ecoArt China 境善境美
ecoArt China / 境善境美. Edmonton: University of Alberta Department of Art & Design, 2021. 160 pp. ISBN 9781551954561
How does art make the world?
Ancient Chinese correlative cosmology teaches that the movement of the universe follows the ceaseless rhythm and transformation of the five elemental phases and yin and yang energies. Water, wood, fire, metal, and earth merge and meld into each other through fluid patters that are both generative and damaging.
Art has a place within this ecology.
Making the World: Pictures and Science in Modern China
In 1907 the Chinese fiction writer and social critic Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936) essayed the thought that making the world depended on attunement towards beauty’s emotional vibrancy and on an imaginative frequency to scientific thought, both. This curatorial project asks after pictures made mostly during Lu Xun’s lifetime, in turn-of-the-century China, mostly by brush-and-ink painters, but also by embroiderers, photographers, cartoonists, taxidermists, map-makers, and others who worked self-consciously within the arts and sciences, popular or academic. Their pictures carry within them their own struggles with the rationalities of science, as well as emotions and imagination, to make the world.
China’s Imperial Modern: The Painter’s Craft 中國畫家的技術：帝國時代的現代性
China’s Imperial Modern: The Painter’s Craft 《中國畫家的技藝：帝國時代的現代性》. Edmonton: University of Alberta Museums, 2012. 156 pp. ISBN 9781551952918
Exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of the 2012 Mactaggart Art Collection exhibition co-curated with seminar students. Essays by Lisa Claypool, De-nin Lee, and Nixi Cura, as well as catalogue entries by twelve University of Alberta students.
China Urban: Exploring the Historical and Contemporary City 城市中國
China Urban: Exploring the Historical and Contemporary City. Co-editor with Stephanie Snyder. Portland, OR: Reed College Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, 2009. 96 pp. ISBN 10: 0982424051 / ISBN 13: 9780982424056
An exploration of the historical and contemporary Chinese city -- as representation, model, catalyst, and socio-political construct.
Other curatorial projects
The Long March 长征项目 @ the UA. Principal curator with students in HADVC 215 CHINA ART NOW, 100 undergraduate students design curatorial projects as a form of activist research-creation to teach the university community about Chinese culture. Pop-up exhibitions across the University of Alberta campus. December 2025, December 2024, April 2023, April 2019, April 2016, December 2014.
A Glance at Nanjing. Principal Curator. In Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia, Special Issue about Nanjing, ed. Joshua Stenberg, 11, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 89-96.
Picturing Science in Modern China. Principal Curator. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review (March 2015): curatorial project commissioned by Dr. Yeh Wen-hsin, peer-reviewed online exhibition with individual image entries to complement 50-page article. SSHRC supported
Art & Design 3.0. Co-curated with Natalie Loveless. University of Alberta Art & Design’s 50th Anniversary exhibition in 2015, HADVC installation. FAB Gallery, University of Alberta.
Quotationalism. Co-curated with Maria Whiteman. FAB Gallery, University of Alberta. June 19–July 14. Juried exhibition of work by BFA students in response to the concurrent China’s Imperial Modern: The Painter’s Craft.
China Violent. Co-curated with Stephanie Snyder and students. Cleaners Gallery, The Ace Hotel, Portland, Oregon. November, 2009. Pop-up exhibition of curated designer toys, performances, and videos in a response to the darker aspects of the designs curated in the concurrent China Design Now exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Matthew Stadler printed catalogue brochures on site that I co-wrote with my students.
