
M WOODS New Venue in Chengdu, China
M WOODS museum is pleased to announce that our new museum site in Chengdu, M WOODS People’s Park, will be open to the public in the summer of 2023!
Since 2014, M WOODS has been committed to invigorating the community by bringing the best in art to the local audience. As a crucial component of Chengdu’s Tianfu Culture Park Project, as well as a key deployment of M WOODS’ national strategic plan of “Three Cities, Four Museums,” themuseum’s new site in Chengdu will be the first step for M WOODS museum to expand its reach beyond Beijing and to a wider audience in China. M WOODS People’s Park will continue to uphold the museum’s mission by presenting a year-round program of exhibitions, performances, music, live events, and talks.

Located in the historical “100-year old street” of Citang (Ancestral Hall) Street, M WOODS People’s Park is positioned nearby the Sichuan Provincial Art Museum, Chengdu Museum, Sichuan Provincial Library, Kuanzhai Alley and other major city landmarks. Designed by Zheng Yong, chief architect of China Architecture Southwest Design and Research Institute, and his studio, the main building of the museum has 3 floors and covers an area of about 4,000 square meters, including exhibition galleries, public education spaces, as well as cafes, bookstores and other creative and innovative enterprises.

M WOODS founder Lin Han said, “M WOODS People’s Park is not just a new museum, but also a new community that brings art, culture and people together. I love Chengdu, especially the people and culture here. I hope together we could weave a better dream for this wonderful city .”
M WOODS founder Wanwan Lei said “Chengdu not only has a rich cultural heritage, but also presents us with a promising future full of possibilities. This city is always willing to embrace new opportunities, while keeping its own unique character. I think this really speaks to M WOODS Museum’s long-term vision and aspirations. And that's also the reason why we would like to participate in the cultural development of this city.”
As part of the Ancestral Street Project, M WOODS will collaboratewith TASCHEN, innerflow, Guanxia, Patagonia among others, to create a rich cultural experience for the local community.
Current Exihibition
M WOODS 798

30 June 2023 – 26 November 2023
M WOODS 798, Beijing, ChinaCurated by Victor Wang, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M WOODS
Past Exhibitions
M WOODS 798

Genieve Figgis: Drama Party
2023.04.15 - 2023.06.04
Curated by Qi Yuanlin, Deng Yingying
Previous Exhibitions

M WOODS Publication
M WOODS Publishing Program.
M WOODS Live
Live events, music, performances, partiesM WOODS 798 and M WOODS Hutong

M WOODS Education
M WOODS Education Program
M WOODS Tongue
M Woods Tongue restaurant M WOODS 798

Upcoming Exihibition
M WOODS Chengdu

Ryuichi Sakamoto | SOUND AND TIME
30 July, 2023 - 5 January, 2024
M WOODS (People’s Park), Chengdu
With collaborative works by Shiro Takatani | Daito Manabe | Zakkubalan | Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Curated by Sachiko Namba, Victor Wang
Exhibition Director: Deng Yingying
Previous Exhibitions
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Collection
M WOODS Collection and F.A.T.
M WOODS Conversations
M WOODS Conversations is a new platform to the museum that brings together well-known figures in the fields of art, culture, design, ecology, and other subjects. M WOODS 798 and M WOODS Hutong
Inaugural M WOODS Scholarship
The M WOODS Scholarship is a new fully-funded scholarship for two deserving applicants from China, or of Chinese decent, to attend a two-year program of their choice at The New Centre for Research & Practice.
Online Projects
Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
Online
Past Special Projects
Organs Underground
Date: 2020.10.30 — 2021.12.13 Location: GUĪ, M WOODS HUTONG
Council Acknowledgement

M Woods expresses our deep gratitude to all members of the Council for their continued support of the museum, and in helping us build a modern and contemporary institution that supports artists and art enthusiasts. We sincerely thank you for your time in discussing and supervising the development of M Woods Museum. Your influence and expertise in various areas and topics have helped us grow to international prominence.
We are grateful that you have decided to take this exciting journey with us, and we look forward to sharing the growth of M Woods Museum with you in the future.
List of Councils
杜杰 Du Jie
关东元 Guan Dongyuan
洪俊伊 Jevin Hong
洪艳霞 Hong Yanxia
李侃侃 Kevin Li
李詠能 Li Yongneng
李战豪 Li Zhanhao
林霄 Lin Xiao
罗旭东 Luo Xudong
区结萍 Sabrina Ou
欧阳昆仑 Ouyang Kunlun
孙祎 Sun Yi & Karen Liu
刘杨 Vincent Liu
元冰 Yuan Bing
张楠 Zhang Nan
周小波 Patrick Chou & 周秀丽 Shoe-li Chou
About M WOODS
M WOODS 798
798 Art Zone D-06,
No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang, Beijing
Locations

M WOODS Chengdu (People’s Park)
Located in the historical “100-year old street” of Citang (Ancestral Hall) Street.
Chengdu, China.
M WOODS Collection:
At the heart of M WOODS lies a dedication to preserving, interpreting, and expanding art beyond traditional boundaries. The collection embraces diverse cultural perspectives, showcasing artists like Kader Attia and Danh Võ, alongside Buddhist sculptors from the Northern Qi Dynasty, and contemporary works by Olafur Eliasson and Yang Fudong, to name a few. A primary focus of M WOODS museum is to actively promote and support the important field of contemporary art locally. This includes showcasing works by emerging and established Chinese artists, fostering a space for experimentation and innovation, and providing a platform for local artists to gain recognition both domestically and internationally.

Kader Attia, “We Want to be Modern”, 2014, Permanent installation at M WOODS 798.

