Rockbund Art Museum

From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making —“Second Assembly: Exhibition-Making Practices in China and Southeast Asia in the 1990s”

Organized by Biljana Ciric and Rockbund Art Museum

The research platform kicks off in March with the final seminar in November 2018

About Second Assembly: Exhibition-Making Practices in China and Southeast Asia in the 1990s

From a History of Exhibitions towards a Future of Exhibition-Making is a platform of seminars initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric with different institutions in the region, including St Paul Street Gallery, AUT (Auckland) and Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai). The platform proposes to revisit the importance of the exhibition, which beyond the artworks themselves is one of the key elements linking art to its wider social contexts.

The seminars will look specifically at the history of exhibitions in China and Southeast Asia. This will be done through a series of case studies examining how the exhibition as form and medium determines our understanding of artistic practices and how exhibitions as a medium are read and understood in different social and cultural contexts. Addressing this geo-political sphere might provide new approaches to art historical mapping and methodologies as well as anchors for comparative research. This path highlights a route that is based on proximity as the changing climate of attention and redefinition of the region and its inner dynamics.

While the First Assembly in Auckland examined early exhibitions of contemporary art in different local contexts, the Second Assembly will look at exhibition-making practices during the 1990s in China and Southeast Asia. This specific focus on the 90s attempts to look at the number of complex issues that appear during this period, taking exhibition-making practices as a main vehicle. 

From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making —“Second Assembly: Exhibition-Making Practices in China and Southeast Asia in the 1990s”

Organized by Biljana Ciric and Rockbund Art Museum

The research platform kicks off in March with the final seminar in November 2018

About Second Assembly: Exhibition-Making Practices in China and Southeast Asia in the 1990s

From a History of Exhibitions towards a Future of Exhibition-Making is a platform of seminars initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric with different institutions in the region, including St Paul Street Gallery, AUT (Auckland) and Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai). The platform proposes to revisit the importance of the exhibition, which beyond the artworks themselves is one of the key elements linking art to its wider social contexts.

The seminars will look specifically at the history of exhibitions in China and Southeast Asia. This will be done through a series of case studies examining how the exhibition as form and medium determines our understanding of artistic practices and how exhibitions as a medium are read and understood in different social and cultural contexts. Addressing this geo-political sphere might provide new approaches to art historical mapping and methodologies as well as anchors for comparative research. This path highlights a route that is based on proximity as the changing climate of attention and redefinition of the region and its inner dynamics.

While the First Assembly in Auckland examined early exhibitions of contemporary art in different local contexts, the Second Assembly will look at exhibition-making practices during the 1990s in China and Southeast Asia. This specific focus on the 90s attempts to look at the number of complex issues that appear during this period, taking exhibition-making practices as a main vehicle. 

In 1993 the first Asia Pacific Triennale provided a new model of exhibition and art history writing beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, while during this period artists from the region started appearing in international biennials. The 1990s in the region also constituted a critical moment in the history of intellectual exchange fostered by the idea of a shared set of Asian values in the context of larger political shifts such as the end of Cold War and the rise of Asian economies.

While Japan and Australia have played important roles in research and in comparative studies beyond the nation-state in trying to frame the region, there is at the same time important attempts to establish South-South relationships through exhibition-making that have once again been revived today. These facts bring about an important rethinking of the relation of the global and the local and its dynamics.

This seminar will focus on case studies of exhibitions during the 1990s that re-define the parameters of how art history has been written while also considering how these new situations and encounters challenged local contexts of exhibition-making on a micro level, from artist-organized exhibitions to the introduction of the role of the curator.

This series of seminars attempt to provide a platform to create an archive around case studies and around a discourse surrounding exhibitions, enabling further comparative research in the future.

Observing from the local contexts of China where the Second Assembly is to take place, the 1994 seminar “The Potential of Asian Thought: Contemporary Art Symposium” (organized by the Japan Foundation) seems an important connection of the gap in time. This 1994 seminar involved several practitioners from China, including the curator Li Xianting and a then-young artist named Cai Guoqiang. These important moments in time provide important insights of connectivity within a region that was attempting to be created during this period and the importance of this seminar to revive these connections

While the seminar will be presented in November 2018, the Rockbund Art Museum will start with public programs devoted to exhibition histories, revealing the research in progress which will ultimately be presented in the seminar. At the same time, from April onwards a reading room devoted to the study of exhibition histories—with rare publications devoted to this yet to be studied topic—will be on view at the Rockbund Art Museum.

