Wednesday, May 3, 2017
5:00 PM
UCLA Perloff Decafe
Founded in 2008, Arrow Factory is one of the longest standing, fully independent, non-commercial art spaces in Beijing. Located in a narrow alley inside the city center, this 150 square foot space spearheads various forms of site-oriented artistic display, collaboration and experimentation by local and international contemporary artists. This talk will give some background on Arrow Factory, and introduce our recent publication, "Arrow Factory: The Next Four Years," which comprehensively documents the twenty-two projects mounted in this reclaimed storefront between March 2011 and May 2015. This follow-up publication features new perspectives from organizers of influential artist-run initiatives around the world, and is structured around the elemental question: What is a good institution? Through these views and others, "Arrow Factory: The Next Four Years" offers a window into the diverse conditions that shape China’s current cultural climate.
Rania Ho and
Wang Wei will also speak briefly about their own work.
Wang Wei (b. Beijing, China 1972, currently resides in Beijing). Graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1996. Wang is a multidisciplinary installation artist who looks at how the navigation of physical spaces can inform us about our own lived reality. Through modifying existing architectural structures with subtle, surprising additions or appropriating stylized features from disparate sources , Wang has developed a strong practice around interventions that are aim to disrupt human perceptions of space while opening a dialogue about construction, labor and ways of seeing.
Rania Ho (b. San Francisco 1968, USA; currently resides in Beijing) is a multidisciplinary artist working in drawing, installation and performance. She often employs a humorous, unexpected approach to everyday objects and situations in her works. Ho received her B.A. in Theater Arts from UCLA and a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Her work often considers ‘users’ in response to their surrounding environment. Ho’s works can be seen to resemble games, however they often carry socially critical observations that are produced or reproduced through the performative action of the viewer. Her un-monumental works often employ absurdity as a means of interrogating broader social or cultural concerns.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Art, Department of Theater, UCLA Confucius Institute