5 among the Most Powerful People in Chinese Contemporary Art

Chinese contemporary art has arguably the oldest continuous tradition in the world, and is marked by an unusual degree of continuity within, and consciousness of, that tradition, lacking an equivalent to the Western collapse and gradual recovery of classical styles. Chinese contemporary art has made a huge impact on the international scene and continues to be one of the art world’s major areas of focus. With countless new museums, galleries and talents coming to the fore, China has a great number of influential art world players. We bring you a selection of 5 among the most powerful people in Chinese contemporary art today. 

1.        Johnson Chang 

Johnson Chang is Co-founder of the Asia Art Archive (AAA) and Founder and Director of Hanart TZ Gallery, established in 1983. Chang is also a Professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He has been curating exhibitions since the 1980s and, with his gallery, has supported and contributed to the development of Chinese contemporary art and the art scene in Hong Kong. In 1993 he curated China’s New Art Post-1989, a seminal exhibition that opened at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and toured the United States and Europe. In 2010, Chang organised West Heavens, a contemporary art collaboration between China and India. In 2013, Hanart TZ celebrated its 30th anniversary and the achievements of its artists. The anniversary saw the organisation of events across three spaces in Hong Kong, outlining the development of Chinese contemporary art from its beginnings and through the works of some of its most important artists. Chang was in ArtReview’s Power 100 list in 2013 for his contributions to the Chinese contemporary art scene and building bridges between China and India.

2.       Philip Tinari 

Philip Tinari (b. 1979, Philadelphia) has been the Director of Beijing’s Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) since 2011. A former Fullbright Fellow at Beijing University, in 2009 Tinari foundedLEAP (The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China) and is founding editor of Art Forum‘s Chinese-language web edition. He has worked as China representative for Art Basel, Sotheby’s and has been lecturer in Art Criticism at CAFA, where is currently Adjunct Professor. In 2014, he was curator of Armory Focus: China in New York, a section of the fair dedicated to a presentation of Chinese contemporary art with works by lesser known and younger artists. Since the beginning of his tenure at UCCA, Tinari has curated various exhibitions, including solo shows of Wang Keping, Gu Dexin and Tino Sehgal and group shows such ON|OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice. Tinari was among Art Review’s Power 100 in 2011.

3. Pearl Lam 

 

In 2007, The New York Times called Pearl Lam ‘a pioneer in the Chinese art world.’ Lam is the founder of Pearl Lam Galleries, with branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2008, she founded the China Art Foundation to create a cultural bridge between the West and China. Lam established her gallery in 2005, with the vision of bridging the perceived differences between art and design and the gap between East and West, as well as promoting Chinese art and integrating it into the international stage. Lam organises professionally curated exhibitions of Chinese and international emerging, mid-career and established artists. The gallery also holds design exhibitions of international and Chinese talents. Lam’s gallery also exposes the Chinese public to some of the best international artists working today, like Jenny Holzer, Yinka Shonibare, Golnaz Fathi, Entang Wiharso and Gonkar Gyatso. Lam was among the Art Power 100 in L’Officiel Art in 2012 and in 2013 she was among Asia’s most powerful women in Forbes’ ‘Asia’s Women In The Mix, 2013: The Year’s Top 50 for Achievement In Business’. 

4. Claire Hsu

Claire Hsu co-founded Hong Kong’s Asia Art Archive(AAA) with Johnson Chang in 2000 and has since expanded the archive’s function of documentation to include research, exhibition and conversation on the recent history of Asian art. In 2011, she initiated a project of digitalisation of the archive’s materials into a freely accessible format. Hsu is a committee member for the M+ museum in Hong Kong, and she started the archive right after her Master’s Degree at the University of London, as ‘a personal project to solve a personal problem’, due to her frustration at locating reference materials for her dissertation on contemporary Chinese art. AAA includes materials on contemporary art from across Asia, both in a physical library with more than 43,000 books, catalogues and other resources and in the Collection Online, with around 20,000 digitised primary source material freely accessible on the website.. Hsu has been among ArtReview’s Power 100 since 2009 and was in Forbes’ Asia’s Women to Watch in 2013.

5. Hou Hanru 

Hou Hanru is an international curator and critic, and a pivotal figure in the international art world for his support and promotion of Chinese contemporary art on the international stage. Hou spent part of his life in the United States and France, before settling in Rome, where he currently is Artistic Director of MAXXI since December 2013. Hou graduated from the prestigious China Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in Beijing and held the post of Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies, San Francisco Art Institute from 2006 to 2012.
He has been Co-director of World Biennale Forum and curator of the 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013, Auckland, New Zealand. He has curated many seminal exhibitions, including the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” and important biennial events such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000), the Gwangju Biennale (2002) and the French Pavilion (1999) and the Chinese Pavilion (2007) at the Venice Biennale, among others. His critical writings can be regularly read on publications such as Flash Art International, Art Asia Pacific, Yishu, Art in America, to name a few.