China Residencies is proud have support from of some of the most qualified and accomplished curators, researchers, writers, artists, directors and CEOs. Please join us in welcoming these twelve wonderful people to the China Residencies board:
Governing board:
Jay Brown founded Lijiang Studio in 2004, an arts practice based in a rural farming village in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Since then, Lijiang Studio has facilitated and produced numerous residencies, exhibitions and events in urban, rural, domestic, public, and private settings. These events are co-curated with the artists involved and with members of that local community. Highlights include Jianghu Mobile Video, Kunming, 2005, To Raise One Question After Another, Beijing 2007, Another China, Berlin 2008, World Heritage Beer Garden Picnic, Lashihai, 2008, Our Host! Gone Just Like That, New York/Providence, 2011, EXOTIKA, Berlin/Bangkok, 2013, Distortion of Distortion, Lashihai, 2014, Lijiang Studio INDEX, 2015, New York. Before Lijiang Studio, Jay worked at the Nature Conservancy’s China Program, based in Yunnan, and at various museums including the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jay graduated from Princeton University in 2001 with a degree in Art History and certificate in East Asian Studies.
Christina Yuen Zi Chung is a writer, researcher, translator, arts administrator, and PhD student in Feminist Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. The focus of her research is centered upon exploring gender relations and its expressions in and through Chinese contemporary art, with reference to its respective socio-political developments in China today. Christina has served as Program Associate of the Asian Cultural Council in Hong Kong, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to supporting fellowships in cultural exchange for arts professionals in Asia and the U.S. Christina is an advocate for women’s stories, and has been engaged in related writing and translation projects. She is a contributing writer for “Chinese Women in the Arts,” and is also the English translator of “ADF and I” – an autobiography by Yang Meiqi, the pioneering dance educator who is widely regarded as the “Mother of Modern Dance in China.” She received her Master of Arts (Hons) degree in archaeology from the University of Edinburgh in 2009, where she was awarded the R N Wardrop Prize in Archaeology. She was later awarded the 2012 Hong Kong Arts Development Council Arts Administration Scholarship and obtained a Master of Visual Arts degree in art and culture (theory and criticism) from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2014. In 2016, Christina won the Top Scholar Award from the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
Daniel Szehin Ho is a writer, translator and editor and one of the founders of randian 燃点, a print and web magazine about contemporary Chinese art. He also writes for ArtForum, Broadsheet, among others, and he has edited and translated numerous museum catalogues, including for Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), UCCA (Beijing), and Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai), among many others. Daniel graduated from McGill University with a masters degree in East Asian Studies and Art History.
Rachel Marsden is a transcultural curator, art consultant, PhD researcher, global educator and arts writer specialising in Chinese contemporary arts and culture, international social art practices, art and language, translation and (self-)publishing. The focus of her PhD at the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts critically examines the local to global translation, through interpretation, of contemporary Chinese art in non-Chinese contexts, specifically the notion of a “transcultural” curatorial practice. She is founder and curator of ‘The Temporary’, a transcultural exchange platform examining “temporary” and ephemeral experience in art, architecture, design, music, sound, performance and culture between the UK and China, and coordinator for CCVA, where she has co-developed a new MA Contemporary Arts China course alongside their exhibitions, events, conferences, artist fellowship and visiting scholar programme, and the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. She has international curatorial, arts administration and management experience from art galleries and museums in UK, USA and China, most recently Research Curator for CFCCA in Manchester. In addition, Rachel is a practicing text, paper and book artist, bookbinder and workshop facilitator at galleries, museums and educational institutions, regionally to internationally.
An “An Xiao” Mina is a technologist, writer and artist. She leads the product team at Meedan, where they are building tools for global journalism and translation, and she is co-founder of The Civic Beat, a research collective focused on the creative side of civic technology. An advising editor to Hyperallergic, Mina has exhibited work and led workshops in spaces such as the Asian Art Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, 4A Contemporary Art Space, the Personal Democracy Forum, Creative Mornings, and others. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Civicist, the New Inquiry and Fusion. Mina was a 2016 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where she studied online language barriers and their impact on journalism. She is currently working on a book about internet memes and global social movements (working title: "Memes to Movements"), to be published by Beacon Press.
Adam Short is the Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Virginia Tech, responsible for developing a best-practices foundation relation platform while advancing philanthropic corporate and private foundation partnerships strategically aligned with the vision and priorities of the university, and its students, faculty, departments, centers, and programs. His development career spans over a decade, during which he has established a track record of success at the major gift level and has been recognized for exceptional communication and proposal development skills. Prior to Virginia Tech, he coordinated corporate and foundation efforts in the Northeast region for the American Red Cross, and worked as the Development & Program Manager at the Alliance of Artist Communities, where he worked in tandem with the Asian Cultural Council to organized and lead an exploratory visit to China to survey the burgeoning field of artist residency programs. Adam holds a bachelor of arts degree from Reed College and a master of business administration degree from Bryant University.
Kira Simon-Kennedy is the co-founder and director of China Residencies, a nonprofit that helps artists find opportunities in China. Thanks for reading about us! Now back to speaking in the third person: Kira also produces independent films and documentaries centring around music, social justice, and human rights in China, Iceland, France, Mali, and Mississippi. Kira holds a BA in East Asian Studies and Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and was a member of the inaugural class of Penn's School of Social Policy & Practice program in Social Impact Strategy and Arts & Culture. She also occasionally translates French and Chinese texts on art and philosophy, and writes things like Holy Shit My Friend Has Cancer to help young people deal with tough situations. Kira is one of the many key punchers who form the New York- and internet-based collective Public Science.