M WOODS Temple Galleries (M WOODS Art Community, LongFu Building).

M WOODS 2019 Staff Photo

Museum Volunteer
M WOODS recruits for volunteers throughout the year. To apply to be a Museum Volunteer, please send a short resume and a photograph of yourself to hr@mwoods.org.
Sponsorships and Partnerships
If you are interested in partnering or collaborating with M WOODS, please call +86 10 83123452 or email sponsorship@mwoods.org
木木美术馆798馆
M WOODS 798
北京市朝阳区
酒仙桥路2号798艺术区,D-06
798 Art Zone D-06, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang, Beijing
开放时间 Opening Hours:
周二-周日 Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00
(最后入场时间 Last Admission 18:00)
每周一闭馆 Closed on Mondays
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酒仙桥路2号798艺术区,D-06
798 Art Zone D-06, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang, Beijing
开放时间 Opening Hours:
周二-周日 Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00
(最后入场时间 Last Admission 18:00)
每周一闭馆 Closed on Mondays



M WOODS Chengdu,
Building 1 & 2, Citang Street, Qingyang District,
Chengdu, Sichuan 610015,
People’s Republic of China
开放时间 Opening Hours:
周二-周日 Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00
(最后入场时间 Last Admission 18:00)
每周一闭馆 Closed on Mondays


For more information, please contact: shop@mwoods.org


Trance: Tianzhuo Chen Solo Exhibition
2019.10.31-2020.2.23
M WOODS 798

M WOODS is delighted to present Trance, a solo exhibition by artist Tianzhuo Chen in the museum’s location in 798 Art Zone. This exhibition will be Chen’s largest solo exhibition in China to date, and centers around a new 12-hour long performance of the same name. Presenting new work in conjunction with some of Chen’s most representative pieces, the exhibition will provide a comprehensive overview of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice that combines moments from previous exhibitions and performances from 2014 to the present.

Artists based in China that have grown up after the turn of the millennium are, in many ways, the country’s first generation of contemporary art creators with a diverse global vision. With cultural background and identity no longer isolated topics in need of clarification, these artists engage with a wide array of subjects within the framework of a broader social, political, and economic context. Having established a distinct voice in contemporary art, Tianzhuo Chen adopts an eclectic and multidisciplinary practice that includes performance, installation, video, photography, and work on paper, oftentimes skilfully merging all these elements in his complex and hypnotic all-encompassing performances that blur the boundaries between exhibition and theater.
Appearing within his work are fragmented pieces of information and symbols derived from sources such as electronic music, religion, club culture, cartoons, and Butoh, a form of Japanese dance theater. These wide-ranging and seemingly disparate sources are synthesized effortlessly by the artist to unpredictable and surprising chemistry. It is a process not unlike our own experiences surfing the web, where similarly, a vast array of information and material is available to be seen, used, and absorbed, all at the click of a mouse. Thus, although Chen’s work can be puzzling in its novelty and absurdity, it is not the artist’s intention to induce confusion, or to force viewers to unpack the meanings of each symbol and detail in order to understand his work. Rather, Chen seeks to create an alternative world, ambiguous in nature and situated somewhere between everyday reality and illusion, which demands the visitor’s visual, aural, and total physical sensory experience. Throughout Chen’s diverse and eclectic practice, what emerges as a constant is his intense – at times even overwhelmingly so – visual imagery, and their persistent reflection on the absurdity of life and death.

Over the course of three days, Chen’s artistic style and energy will be put to the stage in the brand-new performance piece Trance (2019), during the exhibition’s opening. With each performance lasting 12 hours and taking place once per day, this marathon-like performance project is the artist’s first trial after many years of preparation. Unbound by traditional genres of theatre, dance, or musical opera, Trance takes the entire museum as its stage, and presents six stories, all of which are related to human illusions, and previous artworks. Rather than adhering to established conventions of narrative, chronology, or delineation between work and the environment it is situated in, Chen immerses audiences in a spatially and temporally de-centralized performance, where visitors are free to wander for the entire 12-hour duration as if in an aimless stream of consciousness. Eventually, Chen expects viewers will cross a threshold, whereby they are no longer in control and enter a “state of trance” induced by their perceptions. After the first three days of live performances, a related video work will be created and exhibited in the central hall of the museum during the course of the exhibition.
Taking Trance as the starting point, M WOODS invites audiences to immerse themselves in the world of Tianzhuo Chen: in his rebellion against cultural monotony and stereotypical interpretation, and in his persistent search for sincere, genuine modes of expression.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tianzhuo Chen (b.1985) graduated from Central St. Martins, and Chelsea College of Arts, London. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Kunsthalle Winterthur (2017); Long March Space, Beijing (2016); chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2016); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015). Chen has participated in many international exhibitions including the Guangzhou Airport Biennale (2019); Athens Biennale (2018); Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018); Biennale of Contemporary Arts, Portugal (2017); and the Shanghai Biennale (2016). His performance works have been staged at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles; the Barbican Centre, London; Theater Der Welt, Hamburg; and the Tokyo Festival, amongst many others.
Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum
Here at M WOODS we recognize that the current health emergency in China has affected our communities and has forced many of our museums, institutions and galleries to close, leaving a space in which the arts can comment and reflect.
As a public museum, we ask how we then experience art during times of institutional closure: what are the forms that art and art museums must take when galleries become inaccessible to the public?
In light of this, M WOODS will present ‘Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum’, an online exhibition of moments and happenings – contributions of artworks, videos, photographs, words, poems, instructions and thoughts – by artists and thinkers around the theme of ecology, nature, extinction, isolation and kinship, curated by our Artistic Director and Chief Curator Victor Wang.
Conceived as a long-term visual project that will virtually occupy both M WOODS museum locations (798 and Hutong), this experimental exhibition will unfold over a period of several weeks: different galleries of the museum will be open virtually, with accompanying artworks presented online through the museum’s online platforms – Weibo, WeChat, Instagram and Facebook – throughout the duration of the show.
In the context of Mainland China, social media has now become a very powerful tool in sharing information and connecting communities both locally and internationally during the quarantine period. With no end date set for this project, the timeframe is contingent on the opening of our museums and public institutions, and therefore artists will continuously be invited to participate.
Through this activity we hope to continue our mission of working with artists to provide art for the public, making it accessible at all times and in all circumstances.
[Opening February 13 – Continuous ]










