2024 Official

The 2024 Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image" recently concluded its preliminary and secondary selections in Beijing. Out of forty-six valid submissions, five curatorial proposals were selected as finalists and will be showcased as a group exhibition at the 2024 (10^th) Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival.

 

The Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image" was co-launched by the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and CHANEL in 2021. Through a series of measures including an open call for curatorial proposals, professional jury selection, master courses on curation, and project-funding support, the award aims to engage outstanding curators in interdisciplinary research and curatorial practice in the field of visual imagery, providing a fertile ground for contemporary visual arts. Over the past three years, the Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image" has supported 15 curators/curatorial teams, allowing them to engage in dialogues and exchanges with the public and media. The three previous award winners have presented their curatorial exhibitions to the public and subsequently visited Europe for a research trip. Additionally, 196 curators have had the opportunity to learn from international seasoned curators and engage in discussions with them through the "Curatorial Master Courses".

 

This year, the open call of award's scope has expanded from mainland China to include Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and received five curatorial proposals from these regions. The preliminary jury panel, composed of Senior art journalist, curator, and documentary film director Cao Dan; Dutch artist and curator Ruben Lundgren; curator, researcher, and image creator Yu Miao, and Qi Yan, executive director of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, member of Art Committee of Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, assessed and discussed the submissions. Ten curators/curatorial team were invited to Beijing to participate in a two-day secondary selection seminar, as well as artist's lecture, art institution visits, and other academic exchange activities.

 

The secondary selection jury panel for the 2024 Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image". includes:

 

Liu Ding:  artist, curator and co-artistic director of the 8th Yokohama Triennale;

Wang Naiyi: curator, director of Beijing Art and Technology Biennale:

Yu Miao: curator, researcher, and image creator;

RongRong: Chinese contemporary photography artist, co-founder and co-director of the Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival;

Yan Qi: executive director of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and member of the artistic committee of the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival. 

 

Five curatorial proposals were selected by the jury committee following two rounds of selection: 

 

 

 

The exhibition Ghost Dance uses image archives as its medium to explore the hauntological presence of memory and history, aiming to recount the temporal and spatial ruptures and geopolitical diaspora in transnational mobility. The artists' photography, video installations, and archival works deconstruct, reconstruct, or overwrite existing archives using a counter-objective methodology, breaking linear historical narratives. This approach addresses the amnesia and disorientation caused by official record-keeping, and reimagines the identity trajectories of individuals and collectives under the imagination of global nomadism. All image archives, like ghosts, drift between creation and dissolution, carrying humanity's anxieties about existence and hopes for the future, akin to an endless dance, accompanied by the echoes of memories traversing time and space.

 

Starry Chen was born in 2001 in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. She is a Flâneur in the field of contemporary art. With a background in sociology and art history, she is interested in culture ecology as a whole, particularly the creation and consumption of art and affect in various social spaces. Her research focuses on the functioning of art (non)institutions and urban culture flows, while curatorial practice explores the juxtaposition of historical narratives and individual trajectories. She has left traces of her practice in places such as Hong Kong, Wenzhou, London, Beijing and cyberspace. Chen graduated from The University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Social Science, first-class honor, and is currently studying for a Master of Art in Culture, Criticism, and Curation at Central Saint Martin, University of the Arts London (UAL).

 

Sylvia Tan was born in 2000. She is a curator and researcher based in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her curatorial concerns center on space, border, and diaspora, exploring in these contexts cross-cultural experience, visibility of antagonism, and the power dynamics between individuality and structurality. She has institutional curatorial engagements and independent curatorial experiences in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and London. She received her BA in Cultural Management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2023) and her MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art (2024).  

 

 

 

Emotion serves as both a bridge and battleground between the body and ideas, driving us to engage intimately, act impulsively, or withdraw hastily. We believe that discussing love or romantic love and its disillusionment at large can be perilous. In the context of global migration and mobility, this project aims to uncover "outlaw emotions"-intimate connections marginalized by neoliberal social norms. We focus on the complex emotional relationships arising from global migration, which are often closely intertwined with digital technology and imagery. These emotions, still in flux, manifest as uncooperative parades or performances. "Stage" is a shared spatial construct within these works, functioning both as a visible platform and an invisible structure, forming a narrative and spatial thread throughout the exhibition.

 

Yuting Huang was born in 1996. She is a writer, curator and researcher based in Hangzhou, China. She holds dual bachelor's degrees in Art History and Philosophy from Peking University, China, and a research master's degree in Arts and Culture from Leiden University, Netherlands. Yuting's main curatorial interests revolve around socially-engaged art practices and inter-local artistic collectives in East Asia. Her recent writings and critiques can be found on Artforum, ArtDBL, and ArtReview China. In addition to contemporary art, her enduring research interests also encompass RPG video games, Asian hip-hop music, and Daoism practices in contemporary China, particularly their covert interconnections intertwined with both gender studies and decolonization.

 

Zhejun GAO is an art curator, art writer, and part-time artist mainly based in Hong Kong and Mainland China. He obtained a master's degree in Cultural Studies and Cultural Management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His curatorial interests center on the cultural and political agenda in contemporary art. In particular, he recently pays heavy attention to the dynamic relationship between the social-political economies, writing of traumatic history, and bodily matters of individuals facing suffering. He takes a curatorial position that translates curator into a cultural mediator to collectively write muted stories, from which arises a new form of "historical" narrative. Through curating and art making, GAO aims to present and document the hard-to-say stories in post-colonial Asia and Africa.

