Join us for an immersive exploration into the captivating world of Peng Wei, an artist renowned for her unique approach to representing the diversity of female perspectives. This lecture is a key part of the lecture series for the China Institute’s contemporary art exhibition, showcasing the multifaceted nature of Chinese contemporary art and its dialogues with history and identity.
This lecture will delve into the multiple dimensions of Peng Wei’s art. Whether expansive or intimate, three-dimensional or flat, her work consistently centers around women. Rather than simply portraying real or fictional female figures, Peng Wei engages in a dynamic process of responding to and reshaping these representations.
This nuanced interplay between response and remodeling in Peng Wei’s art blurs the lines, demanding a closer look and deeper understanding. Join us in this artistic exploration, where each piece is a dialogue, a story, and a celebration of women’s diverse experiences throughout history.
Click here to watch the program recording.
This program is made possible through the support of the Chinese International Education Foundation, and generous supporters of China Institute.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
China Institute’s cultural programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Peng Wei currently lives and works in Beijing. Peng Wei relies on the methods of traditional Chinese painting and a very personal vision. She links traditional ideas to the present and the West, to find balance between the past and the present. She is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting the classical Chinese ink painting tradition by bringing traditional and historical practice into dialogue with contemporary international art practices. Conjuring extraordinary realities by layering personal narratives across time, geography, and tradition, her work interrogates cultural identity, intellectual belonging, and issues of gender and sexuality.
Since launching her artistic career with the Stone series in 2000, she has completed numerous series of work including Robe, Good Things come in Pairs, Letters from a Distance, Seven Nights, Hi-Ne-in, We All Need Stories. etc., which are executed across artistic mediums, such as painting, installation, video, and photography, into her practice, making her an innovative and internationally renowned Chinese contemporary ink artist.
Peng Wei has held numerous solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Suzhou Museum, the National Museum of History (Taipei Chian), etc. She has also participated in large contemporary art exhibitions around the world, such as Stepping Out! Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art, M+ Sigg Collection : From Revolution to Globalization, Memory and Contemporary, Venetian Arsenal, Beijing Biennial, etc.
Jane DeBevoise is the Chair Emeritus of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and Chair of Asia Art Archive in America in New York. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in 2002, Ms. DeBevoise was Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum, responsible for museum operations and exhibitions globally. She joined the Museum in 1996 as Project Director of China: 5000 Years, a large-scale exhibition of traditional and modern Chinese art that was presented in 1998 at the Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao. Her publications include Between State and Market: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Post-Mao Era (2014) and the co-authored Uncooperative Contemporaries: Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000 (2020).
