contemporary Chinese society and culture in the past 40 years.
The film is being directed by artist and filmmaker Luka Yuanyuan Yang and her team. Bingfeng Dong is serving as Head of Research, with Alvin Li contributing as Advisor.
The Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series at The Courtauld
Titled 'Energies of Attachment: Rethinking Intimacy in Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Art', the first Asymmetry lecture series invites artists, curators and scholars to reflect on and ‘rethink’ intimacy in the context of transnational Chinese and Sinophone art.
Summer Programme 'Growing Gills'
We are thrilled to present 'Growing Gills', the inaugural instalment of our public Summer Programme, running from June to August 2023. The event series brings together feminist researchers, activists, filmmakers, and practitioners from the Sinophone world to investigate the intersection between visual culture and activism. It draws on an emerging archipelagic and inter-Asia network of those who identify as women, including cisgender, transgender, intersex, and other fluid identities, to probe into contemporary forms of oppression and new ways of being, connection, and creation.
II: 'One night stand with Lo Ting'
6-8PM, 07.07.2023
Cooking workshop with curator-artist duo C&G Artpartment
III: All-day film screening and conversations
12-7PM, 08.07.2023
IV: '(Re)productive subjects: collectivity and economy'
3-6PM, 15.07.2023
Talks by artist Ho Rui An and researcher Liu Di, followed by conversation with Curatorial Fellow at Whitechapel Gallery Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung
V: 'Penumbra Asks Umbra: Digital Feminism in Post-Rice Bunny China'
3-5PM, 06.08.2023
Lecture performance by Ling Tang, followed by feminist open mic
Asymmetry is a London-based independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to nurturing curatorial practice and disseminating knowledge about Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art.
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.
Contact
Enquiries
info@asymmetryart.org
Asymmetry HQ
Flat 1, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY, United Kingdom