Advisory board:
Thea Mai Baumann is an Australian creative technologist, artist, and inventor. She is CEO/ Founder of transnational tech brand Metaverse Makeovers® and 超宇美人®, and a Director of Metaverse's entities in Australia, Hong Kong, and China. She began her creative technology experience working for Media Arts Asia Pacific, looking at some of the first waves of net art coming out of Asia. She then received the Brisbane Lord Mayor Fellowship to study Mandarin and Chinese opera makeup. She later undertook residencies at Red Gate in Beijing and W+K in Shanghai, where she launched the first iteration of her company, Metaverse Makeovers.
CHEN Wei-ching, Joanne is an independent curator, art consultant, widely published critic and she was the Director of Taiwan Art Gallery Association and Art Taipei art fair from 2007 to 2010. Currently, she is the founder of inCube Arts, a non-profit art organization in New York City with a focus on art from Asia, South Asia and a commitment to exhibition-led enquiry. She is the organizer of “inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival”, the first and most important art festival that dedicate to Asian time-based art in North America. Chen has also curated international exhibitions such as “inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival 2013 – MicroCities” at The Queens Museum, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, the NARS Foundation and Residency Unlimited in New York, “Jenny Chen: Without End” at ISE Cultural Foundation, New York, “London Calling” a touring exhibition (China/Taiwan)...etc. She has written and published her articles in ARTCO, Art Investment, Art Collection+Design, ARTITUDE Magazine and Art Taipei Forum Media, the National Culture and Arts Foundation online Media. She also was a contributing writer for “Global Art Fair Guide” in 2013, covering the North and South American art market.
Samantha Culp is a California-born writer, curator and creative producer based between Los Angeles and Shanghai. She has spent the past decade in greater China, first in Hong Kong, then in Beijing and Shanghai. Her writing and criticism have appeared in publications such as Artforum, the New York Times T Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and as a contributing editor of Chinese art magazine LEAP (艺术节). Samantha is the founder and director of New Territories, an experimental studio for research and production, which develops projects and events spanning art, cinema, and design. Works include “Short Stays”, a series of short films by indie filmmakers sponsored by a Beijing boutique hotel, a year of cultural programming and consulting for creative agency Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, and POV, a briefing on Chinese moving image culture for multimedia studio P.I.G. China. She was co-curator of "No More Westerns", the 23rd annual Impakt Media Arts Festival in Utrecht (NL), and is the founding curator of Tulou Open House, an annual site-specific creative experiment, residency, and conference at a traditional tulou in rural Fujian Province. Recent events include presenting independent publications from China at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair and co-curating the ADChina Design Forum at the inaugural Design Shanghai fair. She recently co-founded Paloma Powers, a creative agency developing artist-led solutions for realms far beyond the art world.
Melissa Karmen Lee is the new Curator of Education and Public Programs for Old Bailey Galleries, Tai Kwun Arts Centre in Hong Kong. Previously, she was Senior Lecturer on faculty at the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lee has published on diaspora, transnational literature and visual art in a academic publications. She has been an invited and keynote speaker at numerous panels and conferences including Sharjah Art Foundation March Meetings (2015) ‘Women in the Arts’ at the Asia Society Museum, Hong Kong (2013), and the ‘Arts Writers Convening’ at the Warhol Foundation / Creative Capital, Philadelphia (2011). She gave a TEDX Hong Kong talk entitled ‘Translating the Human Experience” (2013). Lee is also a public art curator, consultant, and has worked on numerous projects in Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, United States and Canada. Her work on public art has spanned from graffiti commissions to outdoor large-scale sculpture parks, organized public seminars on the subject of Peace, to the creation of an online digital archive. In 2015 she curated two cloud exhibitions for Slought Foundation which were ‘The Jester’s Privilege’ featuring artist duo Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries and ‘Add Oil Machine’ featuring artists Sampson Wong and Jason Lam. She is the founder of Fairytale Project, a 2011 online translation and research archive in collaboration with Slought Foundation and Ai Weiwei.
Ming Lin is a writer-researcher whose activities have frequently revolved around a shop, exhibition space and distribution network in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Her interests lie in the poetics of production and the distinct configurations and behaviours that arise in the "backalleys of capitalism". Various investigative efforts—writing, curating, logisticizing—are complemented and facilitated by her work as part-time importer-exporter. Trading commodities and art objects across social networks is means of examining the shifting patterns and effects of circulation. In 2015, she was one of the recipients of the second Crystal Ruth Bell Residency in Beijing where she, alongside performance artist and translator Alexandra Tatarsky, conducted fieldwork regarding the politics of translation looking at the English text found on garments manufactured and sold in China. A report on these findings, titled "The Shanzhai Lyric" was published at The New Inquiry. She is currently pursuing similar lines of research regarding formal and informal economies at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in London. Further writings can be found in LEAP, ArtReview Asia, art-agenda and Art in America.
Emma Karasz has been living and working in Asia for the last five years. She first lived in Beijing, where she worked in publishing and then as director of Red Gate Residency. She now lives in Taipei, where she is continuing her Chinese language studies on a government scholarship. During her time at Red Gate, she worked to increase visibility and diversity of the program, as well as to make stronger connections to the larger arts and residency community in China. Emma is a managing editor at Concrete Flux, a publication and platform for talking about the ways in which cities are changing. She occasionally edits, writes and curates. Her personal interests include cross-strait relations, religious visual and material culture, and environmentally conscious arts initiatives. She graduated from the College of Wooster with a BA in Religious Studies, Art History and Chinese language.