With Contributions By:
aaajiao
Allora and Calzadilla
Annika Eriksson
Babi Badalov
Basim Magdy
Cerith Wyn Evans
Cheng Ran
Chulayarnnon Siriphol
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Éléonore Saintagnan & Grégoire Motte
Fan Xi
Fang Di
Haroon Mirza
Hu Xiaoyuan
Huang Rui
Jonathas de Andrade
Katja Novitskova
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lawrence Lek
Li Binyuan
Lin Tianmiao
Li Tingwei
Liu Shiyuan
Lu Pingyuan
Lu Yang
Miao Ying
Michael Najjar
Nabuqi
Oscar Murillo
Patty Chang
Raqs Media Collective
Reynier Leyva Novo
Richard Tuttle
Robert Zhao Renhui
Solange Pessoa
Stephanie Comilang
Sun Xun
Tania Bruguera
Timur Si-Qin
Victoria Sin
Xiang Jing
Xie Nanxing
Yang Yuanyuan
Yang Zhenzhong
Yu Ji
Zadie Xa
Zhang Enli
Zhang Peili
Zhao Zhao
… AND more artists and contributions to be announced throughout the week!
Click here to enter the galleries:
WEEK 1, ROOM 1【0213AC】
WEEK 2, ROOM 2【02203AL】
WEEK 3, ROOM 3【0227BS】
WEEK 4, ROOM 4【0305FV】
WEEK 5, ROOM 5【0319HZ】
WEEK 6, ROOM 6【0326BY】
WEEK 7, ROOM 7【0402ZZ】
WEEK 8, ROOM 8【0409KZ】
WEEK 9, ROOM 9【0416LY】