 

 

 

Metal Odyssey uses "metal" as a symbol of patients and medical instruments, delving into the trauma and memories associated with life's challenges. The exhibition incorporates the imagery of a suitcase and the lived experiences of patients, highlighting the interaction between artists and their families within medical records. Chia-Shin Yang combines her mother's handwritten medical records with everyday imagery, exploring caregiving relationships and bodily memories through intimate mother-daughter dialogues. Jess Ching-Wa Lau uses dynamic visuals to depict the "blind field" experience before and after her father's cataract surgery. Presented in a documentary form, the exhibition reflects on the patient's recovery journey, symbolizing a difficult yet courageous "Odyssey." It invites the audience to reflect on their own intimate photo albums, experiencing the metallic sheen that emerges from the intertwining of artistic practice and reality.

 

Yi-Ning Lin, born in 1995 in Cambridge, UK, currently lives and works in Taipei. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London with a Master's degree in Curating Contemporary Art. She is deeply fascinated by the sounds that arise between roles in visual arts field and has a passion for observing and documenting the process of archiving experiences.Since 2020, she has curated and hosted the art radio program, titled 隨藝聊聊, which focuses on the current state of contemporary art and aims to capture the dialogues between artists and curators. 

 

Chia-Shin Yang, born in Tainan in 1999, currently lives and works in Taipei. Her subjectivity to experiences of illness and trauma is central to her artwork, which extends through a range of artistic media, including photography, installations, artist books, and other mixed media. Her works revolve from the concepts of imprints and pain to explore the interplay between the body, visual experiences, materials, objects, and space. She reflects on emotional narratives, perceptions, corporeality, and the multi-sensory constructs shaped by illness and trauma, and courageously confronts the impact of illness on memory, along with its effects on physical and mental states.

 

 

 

Floating oil is insoluble in the soup. The stratification of oil refers to the differences in social perception. We regard the oil in the soup as an island in the sea, starting from a bowl of home-cooked soup and sliding towards the vast sea behind the oil. In the current era of scarce capital distribution and neoliberalism's prevalence, there are possibilities beyond stirring up the "floating oil-like fate of the nation" with oil on soup. At this moment, photography is no longer just a technique, but like oil washing, it flips, clarifies, and uncovers the real confusion that humans face. The name of this exhibition is derived from the Guangdong proverb 'freshly cooked first sip of soup', The courageous taste first? It is also in the personal destiny of those who emerge from the turmoil that we realize the precious care, infinite initiative, and insight between people. Hope shines like oil, and radiates with luster.

 

As a researcher, Fangfei Liu takes curation as a social practice, studying the emotional politics of institutional establishment and historical digestion in the context of the global South, and restoring the archives erased by discourse. She graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Insititue Art and Humanities Department, and currently living in Beijing and Guangzhou. In 2022, her exhibition was awarded the Grand Prize of the Virtual Curatorial Design Track for Global Students, and she executed the curation of the Sustainable China section of London Design Week. Sine 2023, she has presented exhibitions with the artist at the Guardian Art Center and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. She has worked as a curator at Pills Architects and is currently working as an academic researcher in the design department of X ACADEMY.

 

Liao Sun graduated from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, currently based in Guangzhou and Wuhan. She has recently focused on topics like Social Practice and Community Building of Landscape Architecture and has won numerous awards in the fields of space and graphic design both domestically and internationally. Exhibitions planned by her have been exhibited at the Beijing Guardian Art Center, including the Art Novo 100 Annual Exhibition "Borderline: Soundscapes, Studio Geography, and Contemporary Art Practice" and "Flashback". She now serves as an international volunteer at the Education Without Barriers.

 

 

 

The exhibition Fragmented Intimacy focuses on the unspoken pain and fractures in intimate relationships within the East Asian context. Through performance videos and media installations, it uses a "unspeakable" body language and fragmented visual expression to concretize the "fractures" in intimate relationships across generations, gender, and cultural identities. The exhibition adopts a fragmented maze-like form, aiming to invite viewers to explore the emotional undercurrents behind intimate bonds. Beyond addressing the fractures and breakdowns, the exhibition emphasizes the quest to rediscover and reconstruct intimacy. Viewers, no longer passive observers, are invited to step into the role of the "other," reflecting on their own emotions and identities as they explore the cracks in others' relationships. Through this process, they ultimately reshape their understanding of intimacy and belonging, finding meaning amidst the brokenness.

 

Zou Jielei, curator and writer, born in 2001, is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her curatorial and exhibition projects have been showcased in collaboration with institutions such as the Sea World Culture and Arts Center, Chiwawan No.1 Art Center in Shenzhen, and the Bomb Factory in London. Her curatorial practice is closely intertwined with media studies, exploring themes of technological critique, space of flows, and power imbalances in the digital age. Currently, her research focuses on decolonized and decentralized knowledge production models, with a particular emphasis on Documenta in Kassel.

 

 

After in-depth discussions with the candidate curators, Liu Ding, a jury member of this year's "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image", expressed the following remarks:

 

 

The 2024 Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival will host the "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image Finalist Exhibition " and the "Curatorial Seminar." The winner of the fourth edition award will be selected and announced during the opening week of the festival. The winning proposals will be exhibited at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre with the support of this project, and will tour to other cities in China or overseas. The award winner will also receive a cash prize of 100,000 RMB.

 

In line with the shared mission of nurturing talent in contemporary Chinese visual arts by the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and CHANEL's support for adventurous emerging artists in various fields, the Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image" will continue to promote research and curatorial practice in visual arts. It aims to encourage young curators by adopting an open and diverse approach. In doing so, it not only expands its presence in the public eye but also contributes to the broader promotion and representation of outstanding contemporary visual creations.