Rockbund Art Museum Research Program: Curatorial Practices in Asia

The Rockbund Art Museum regards research programs to be a substantial set of practices in a contemporary art institution, practices which support artists, curators, audiences as well as the RAM team itself.

Research programs should be conceived with the following objectives:

—activating an on-going process of thinking inside an institution;

—remaking and contributing to art histories with original angles/perspectives for the future development of contemporary art;

—supporting the conception of new curatorial, education, and art projects;

—sharing new ideas and challenges in contemporary art with audiences;

—networking the museum with researchers and academics who have a strong interest in contemporary art, especially in the contexts of Greater China and Asia.

Besides the ongoing process of producing and programming exhibitions, it is extremely important for RAM to welcome research projects that provide sufficient time, careful consideration and support for forward-looking perspectives, analyses, research and networking. By offering an impulse, sharing ideas, debating, as well as looking at the past, present and future, research programs make a museum stronger and more sustainable. RAM is not only a place to showcase art products but also a platform to generate exchange, discussions, paradoxes and contradictions.

In 2018 the Rockbund Art Museum launches a research program entitled “Curatorial Practices in Asia”, the main objective of which is to develop a strong network in Asia with artists, academics, art organizations, independent curators and researchers—with people engaged in innovative research and artistic projects that support a better understanding of contemporary artistic practices in Asia.

Rockbund Art Museum Research Program: Curatorial Practices in Asia

The Rockbund Art Museum regards research programs to be a substantial set of practices in a contemporary art institution, practices which support artists, curators, audiences as well as the RAM team itself.

Research programs should be conceived with the following objectives:

—activating an on-going process of thinking inside an institution;

—remaking and contributing to art histories with original angles/perspectives for the future development of contemporary art;

—supporting the conception of new curatorial, education, and art projects;

—sharing new ideas and challenges in contemporary art with audiences;

—networking the museum with researchers and academics who have a strong interest in contemporary art, especially in the contexts of Greater China and Asia.

Besides the ongoing process of producing and programming exhibitions, it is extremely important for RAM to welcome research projects that provide sufficient time, careful consideration and support for forward-looking perspectives, analyses, research and networking. By offering an impulse, sharing ideas, debating, as well as looking at the past, present and future, research programs make a museum stronger and more sustainable. RAM is not only a place to showcase art products but also a platform to generate exchange, discussions, paradoxes and contradictions.

In 2018 the Rockbund Art Museum launches a research program entitled “Curatorial Practices in Asia”, the main objective of which is to develop a strong network in Asia with artists, academics, art organizations, independent curators and researchers—with people engaged in innovative research and artistic projects that support a better understanding of contemporary artistic practices in Asia.

The “Curatorial Practices in Asia” research program will develop different activities such as:

—connections, meetings and seminars with researchers in Shanghai or elsewhere in Asia, which can help structure the network;

—seminars and symposia;

—publications;

—exhibitions or other formats of visibility that can help and support research and art projects.

The research program “Curatorial Practices in Asia” will have a specific interest in the following:

—(re)making histories of curatorial practices in contemporary art within Asia;

—prospecting innovative curatorial practices that support artists’ projects in Asia;

—Consolidating collaborations between exhibition-making institutions in Asia and art research institutions in Asia (such as Asia Art Archive and universities with specialties in cultural studies of Asia).

In 2018, the Rockbund Art Museum is proud to announce its collaboration with Biljana Ciric, which is connected to her substantial and distinctive research and publications on the archives of contemporary art exhibition practices in Asia. 

About Rockbund Art Museum

For over eight years Rockbund Art Museum has been at the forefront of the growing contemporary art scene in China, presenting world-class programs in a unique museum setting. A boutique museum of the utmost quality, RAM holds a unique position within Shanghai’s continually expanding cultural scene. The museum is located within the Bund district and housed in an exquisite heritage Art Deco building, which was renovated by the architect David Chipperfield before opening in 2010.

The museum’s exemplary curatorial, education and research programs showcase acclaimed and emerging Chinese and international artists, responding to and reflecting on present and urgent challenges of society locally and internationally. RAM presents a bold and pioneering program of three exhibitions and a special project “RAM HIGHLIGHT” per year, exploring and realizing artists’ most ambitious projects and working with them to tailor exhibitions to the Museum and to the Shanghai context, often with a large proportion of works b