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Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness
Curated by Victor Wang
December 6, 2020 – June 14, 2021
M WOODS is proud to present the first
museum exhibition in China of the work of the celebrated Italian artist Giorgio
Morandi (1890-1964).
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Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
Morandi was born on July 20, 1890, in
Bologna, Italy, and spent nearly all his life there, working quietly in a modest
studio and apartment that he shared with his three sisters. Morandi’s acclaimed
small-scale and contemplative landscapes and still life depictions of
commonplace objects traverse a space of poetics that can be compared with what the
poet T.S. Eliot described as ‘the intersection of the timeless with time’.[1]
The survey exhibition at M WOODS, Giorgio
Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness, explores six decades of Morandi’s practice
across over eighty works, from his early life, when he first exhibited in
Bologna in 1914, and was heavily influenced by avant-garde art movements like Cubism and Futurism, to the period between 1930 and 1956, when Morandi was professor of
etching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and his later work in the 1960s
just before his death. As the first museum solo exhibition of Morandi’s work in
China, the show also considers Morandi’s silent investigations of form,
meditative repetition of still life and introspective compositions in parallel with
concepts of timelessness in both European and traditional Chinese thought and philosophy.
Just as the ancient Greeks had two words
for time, chronos and kairos, the former describing chronological
time and the latter referring to the qualitative nature of time, a special
moment or event in time, Morandi’s work also departs from classical temporal categories
to create deep spaces of contemplation at the height of early twentieth-century
war and conflict. Rather than following a chronological approach, the
exhibition is assembled with reference to Morandi’s still life compositions. That
is, in the same way that the artist arranged a series of different objects to
create a single image, the galleries of the museum will be divided into
different themes that expand on specific elements of Morandi’s practice, such
as his use of repetition and recurrence throughout his career, or his long-term
investigation into the natural scenery in Grizzana, to bring together a portrait of the artist’s career through work
in different mediums and from different periods of his life.
![]()
Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
[1] Pedro Blas González,, ‘Time and
Permanence in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets’, Oct 27, 2014, Russell Kirk
Center, available at:
https://kirkcenter.org/essays/time-permanence-eliot-four-quartets/
These themes are divided into four main
sections: ‘Transitions’, ‘Recurrence’, ‘Landscapes’(Paesaggi e fiori), and
‘Late Works on Paper’. Morandi once said
“the feelings and images that the visible world awakens in us are very
difficult to express or are perhaps inexpressible with words, because they are
determined by forms, colors, space and light”.[1] For the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the transcendental was a way to
understand the boundary of things in the perceivable world, and he suggested
that we can only understand space and time through our interaction with, and
perception of, objects and things.[2] This section of the exhibition will trace the important transitions and formative influences on
Morandi’s linguaggio formale, his
formal language, through several key works such as Still Life, 1914, one of his earliest still life
paintings and Natura Morta con Bottiglia e Brocca, 1915, both works the
artist made just before he was called up to fight in World War I, and Still Life,
1928, one of Morandi’s best known compositions
that displays lingering visual elements
from when Morandi was briefly associated
with the Metaphysical Painting movement in Italy that embraced transcendental
ideas of reality and objects. Also on show are Morandi’s
more unusual still life paintings of shells, alongside his etchings and oil
paintings of table tops with bottles, boxes, vases and flowers, that reflect both
the shift in the political environment of the time, exemplified by artistic
movements such as Strapaese, and a return to more regional modes of art that challenge the
understanding of objects beyond their direct meaning or their perceived nature
in the world, into a space that neither words nor cultural significance alone,
as Morandi shows, can fully describe.
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Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, (Recurrence Gallery), courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
Morandi’s method of continuously repeating
still life compositions and subjects, or “serial variations”,[3] is highlighted in the section entitled ‘Recurrence’ and traced through the
evolution of two specific objects: the white bottle and cylindrical white vase
as seen in works such as Still Life, 1956. The philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche described recurrence and timelessness as cyclical: not in terms of
how long something lasts in the world, but in how things repeat again in time,
and the many ways in which things are continued or passed on through time. “A
white bottle is all that remains”,[4] Morandi said in 1962. For Morandi the use of repetition was key, and the same
set of objects was revisited by the artist again and again in paintings and
etchings. This section will highlight a series of works that centre on Morandi’s
arrangements of vases and bottles from the 1920s to the 1960s, in addition to works
from the late 1940s, when he
received the First Prize for painting at the 1948 Venice Biennale.
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Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, (‘Landscapes’ (Paesaggi e fiori)), courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
‘Landscapes’ (Paesaggi e fiori), will
highlight Morandi’s long-term investigation into the natural scenery in Grizzana
and Bologna, and his innovative landscape paintings and etchings that reveal
his fascination with the outdoors and Bologna’s urban landscapes. Here we will
show key works such as Landscape of Grizzana,
1913, the artist’s second etching ever made.
A specific gallery
within this theme will also be dedicated to Morandi’s exploration of flowers in
still life, with works such as Flowers, 1952, a subject that the artist
was deeply passionate about.[5] Morandi became familiar with the
work of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists such as Claude Monet and
Paul Cézanne through exhibitions in Venice and Rome, but he travelled very little
in his lifetime, and only crossed the Italian border a few times. This section
will display paintings, drawings and etchings immortalizing the natural scenery
in Grizzana, a town at the foot of the northern Apennines in Emilia-Romagna where
Morandi spent the summer months, alongside his paintings of casas colonicas (farmhouses) and landscapes and sketches made from his studio window in Bologna.
![]()
Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
![]()
Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
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Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
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Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi:
The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021.
Photo by M WOODS photography team
With special thanks to the Morandi family; Collezione Augusto e Francesca Giovanardi, Milano; Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m., Bologna/Milano/Paris; Institutional Collection and Private Collections, China; Private Collections, courtesy Imago Art Gallery-Lugano, Switzerland.
[1] “STILL LIFE”, (NATURA MORTA),
1942, “A Backward Glance: Giorgio Morandi and the Old Masters”, Guggenheim
Bilbao, 2019
[2] Nicholas F. Stang, ‘Kant’s
Transcendental Idealism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/>.
[3] Giorgio Morandi: 1890-1964:
Nothing Is More Abstract Than Reality, (exhibition catalogue), edited by Maria
Cristina Bandera and Renato Miracco (Milan: Skira; London: Thames and Hudson,
2008), p. 260
[4] Giorgio Morandi: 1890-1964:
Nothing Is More Abstract Than Reality, p.280
[5] Giorgio Morandi: 1890-1964:
Nothing Is More Abstract Than Reality,
p. 49








[IMAGE CAPTIONS]
1) Natura morta con bottiglia e brocca, 1915
2) Flowers, 1942
3) Still life, 1960
4) Still life, 1938
5) Still life, 1950-1951
6) Landscape, 1928
7) Still life, 1914
8) Flowers, 1952
9-15) *
*Installation view, ‘Giorgio Morandi: The Poetics of Stillness’, courtesy M WOODS 798, Beijing, 2021. Photo by M WOODS photography team
Images courtesy of the Collezione Augusto e Francesca Giovanardi, Milano; Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m., Bologna/Milano/Paris; Institutional Collection and Private Collections, China; Private Collections, courtesy Imago Art Gallery-Lugano, Switzerland. All images © Morandi family/SIAE, Rome.
Collective Care: A House with Many Guests
Date: 2020.06.12 - 2020.09.13
Location: M WOODS 798
With artworks by: Kader Attia, Pierrette Bloch, Gustave Courbet, Martin Creed, Dong Dawei, Tomoo Gokita, Katharina Grosse, Gu Changwei, Charles Harlan, He Xiangyu, Jeppe Hein, David Hockney, Pierre Huyghe, Raoul de Keyser, Austin Lee, Li Ming, Pixy Liao, Liu Heung Shing, Paul McCarthy, Sabine Moritz, MR., Nicolas Party, Alex Prager, Robin Rhode, Sterling Ruby, Nicola Samorì, Taca Sui, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dahn Vo, Guo Xi, Wang Yin, Cristof Yvoré, Yu Ji, Zhou Siwei, Zhou Tao.

