As a curator, Chelsea Qianxi Liu has researched the interactive relationship between China and East Asia in terms of artistic and cultural production, as well as its cross-cultural role in late 20th century globalization. During her fellowship, she will spend 3 months in Japan, followed by trips in Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and other countries in Asia to research the art ecologies of the regions, especially of art institutions, programs, and individuals who focus on the modern and contemporary Asian art history. She aims to explore how Japanese contemporary art has grasped the uniqueness of its local social, historical, and political contexts as it interacted with an increasingly globalized community and how artworks and curatorial practices in Japan and other Asian countries have responded to their local histories and politics to better understand and gain new perspectives on local and global issues.
Profile
Currently an Asian Cultural Council (ACC) fellow conducting research in Japan and other countries in Asia. Previously, she held the position of curator at Taikang Art Museum (formerly known as Taikang Space, Beijing) from 2017 to 2024 and worked at ARTFORUM International in New York from 2014 to 2017. She received master’s degrees in art history and criticism from University of Connecticut in the US and Tsinghua University in China. She was the Finalist of the award for emerging Chinese curators, “Hyundai Blue Prize 2018,” and served as the nominator for “Jimei x Arles Discovery Award” in the same year. She was on the shortlist Jury for the Eighth and Ninth “Huayu Youth Award” in 2020 and 2021. Her recent curatorial projects include “Professional Amateur and Emerging Modernity: Luo Bonian and His Contemporaries, 1930-1940s” (2021) and “Let Painting Talk” (2021). She was involved in the editorial project of Zhang Peili: Record. Repeat (Art Institute of Chicago, 2017) and writes for ARTFORUM, LEAP, ArtAsiaPacific, and FLASH ART, among others.