Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China

Paul Gladston is the inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He was previously Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham (2015-2018) and, prior to that, Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham (2010-2015) and inaugural Head of the School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China (2005-2010). Paul has written extensively on contemporary art and culture with respect to the concerns of critical/cultural theory. His numerous book-length publications include Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History (2014), awarded ‘best publication’ at the Awards of Art China (2015), and Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity (2019). He was an academic adviser to the internationally-acclaimed exhibition ‘Art of Change: New Directionsfrom China’, Hayward Gallery-South Bank Centre, London (2012), and  co-curator—with Dr Lynne Howarth-Gladston—of the exhibitions, ‘Dis/Continuing Traditions; Contemporary Video Art from China’, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania (2021) and 'New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou', Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham (2015).   Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk is a Senior Lecturer in Art History & Curating at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, with a focus on Diaspora and Global Visual Culture. She is on the Editorial board for the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. She was Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded research network - Culture, Capital and Communication: Visualising Chinese Borders in the 21st Century (2014-16) and is currently working on her monograph - Imaging Migration in Post-war Britain: Artists of Chinese, Korean and Japanese Descent, Routledge (2021-22).   Ming Turner is Associate Professor in the Institute of Creative Industries Design, and Director of Visual Arts at the Art Center, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She was awarded her PhD in Art History and Theory from Loughborough University and lectured on critical and contextual studies at De Montfort University. She has published widely in both English and Chinese  and has curated a variety of projects and exhibitions internationally. Her recent book-length publications include The Art of Contemporary Curation and Its Realisation: Body, Gender and Technology (2018), and Crossing Borders: Transition and Nostalgia in Contemporary Art (2015).

Introduction.- Hong Kong and the South China Sea.- Some Tangible, Some Forgotten: art about borders in the Hong Kong SAR.- Reclaiming the Autonomy of Living in Truth: protest-making and design in Hong Kong's Occupy Central/Umbrella Movement.- Imagined Mappings of Geopolitical Power: liquid borders, military infrastructures and ecological destruction in the South China Sea.- Art and Technology.- Rendering Frontiers: from China’s historical dynastic-imperial to modern republican borders and the changing significances of Chinese art.- Confucianism and Technology: critical reflections on the borders between Chinese and Euro-American modernity.- Remediating China’s Virtual Borders: the ambient myth of Moha (toad worship).- Gender and Sexuality.- Taming China’s Southern Frontiers through Song and Dance: chauvinisms (Han and male) in The Red Detachment of Women.- Biopolitical Borders, FemaleBodies and Knowledge about ‘Women’ in the Work of the Beijing-based Artists Ma Qiusha and Hu Xiaoyuan.- Technological Art and the Borders of Sexuality and Gender in Taiwan: a case study of Pey-Chwen Lin.