If, as independent exhibition designer Harald Szeemann suggested in the 1980s, a museum is a ‘house for art’, then what is the museum in 2020?
As M WOODS’s first exhibition in our 798 location since its temporary closure in early January, we look to collectivism and networks of sharing collections locally as a relevant model for exhibition-making in China during our new distinctive post-Covid-19 present.
Collective Care: A House with Many Guests invites eight local collections to be presented alongside the museum’s collection in an exhibition that crosses chronological boundaries as well as conventional stylistic categories by displaying both art objects in a variety of mediums and periods, from installation art to Chinese antiques, alongside non-art objects from the early 1990s to the present.
Divided into separate autonomous spaces, the exhibition asks how museums might become more open spaces comprised of intersecting voices and fingerprints, while also looking into the concept of care, as a crucial component to every museum and collection moving forward.
Imagining a new ‘local turn’, Collective Care: A House with Many Guests is both an exhibition and a model of sharing collections that works locally and within a collecting network of sympathetic individuals and guests. Showing that hospitality, as French philosopher Jacques Derrida suggested, “can only be poetic”. By opening up M WOODS to these mixed voices and collections, the museum also hopes to reflect on what role a museum can play in the larger art ecology of the region.
Participating collections include: Du Jie, Hong Yanxia, Jevin Junyi Hong, Li Zhanhao, Vincent Liu, Ouyang Kunlun, Yuan Bing, Patrick & Shoe-li Chou











Yinka
Shonibare CBE: Radical Hybridity
Curated by Victor Wang
25 August – 11 October 2020
M WOODS Art Community, LongFu Building, Temple Galleries, 9th
Floor, Beijing
Opening: 25 August
M WOODS is proud to première two
film works in our Temple Galleries by the influential British-born Nigerian
artist Yinka Shonibare CBE (b. 1962).
Yinka Shonibare CBE, who was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the
British Empire) in 2019, has spent three decades exploring the European
colonial impact on African identities and their diasporas. Rather than taking a
fixed position on visual identity and cultural representation, Shonibare CBE opens
up a space of cultural hybridity and duality in his practice.
The films are shown within
the museum’s specially reconstructed Ming dynasty temples that were originally built on
the museum’s current site in 1452 by the Jingtai Emperor of the Ming dynasty.
These temples were the only ones in the city to accommodate both lamas and
monks.
Visitors are invited to view Shonibare CBE’s films Odile and Odette (2005) and Addio
del Passato (2011) within this unique setting and context of the rebuilt temples, thus combining tradition, Chinese history and contemporary art. The period during
which the temples were built was also itself a significant one in terms of
cultural migration and cross-pollination in a Chinese context.
This première also marks the first project in a new series of
programming and initiatives at M WOODS that will reconsider aspects of
post-colonial theory, diasporic knowledge and Black intellectual thought in the
context of China and East Asia.
“I’m
delighted that M WOODS have chosen to show my films at this prescient time”. Says
artist Yinka Shonibare CBE. “This will be the first significant presentation of
my films in China, in such a unique setting and I’m happy to contribute to the
wider important conversations on post-colonial affects and diasporic influence
within this context.” (Yinka Shonibare CBE)
(M WOODS Art Community: Longfu Building, Temple Gallery)
About the Artist:
[Photo credit: Yinka Shonibare CBE, 2014, Photo: RA Marcus Leith]
Yinka Shonibare CBE
Yinka Shonibare CBE (b. London, UK, 1962 -) studied Fine
Art at Byam Shaw School of Art (1989) and received his MFA from Goldsmiths
College, London, (1991).
His interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western
art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural
and national identities within the context of globalization. Through examining
race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the
tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective
economic and political histories.
In 2004, he
was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2008, his mid-career survey
began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; touring to the Brooklyn Museum,
New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington
D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was
displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, and was acquired by
the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
In 2013, he was elected as a Royal Academician and was
awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in the
2019 New Year’s Honours List. His
installation ‘The British Library’ was acquired by Tate in 2019 and is currently on display at
Tate Modern, London.
His work is included in notable museum collections
including Tate, London; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian
Institute, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Abu
Dhabi; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
About the films:
Odile and Odette (2005-2006) is a film made in collaboration with the Royal Opera House. Here,
Shonibare CBE re-imagines a classical episode from Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Swan
Lake, where the lead roles 'Odile' and 'Odette' engage in a close dialogue of
gestures and movement. Odile and Odette are characters which embody “good” and “evil”
and are traditionally danced by a sole prima ballerina. The artist transforms
this classical part into a complex and subtle interplay between two dancers in
which the duality of the characters is played out in racial difference.
Mirroring each other’s expression on either side of an ornate Baroque frame,
Shonibare CBE suggests that their movement is both estranged and united. The
dancers perform a passage from the ballet in a studio stage set to silence, the
rhythm of their pointe shoes creates the only soundtrack to the film.
Filmed
from one side of a “stage set” but using two cameras, the doubling effect is
further played out as the dancers switch side of the mirror frame and creates a
visual environment where the viewer is privileged to see the work performed
from both sides of the 'mirror'. The film's narrative and construction suggest
that both characters are one and that their complex relationship is both
co-dependent and formed by each other.
In
a recent interview Shonibare CBE said: “What I find interesting is the idea
that you cannot define Africa without Europe. The idea that there is some kind
of dichotomy between Africa and Europe - between the ‘exotic other’ and the ‘civilized
European’, if you like - I think is completely simplistic. I am interested in
exploring the mythology of these two so-called separate spheres, and in
creating an overlap of identities.”
Addio del Passato (2011) is the title of an aria about betrayal, love and loss from Verdi’s opera
La Traviata, sung by the dying heroine Violetta. In this film Shonibare CBE
alters the characters so the aria is performed by a black singer in the guise
of Frances Nisbet, the wife who Nelson betrayed and abandoned during a lengthy
affair with Lady Hamilton. Here Nisbet agonizes over her own life and Nelson’s
absence, even envisaging his death in a series of tableaux (the Fake Death
Pictures) that occur outside the immediate action of the film, as though giving
form to her tortured thoughts and daydreams.
Addio del Passatois Shonibare CBE’s first investigation of Nelson’s wider human story; more
typically he views Nelson in a purely metaphorical sense, as a cipher for
empire. As an artist he works with aesthetics, metaphor, politics; indeed, his
headless and faceless figures are purposefully not “individuals” with whom we
could identify as people. As such, despite its obvious artifice, the level of
emotional intensity and engagement offered by Addio del Passato is unexpected, breathtaking. Like Un Ballo in Maschera (2004), this work
features what at first seems to be the looping of the film. However, this is
not a loop, but an actual live replaying, the singer beginning her song and her
walk through the house and landscape again. In this case the repeated action
implies an endless cycle of sadness and despair that amplifies the potency offeeling
and sense of hopelessness. The film explores the concept of
destiny as it relates to themes of desire, yearning, love, power and sexual
repression.
The
film was shot in the magnificent surroundings of Syon Park, just outside
London, which is the ancestral home of the Duke of Northumberland. Originally
built in the sixteenth century, it was extensively remodeled in the eighteenth
century by two of the most renowned designers of the period to reflect
contemporary fashions - Robert Adam working on the house and Capability Brown
on the landscape. This location extends Shonibare CBE’s reference to the
aristocracy and the trappings of wealth.

