hong kong tatler. september 2017 227
“Chinese art is hot” is the truism uttered
around the world since the country’s artistic
expression took the lead on the global stage. But
it was the preceding two decades that paved the
way for the boom. And it’s this background that
Art and China After 1989: Theatre of the World,
an ambitious show opening at the Solomon R
Guggenheim Museum in New York next month,
seeks to explore, putting contemporary Chinese
art in a historically nuanced context.
Featuring 150 iconic and lesser-known works
by 75 artists gathered from international private
and public collections, the exhibition will be
one of the most comprehensive showcases of
contemporary art from China, and the largest of
its kind ever in North America.
It is curated by three of the world’s leading
experts in the field: Alexandra Munroe, the
Guggenheim’s own senior curator for Asian
art and senior adviser for global arts; Philip
Tinari, the director of the Ullens Centre for
Contemporary Art in Beijing; and Hou Hanru, the
director of the MAXXI, or National Museum of
the 21st Century Arts, in Rome.
“I began spearheading the project in 2014,” says
Munroe, “then asked Philip and Hanru to join meAVANT-GARDE
Jiang Zhi’s
installation Objects
in Drawer (1997),
one of the works
included in Art
and China After
1989: Theatre
of the World,
collates personal
belongings and
“damaged” human
body parts in a
paradoxical still life