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    Off-Site Talk: Zishi Han & Wei Yang at Asia Art Archive in America

    Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm

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    Off-site program at Asia Art Archive in America in conjunction with In Practice: Zishi Han & Wei Yang

    In the midst of their exhibition and performance series at SculptureCenter (presented through SculptureCenter’s In Practice open call), Frankfurt-based artists Zishi Han and Wei Yang are joined by additional New York-based collaborators who are taking part in this new, expanded phase of Hairpin Beneath, an ongoing collaborative research project into historical Chinese homoerotic literature, intertwining multiple narratives that explore queer existences in China and of Chinese diaspora.

    The conversation will reflect on Han and Yang’s introduction of a late Ming dynasty anthology of homoerotic stories 弁而釵 (Biàn ér chāi) and other texts to a group of artist peers who have in turn participated in co-editing and rehearsing the performance work staged at SculptureCenter from March 13 to 23, 2025.

    Collaborators participating in the program include:

    Zishi Han (b. Beijing, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) probes masochistic attachment to power structures through installation, sculpture, video and drawing. Drawn to forms that hold and let through, he constructs possessed and perverted apparatuses to dismantle previous relations and incubate unexplored desires.

    Wei Yang (b. Liuzhou, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) explores human beings as a geographic subject in diasporic spaces. He layers collective memories to create hybrid images through myths, history and personal landscapes, which serve as sites of resistance against grand narratives and archival neglect.

    Their ongoing project Hairpin Beneath has been exhibited at Perdu, Amsterdam (2025); Tropez, Berlin (2024); Memphis, Linz (2024); Pols, Valencia (2024); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2024); West Den Haag, The Hague (2024); Delfina Foundation, London (2023); and Pickle Bar, Berlin (2023).

    Zishi Han and Wei Yang’s time in New York City is organized in partnership with Asia Art Archive in America (AAAinA). SculptureCenter and AAAinA are co-presenting public programming off-site in AAAinA’s Brooklyn Heights reading room that expands on the artists' In Practice commission and their ongoing collaboration.

    Performances at SculptureCenter take place on March 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, and 22. Learn more about the performances here.

    Asia Art Archive in America (AAAinA), founded in 2009, is an independently established and operated U.S. 501(c)3, and the first overseas hub of Asia Art Archive (AAA) in Hong Kong. AAAinA’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make accessible information on contemporary art from and of Asia, in order to facilitate public understanding and specialized research to instigate dialogue and critical thinking, and to raise awareness of and support for the activities of AAA globally. To achieve this goal, AAAinA maintains a reading room in Brooklyn, New York which is open to the public free of charge, and comprises over 5,000 monographs, exhibition catalogs, reference books, periodicals, and audio-visual materials about contemporary art related to Asia. AAAinA also organizes a regular program of talks, screenings, workshops, participatory projects, exhibitions, residencies, and panels with artists, curators, critics, and scholars in the field.