Organs Underground
30 October – 13 December 2020
GUĪ, M WOODS Art Community
30 October – 13 December 2020
GUĪ, M WOODS Art Community
We are proud to announce that M WOODS will collaborate with PLATESPACE to present the group exhibition Organs Underground. Co-launched by M WOODS and PLATESPACE, the exhibition features work by 8 young Chinese artists and an artist group. Marked as the first collaboration of M WOODS with an alternative art space, this project aims to support local young artists, to explore new possibilities of curatorial practice and to instill the vitality of contemporary art into the historical center of Beijing.

杨圆圆, From now on, the cyberspace will be clean and ecological,2020
As an alternative art program, PLATESPACE remains independent from galleries, museums and other art organizations as well as the art market, providing opportunities for pioneering and experimental artists to practice and exhibit art. This type of art spaces compensate for the limitations of mainstream exhibitions and balance the over-commercialization and marketization of the contemporary art eco-system. PLATESPACE is more of a platform than a space, which connects individual art creators to form a social network, facilitating interaction and communication among one another. The city’s gentrification process has forced many nonprofit art programs to search for new ways of existence, as a result of which PLATESPACE has employed a nomadic mode of operation. Not tied to a fixed space, it flexibly and creatively utilizes available spaces in the city center, such as apartments, shared offices, cafes in the hutongs, bookshops, bars and other unconventional exhibition venues, which breaks the “White Cube” aesthetic by positioning the exhibition into a more specific spatial context. GUĪ, the exhibition venue for this project, is an electronic music club located underneath the M WOODS Hutong museum. It represents a brave attempt of M WOODS Art Community to venture into new territories, extending the experience of art into the night so that visitors can learn about a different dimension of contemporary culture. The spontaneity and experimentality embedded in the concept of “night” and “underground” not only correspond to the characteristics of alternative space, but also imbue the project with more profound meanings.

刘雨佳, Life wasn’t meant to be easy,This is making things hard,2017
Organs Underground challenges the “text-centered” curatorial model and experiments with new ways of curating. Under the conventional model, artists are mere providers of artworks that are usually classified into certain categories such as mediums and themes and that serve as formal representation of the curatorial text. In this project, however, there is no so called “curator”, while the artists jointly participate in the curating process. Coordinated by the co-launchers, they communicate with one another to decide on the works to be exhibited, the way of exhibiting as well as the floor plan. During this decentralized and organic process, artists break away from predetermined curatorial ideas and gain inspirations of the exhibition as well as their own practice. At the same time, exhibited works are no longer shoehorned into the curatorial frame, the richness, complexity and even uncertainty of which can be fully revealed and presented to the viewer.
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词穷公园,修普诺斯(Hypnos),2020
However, this project isn’t meant to invalidate the importance of exhibition text, but instead adopts a reverse working process – making the writing of it the last step of the entire process, so that the exhibition structure can be more flexible and dynamic. If artists are the basic modules comprising an exhibition, then this project can be seen as the result of the permutation and combination of several artist modules, in which text serves to record, analyze, summarize and extend this result. For this project, we invite independent curator Wang Tianmo to take on the role of “project observer” and to contribute a piece of writing that interprets the exhibition from a third perspective. Through self-inquiry, she guides the viewer to reflect on the project itself as well as the works on view.
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Leelee Chan
Orange Moon #2, 2019
galvanised steel vent well, spray paint, window glass, clip-on LED light
66 x 31 x 22 cm

词穷公园,修普诺斯(Hypnos),2020
However, this project isn’t meant to invalidate the importance of exhibition text, but instead adopts a reverse working process – making the writing of it the last step of the entire process, so that the exhibition structure can be more flexible and dynamic. If artists are the basic modules comprising an exhibition, then this project can be seen as the result of the permutation and combination of several artist modules, in which text serves to record, analyze, summarize and extend this result. For this project, we invite independent curator Wang Tianmo to take on the role of “project observer” and to contribute a piece of writing that interprets the exhibition from a third perspective. Through self-inquiry, she guides the viewer to reflect on the project itself as well as the works on view.

