In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere

‘In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere’ is a landmark survey exhibition showcasing contemporary video artworks by eleven artists: Huang Yuhui 黄宇辉, Li Nu 李怒, Liang Yue 梁玥, Liu Guoqiang 刘国强, Ma Haijiao 马海蛟, Ma Qiusha 马秋莎, Siu Wai Hang 萧伟恒, Tong Wenmin 童文敏, Xin Yunpeng 辛云鹏, Yi Lian易连 and Zheng Xinhao 郑新皓 produced between 2025 and 2025. 

The featured artworks are lyrical, poetic and conceptually abstract while also referring to everyday life and experiences. All have transcultural relationships to defamiliarizing techniques associated with international post-Duchampian contemporary art as well as the resonant indeterminacy and oblique criticality of classical Chinese aesthetics – the persistent traces of which are a defining part of present-day Sinophone habituses.

The Sinosphere is a cultural-linguistic domain traversing the borders of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and related diasporic communities. It encompasses a diverse range of distinct though interrelated identities that intersect with the ‘realities’ of differing localised sociopolitical and economic conditions. The extent of the Sinosphere is geographically indeterminate and fluid. Its constituent identities are made ever more complex by the intensified global movement of Chinese speaking peoples as part of the unfolding of post-Cold War globalisation. Videos included in the exhibition were produced by artists living and working in mainland China and Hong Kong in addition to one from mainland China currently located in Canada and another from Hong Kong now in the UK.

‘In-/Visible Spectrums’ intervenes with institutionally dominant conceptions of Chinese contemporary art as a phenomenon related exclusively to mainland China as well as current tendencies within the contemporary international artworld towards explicit messaging and oppositional protest (rather than critical demonstrations of the deconstruction of meaning). The significances of the videos included in the exhibition are open – by in-/visible turns - to shifting spectral reading across cultural boundaries.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of screenings and panels exploring the making and significance of video artworks by Sinophone artists including several not included in the exhibition. There will also be a plenary roundtable on the critical interpretation of contemporary video art from the Sinosphere.

The exhibition’s curatorial team is led by the University of New South Wales Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art (UNSW JNCCA) Professor Paul Gladston and the independent curator Dr. Lynne Howarth-Gladston. The exhibition’s co-curators are the artist and curator Yique, the art writer and curator Lin Zi - both based principally in mainland China - and Professor Frank Vigneron of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  

Supported by the endowed funds of the University of New South Wales Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art (JNCCA)

Produced in association with the Springtime Art Center, 798 Beijing and the ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai