Symposium — Entangled Matters: Material and Memory in Contemporary Chinese Art

This two-day program, composed of a seminar and a public symposium, reflects on how artists and cultural practitioners in China have, over the past decades, engaged history as both material and mindset, one that evolves alongside shifting socio-political and economic conditions. From post–Cultural Revolution experiments that challenged institutional and ideological constraints to more recent practices and economies marked by renewed attention to tradition, historical references emerge not as static inheritances but as sites of ongoing introspection and recalibration. At today’s historical juncture shaped by technological acceleration and geopolitical uncertainties, we place material and materiality at the center of our inquiry. The program invites reconsideration of how China’s cultural production has been shaped through layered returns to earlier periods, physical matters, and modes of thought, offering perspectives that complicate singular or static readings of both past and present.