Leelee Chan
Orange Moon #2, 2019
galvanised steel vent well, spray paint, window glass, clip-on LED light
66 x 31 x 22 cm
Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum
2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
ROOM【0305FV】
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M WOODS Online Schedule (CST Beijing Time):
Weibo:
Everyday @ 12.00 pm
WeChat:
Every Thursday @ 6.00 pm
Instagram:
Every Thursday and Friday @ 10.00 pm
Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum
2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
2020 FEB 13 – ONGOING
ROOM【0305FV】

M WOODS Online Schedule (CST Beijing Time):
Weibo: Everyday @ 12.00 pm
WeChat: Every Thursday @ 6.00 pm
Instagram: Every Thursday and Friday @ 10.00 pm
Weibo: Everyday @ 12.00 pm
WeChat: Every Thursday @ 6.00 pm
Instagram: Every Thursday and Friday @ 10.00 pm

Lawrence Lek, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Fang Di, Miao Ying, Lin Tianmiao, Li Tingwei, and Visionist
In the contribution ‘Unreal Estate’ (The Royal Academy is Yours), by artist Lawrence Lek, we enter a future in which the Royal Academy of Arts in London has been sold to a Chinese billionaire as a luxury private mansion. Artist Li Tingwei has been meticulously documenting her meals prepared at home during China’s self-quarantine period, and Lin Tianmiao gives us new tools that are grafted hybrids of bone and industrial materials.
Miao Ying’s ‘Hardcore Digital Detox’ gives us an online break from the dominance of multi-billion dollar businesses like Google and Facebook by offering you to set your virtual private network (VPN) to Mainland China, where these websites and apps are blocked. And artist Fang Di documents the rise and life of Justin Tkatchenko, currently Minister for Lands & Physical Planning, in Papua New Guinea, drawing the connections between this region and the economic development plan of China. Lawrence Abu Hamdan takes us to The Golan Heights where Israeli borders are breached by 150 Palestinian protesters from Syria, and where the topography creates an acoustic leak where families gather to hear each other’s voices and wave to one another across the otherwise impervious divide. One of modern music’s most elusive experimentalists, Visionist, gives our audiences a collection of tracks, which he describes as ‘A Delicate Rage’, and as a reflection on the present he sees now.
This gallery has several different kinds of mediums and perspectives by the artists, and contains both new and existing works. Our contributors in this section are coming from all over the world.
M WOODS recognizes that the current health emergency in China has affected our communities and has forced many of our museums, institutions and galleries to close, leaving a space in which the arts can comment and reflect. Through this activity we hope to continue our mission of working with artists to provide art for the public, making it accessible at all times and in all circumstances.
We thank the artists and galleries for their contributions and support.

Fang Di,Minister, 2019, Single-channel video, 60 minutes
Courtesy the artist
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
Fang Di (born 1987) is a Chinese artist & senior engineer based in Shenzhen, China, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. His works delve into racism and social class. By incorporating references to news and politics, his works use multiple vocabularies to investigate our intertwined city life and attempt to pursue the root of special communities how they were defined suffering under the global economy and nationalist, becoming the most important social fracture.
Fang has exhibited at many solo shows: including The Golden Bowl at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai, 2019), DÀ Qi DÀ LUÒ at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai, 2017), Lost in Shenzhen presented by Jiu Society at 33 Art Space (Shenzhen, 2016), HIT ME! at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, 2013). His group shows include: Kulturforum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin, 2019), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester, 2019), Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2018), Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, 2018), Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (Shenzhen, 2017), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen, 2017), Today Art Museum (Beijing, 2015), Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, 2015), Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow, 2014), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, 2013). Fang’s films have been screened at Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, 2014) and Pantalla Fantasma (Basque Country, 2014). He is a recipient of the New Star Award (2017), Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship (2013) and finalist of Huayu Youth Award (2018) and Yishu 8 Award (2018). And he has been a resident artist at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California, 2014) and Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York, 2013). Fang received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. He is also co-founder of Jiu Society.
Work Synopsis:
Justin Tkatchenko is a member of parliament in Papua New Guinea who is currently Minister for Lands & Physical Planning. He is also the Minister for APEC affairs, a ministry created by the government to specifically prepare for the 2018 APEC summit to be hosted for the first time in PNG.
This film takes an inside perspective into the life of a person who went from being a young Australian born Botanist who fell in love with Papua New Guinea that he decided to make it home, and his journey to becoming a political leader in the country.
Now, after 25 years of living and working in PNG, his achievements over the years are unique for a political leader in PNG. He had built a successful business around his love for plants and nature, became a popular TV personality widely known as ‘The Happy Gardener’, and his T.V popularity and charisma eased him onto becoming successful in his run for elections to become the elected member for Moresby South electorate in the capital city, Port Moresby.
This is a remarkable story of a man who was ones a foreigner but now is regarded as a Papua New Guinean. And not just a Papua New Guinean- A leader.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, This whole time there were no land mines, 2017, 1:1 Video loops, Total 56 sec
(Format adapted for IG for M WOODS)
Courtesy the artist
(Format adapted for IG for M WOODS)
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (born 1985, in Amman) is a contemporary artist based in Beirut. His work looks into the political effects of listening, using various kinds of audio to explore its effects on human rights and law. He is an artist and "private ear" whose projects have taken the form of audiovisual installations, performances, graphic works, photography, Islamic sermons, cassette tape compositions, potato chip packets, essays, and lectures. Abu Hamdan’s interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background in DIY music. In 2013 Abu Hamdan’s audio documentary The Freedom of Speech Itself was submitted as evidence at the UK asylum tribunal where the artist himself was called to testify as an expert witness. He continues to make sonic analyses for legal investigations and advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International - and was prominently part the No More Forgotten Lives campaign for Defence for Children International. The artist’s forensic audio investigations are conducted as part of his research for Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths College London where he is also a PhD candidate.
Recent solo exhibitions include WALLED UNWALLED (PYLON-Lab, Dresden, 2019), The Voice Before the Law (Baloise Group Collection Display Exhibition, Hamburger Bahnof, Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin, 2019), Earwitness Theatre (Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 2019), Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a solo exhibition (Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2019), Earwitness Theatre (Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK, 2018), Lawrence Abu Hamdan: [INAUDIBLE] (mor charpentier, Paris, France, 2018), Walled Unwalled (Tate Tanks, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2018), Walled Unwalled (daadgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 2018), Hammer Projects: Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2018), Conta Diction (Maureen Paley, London, UK, 2017), and others.
Work Synopsis:
The Golan Heights is an area illegally occupied by Israel from Syria since the 1967 war. Families and communities living on either side of the ceasefire line have been divided. In the Golan Heights there is a place called the ‘shouting valley,’ where the topography creates an acoustic leak across the border. Here families gather to hear each other’s voices and wave to one another across the otherwise impervious divide. These are the sounds you hear.
The images you see are from the 15th May 2011 when protesters from all over the country gathered on the Syrian side of the shouting valley for the anniversary of the Nakba. However, unlike the usual gatherings in this valley, this time the voice was not the only thing to cross the border. 150 Palestinian protesters from Syria unexpectedly broke into Israeli territory. For the first time since 1967 the border was breached. Four protesters were later killed by Israeli soldiers yet the majority managed to exercise, even if briefly, their right of return.
This border breach was captured by an anonymous source filming on their phone from the Israeli side, where communities local to the shouting valley gathered in solidarity with the protestors. On this video, amongst the loud protest chants of those breaching the border we can just about make out the voices of the families of the shouting valley in the background. However, they are not shouting their usual salutations. Like the border itself their voices became overpowered by the noise as they shout at the top of their lungs:
Enough
Enough
Stop
Stop
Hey. Stop
Enough
Enough
Enough
Stop. Enough
Stop. Enough
Enough
There are land mines
Stop
Stop
There are land mines. Land Mines
Land Mines. Land Mines
Enough

