On Friday, July 12th curator and art historian Xin Wang and writer and editor Brian Kuan Wood presented on their recent and respective curatorial endeavors in the realm of large-scale international biennials in East Asia. Wang served as the curator of the 4th art and technology themed biennial, titled “To Your Eternity,” at Beijing’s Today Art Museum which opened in the fall of 2023. Wood, alongside Freya Chou and Reem Shadid, curated the 2023 Taipei Biennial, titled “Small World.” 

This program at AAAinA was conceived beginning with informal conversations around the ongoing phenomena of the ever-expanding biennial circuit in contemporary art as well as the commonalities and differences that we see within these exhibitions, particularly those based in East Asia. Both “To Your Eternity” and “Small World” began their journeys during the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and opened during a new “post-pandemic” reality. Presented within similar time frames, the exhibitions shared surprisingly distinct artists and themes. Our program began with presentations by Wang and Kuan Wood followed by a conversation between the two presenters, moderated by AAAinA’s Jane DeBevoise. 

Participant Bios:

Xin Wang is a curator and art historian based in New York. Currently finishing a PhD dissertation on Soviet Hauntology at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, she held curatorial and educational positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, and received the Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant in 2021. Publications such as “Asian Futurism and the Non-Other” have been widely circulated, translated and taught in university curriculums. She has served on jury panels for The Shed, the Creative Capital Grant, and Anonymous Was a Woman. An appointed faculty at Yale University’s MFA program in Photography since 2021, she served as the curator of the 4th art and technology themed biennial program—titled “To Your Eternity”—at Beijing’s Today Art Museum in fall 2023. Since summer 2024, she is the Curatorial Director at Pace Gallery, New York, working to deepen art historical understanding of represented global artists, as well as their ties to both museums and the broader public. 

Brian Kuan Wood is a writer based in New York, and an editor of e-flux’s book series and monthly journal. With Freya Chou and Reem Shadid he curated the Taipei Biennial 2023 “Small World.” Since 2015 he has taught at the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was Director of Research from 2017 to 2022. He has taught and lectured at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Inside Out Museum in Beijing, and China Art Academy in Hangzhou, among other places.

AAAinA’s general programming and operations are funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, Ruth Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation.