Presentation of the Slide/Show at UCCA

This exhibition is organized by Holly Roussell, curator of the UCCA . The exhibition Slide/Show is co-produced by the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and the Hauts-de-France Institut pour la photographie.

The Exhibition Slide/Show examines the role of photographic projection in the development of contemporary Chinese art.

In the 1980s, during Deng Xiaoping’s tenure in power and its aftermath, art-historical texts and images from beyond China’s borders began to filter into the country, introducing new cultural references. Portable and easily reproducible, the photographic slide was at the heart of this rapidly expanding landscape of exchange. In the pre-Internet era, slides gave artists, historians, and curators new perspectives on art produced elsewhere. Many also adopted the medium as a tool for sharing their work more widely. 

At the same time, the export of artworks by emerging Chinese artists to the global market meant that they were entering the broader contemporary art scene for the first time. Slide/Show offers a unique perspective on this period in the history of Chinese art by exploring the various applications of projected photography from the Cultural Revolution through the 2010s. Organized around the key characteristics of the slide medium—its transparency, refraction, and use in transmission—the exhibition guides viewers through the history of projection in China and elucidates a genealogy of the medium in the post-Mao context.

More information