About this Event
This series of screenings/panel discussions accompanying the SOAS Gallery exhibition ‘In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere’ showcases contemporary video artworks by Sinophone artists along with in-depth discussions about their making and significance with the artists and experts in the field of Chinese contemporary art studies. The screened artworks are aesthetically and technically diverse. They also address a range of issues, including institutional critique, patriarchy, resistance to authority, queer identity, social control, climate change and well-being. Panel discussions at the screenings will be followed by extended audience Q&A.
The videos featured in this series of screenings contrast aesthetically in many cases with those included in the exhibition ‘In-/Visible Spectrums.’ While all the videos in the exhibition are lyrical, poetic and conceptually abstract most of those featured in the screenings involve more explicit narratives and/or forms of social engagement.
This screening/panel showcases a video by the mainland China-based artist Zheng's Que. Zheng's video presents a site-specific performance by the artist at Beijing's Chaobai River. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the river acted as a boundary closing off central Beijing from it's suburbs. Viewers should be advised that the video includes sexualised imagery.
This talk will be with Zheng Que 郑确 and Professor Paul Gladston
Exhibition and screenings/panels produced and financially supported by the University of New South Wales Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art (JNCCA).
Event location
The event is being held at the Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT) at SOAS, University of London. When you arrive at SOAS, you will need to sign in at the front desk, then you will be directed to the KLT.
About the Speakers
Paul Gladston
Paul GLADSTON is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, a Distinguished Affiliate Fellow of the UK-China Humanities Alliance, Tsinghua University, Beijing and a member of the governing board of the journal Third Text. His book-length publications include Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History (Reaktion 2014), awarded ‘best publication’, Awards of Art China (2015), and Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity (Bloomsbury 2019). He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Intellect) and the book series Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics (Palgrave) as well as being the editor of numerous collected editions and special journal editions, including Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art: Cultural Diversity and Tradition (Palgrave 2024) and Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West" Contemporaneity (Palgrave 2021). He was the curatorial director of the exhibition ‘Yique’s Way – Mutuality in Extremes’ (Ugly Duck, London 2024), organizer of a scholarly roundtable accompanying the exhibition ‘Strange Wonders: Jizi and Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Art from China’, SOAS Gallery (2024) and an academic advisor to the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Art of Change: New Directions from China’ (Hayward Gallery-South Bank Centre, London 2012).
Zheng Que
Zheng Que is an artist working across performance, installation, video and text. Born in 1995 in Harbin, China, she moved to Beijing with her parents in 2003, where she continues to live and work. Often described as a mysterious urban figure, Zheng’s practice is structured around three interrelated concepts: space, locality and humour. Within her work, space is approached as a problem to be negotiated, locality as a situated perspective through which meaning is produced, and humour as a critical attitude that mediates both. Through this framework, she explores the conditions of contemporary urban life, employing subtle, often playful interventions that unsettle habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the everyday.
About the exhibition
In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere is a landmark exhibition of eleven Sinophone artists working across mainland China, Hong Kong and the diaspora. Featuring lyrical and conceptually rich video works, it explores transcultural aesthetics, everyday experience and shifting identities within the fluid, global Sinosphere. The exhibition opens on Thursday 16th April and is on until 20th June 2026 at the SOAS Gallery. Open Tuesday to Saturday 10:30am-5pm and late on Thursdays until 8pm. Free and open to the public, no booking required.
Header image: Chaobai River: Bait the Willing! (2024), single-channel video, colour, sound, 5’42’’ by Zheng Que
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Khalili Lecture Theatre, Torrington Square, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
