The combination of Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu has been chosen by the Yokohama Triennale organizing committee to serve as the artistic directors of the 8th iteration of the triennial event, Yokohama Triennale 2023.
Liu and Lu, two Beijing-based artists and art historians, both have their own practices in the international art scene and have collaborated on curatorial initiatives since 2007. Their selection seeks out nuggets of knowledge for surviving the present in both the details of individual work and the significant historical turning points during a time of historical upheaval. Their frame of reference transcends space and time as they look for inspiration in everything from ancient oriental philosophy to contemporary global lifestyles.
“Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu’s proposal was particularly suitable for an art festival in Yokohama, a city that is open to Asia,” comments Asada Akira, the Chairperson of the Artistic Director Selection Committee. “Rather than repeating the fashionable themes often seen at international art festivals, it takes Lu Xun’s* prose poetry collection Wild Grass, which is well known in Japan, as a starting point for a journey that goes deep and broadly into the imagination.”
Liu Ding, an artist and a curator, creates artworks using text, photography, installation, painting, performance and other media based on his research into the interplay between art, culture, and politics in modern and contemporary Chinese history. His recent solo exhibition includes Reef: A prequel, Bonnefanten, Maastricht (2015). He’s participated in biennales including Busan Biennale (2018), Yinchuan Biennale (2018), Istanbul Biennial (2015), Asia Pacific Triennial (2015), Prospect 3 New Orleans (2014), Shanghai Biennale (2014), Taipei Biennial (2012), Chinese Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), Media City Seoul (2008) and Guangzhou Triennale (2005). His work has been shown at numerous major art institutions, including Castello di Rivoli, The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), MOMA PS1, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai Power Station of Art, Astrup Fearnley Museet, ZKM, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthalle Wien, Sao Paulo Museum of Art, and Tate Modern, among others.
Carol Yinghua Lu is an art historian and a curator. She is Director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, where she’s recently curated Wang Youshen: Codes of Culture (2022). She was Artistic Director and Chief Curator of OCAT, Shenzhen (2012–2015) and Co-Artistic Director of Gwangju Biennale (2012). She was a contributing editor for frieze magazine (2008–2018), one of the first recipients of ARIAH East Asia Fellowship (2017) and the first visiting fellow in Asia-Pacific Fellowship Program at Tate Research Centre (2013). She has acted as a jury member for many art prizes, such as Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (2019–2022), Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative (2019), Hugo Boss Asia (2019), International Award for Art Criticism (2014), Future Generation Art Prize (2012), and Golden Lion Award at Venice Biennale (2011).
In addition to co-curating Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art at OCAT in Shenzhen, MUSEION in Bolzano, and Asia Culture Center in Gwangju (2011-2015), they started their joint curatorial activities in Beijing in 2007. Since then, they have organized exhibitions at art museums across China, including Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and Beijing 798 Creative.
For its seventh season in 2020, the Yokohama Triennale welcomed Raqs Media Collective as its first non-Japanese artistic director. Since then, COVID-19’s persistent difficulties and the war have demonstrated how intricately intertwined our world has become. In order to produce an event that is open to the entire globe and makes use of the port city’s position as a crossroads of people and cultures, it once again welcomes a team that is active on the international scene to serve as Artistic Director for the 8th edition.
The Yokohama Triennale 2023 is slated to be open from December 9, 2023 to March 10, 2023, at the Yokohama Museum of Art and PLOT 48 in Yokohama, Japan.