About Entangled Matters
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and ideological constraints to more recent practices and economies marked by renewed attention to tradition, historical references emerge not as static inheritances but as sites of ongoing introspection and recalibration.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.
Sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Center for East Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
Symposium
10:00
Welcome and Opening Remarks
10:15
Mining the Material: Feminine Labor and Cultural Narratives
Beili Liu (University of Texas at Austin)
10:45
Echoes of the Past: Chinese Art in the Reform Era
Keyu Yan (Savannah College of Art and Design)
11:15
Ash and Resistance in Contemporary Chinese Art
Kseniya Portnaya (University of Texas at Austin)
11:45
Discussion
12:15
Coffee Break
1:00
Reframing Materiality: Rock and Ice in Contemporary Chinese Art
Vivian Li (Dallas Museum of Art)
1:30
Repaint the Cave: New Tech, New Economy, and Reimagined Memories
Leo Xu (Writer, curator)
2:00
Discussion
2:20
Roundtable
3:00
Closing Remarks
View the abstracts of the panel presentations
Discussants
Orianna Cacchione (University of Richmond Museums)
Peggy Wang (Bowdoin College)
Convener
Sylvia Wu (University of Texas at Austin)
Event Details
Free and open to the public