Ephemeral Architectures: early video and performance art from China is a student-curated pop-up exhibition featuring early video and time-based media art from China. Artists included in the exhibition employ video and sound as means to remember spaces, movements, and moments amidst a time of profound socio-economic transformation within China around the turn of the new millennium.
Staged across the University of Chicago campus, this exhibition interrogates intersections between early moving image art and the physical precarities of public spaces in which many of these works were made. While artists like Liang Yue explore issues of ephemerality within changing urban spaces of her native Shanghai, Kan Xuan, Zhu Jia, and Yang Zhenzhong’s works emphasize evanescence through various modes of repetition along with direct employment of the camera’s lens. Collectively, these artists all share an interest in creating work that contemplates our everyday relationships with time, space, and memory.
For more information, including student-authored texts and wall labels, please visit the Ephemeral Architectures project website.
CWAC Exhibitions Installation
杨振中 Yang Zhenzhong, 922 Rice Corns, 2000
Single-channel video, 7 minutes 59 seconds
Video on loan from ShangART Gallery
Installation Location: Cochrane-Woods Art Center (second floor)
Partner Installations
Campus Public Art/Smart Museum
朱加 Zhu Jia, Forever, 1994
Single-channel video, 7 minutes, 7 seconds
Video on loan from ShangART Gallery
Installation Location: Campus North Parking
Logan Center Exhibitions
梁玥 Liang Yue, Stop Dazing, 2005
Single-channel video, 35 minutes, 30 seconds
Video on loan from ShangART Gallery
Installation Location: Logan Center for the Arts (second floor alcove)
阚萱 Kan Xuan, Object, 2003
Single-channel video, 6 minutes, 35 seconds
Video on loan from Hammer Museum, UCLA
Installation Location: Logan Center for the Arts (basement)
Curators
Ephemeral Architectures: Early Video and Performance Art from China is co-curated by Dr. Ellen Larson and her Fall 2023 Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art seminar. Student curators include:
Mayur Bajaj (Philosophy, Public Policy and Statistics)
Derek Chu (4th year, Economics, Philosophy)
Steven Jiao (MAPSS, Statistics)
Eva Jiao (Harris MAPP)
Olivia Lai (3rd year, Art History)
Emily Lin (4th year, Art History, Economics)
Peter Minkoff (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Economics)
Neil Sashti (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Biology [minor])
Feifei Wang (MFA, Visual Arts)
Jess Xiong (3rd year, Economics, Philosophy)
Miki Yang (3rd year, Art History, Economics)
Henie Zhang (3rd year, Art History, Creative Writing)
Chloe Zhong (4th year, Art History, Economics)
View the full installation archive of images on LUNA.
Support
The installation of Yang Zhenzhong's 922 Rice Corns (2000) at the Cochrane-Woods Art Center is supported by a generous gift from Brenda Shapiro, UChicago’s College Curricular Innovation and Undergraduate Research Fund, and the Department of Art History. Installation support and preparation provided by the curators, Yufei Chen, Natalia Granquist, and Owen Hoffer.
The Ephemeral Architectures: early video and performance art from China program series and pop-up exhibition has been made possible thanks to the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago with generous support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and the University of Chicago’s Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse. Additional support is provided by UChicago’s College Curricular Innovation and Undergraduate Research Fund, the Department of Art History, the Visual Resources Center, and the Center for the Art of East Asia.