Lawrence Lek, Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours), 2015, HD CGI Video, 18min 10s
Courtesy the artist; Sadie Coles HQ, London
Courtesy the artist; Sadie Coles HQ, London
Biography:
Lawrence Lek was born 1982 in Frankfurt am Main and is an artist based in London, working in fields of virtual reality and simulation. He studied at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, the Architectural Association, London, and The Cooper Union, New York. Lek uses advancing technologies, such as computer-generated imagery, virtual reality, 3D animation and gaming software as well as installation and performance to simulate and develop digital environments described by the artist as ‘three-dimensional collages of found objects and situations.’ By rendering real places within fictional scenarios, his digital worlds reflect the impact of the virtual on our perception of reality.
Recent solo exhibitions include Ghostwriter, Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, Prague (2019); Farsight Freeport, HeK House of Electronic Arts Basel, Basel (2019); Nøtel, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Essen, Germany (2019); AIDOL 爱道, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); Nøtel, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague (2018); 2065, K11 Art Space, Hong Kong (2018); Play Station, Art Night, London (2017). Current and recent group shows include Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco | de Young Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2020); Video Games, CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona (2019); Cosmologic Arrows, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2019); The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030-2100, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2019); FTSE (Farsight Stock Exchange), Bold Tendencies, Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park, London (2019); artapes. Low Form, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2018); Offline Browser, The 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2018, Taipei (2018); HyperPavilion, Arsenale Nord, Venice, Italy (2017); The New Normal, UCCA, Beijing (2017); Glasgow International, Tramway, Glasgow (2016); SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2016, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2016); Missed Connections, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2016); Secret Surface, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016); Software, Hard Problem, Cubitt Gallery, London (2015); and The Uncanny Valley, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015). Lek received the 2017 Jerwood/FVU Award and the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award.
Work Synopsis:
Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours) uses video game software to imagine a future in which the Royal Academy of Arts in London has been sold to a Chinese billionaire as a luxury private mansion. A first-person perspective tour through their new abode is accompanied by a voiceover – translated from the Russian edition of high-society Tatler magazine into Mandarin – about how to hire and fire an 'army of household staff'.
Drawing from the language of high-definition property marketing videos, the project presents a critical look at the capital's current housing crisis. The Royal Academy is itself on a rental contract from the government, and this fact shows the precarious status of even the nation's oldest and most revered art establishment. This is an uncannily familiar virtual world where a major cultural institution has been appropriated into commercial real estate.
Even the heritage architecture and art collections of the Royal Academy are marketed as private property. The courtyard now contains a Jeff Koons bunny; wallpaper by Yayoi Kusama lines the walls of the private galleries; grand receptions are converted into double-height bedrooms with jacuzzis; security is extremely tight with laser alarms, CCTV, and encrypted wireless networks. Helicopters never stop hovering over the estate.
The work forms Chapter 9 of Lawrence Lek's ongoing Bonus Levels project, a series of utopian/dystopian virtual worlds based on real places.

Li Tingwei, 1/31-2/14, 2020, iPhone Images
《1/31-2/14》
Li Tingwei was born in 1989 in Yantai, China and now based in Shanghai and Berlin. She graduated from Universität der Künste Berlin and had previously studied at Hunter College MFA program and Tongji University. She holds the title of Meisterschuelerin of the Berlin University of Arts. Working with objects, images, and videos, Tingwei is interested in the phenomenon and core values in contemporary life. By addressing how human consciousness and behavior have been changed in the consumer society, she deals with contemporary issues such as the self-optimization and the “flexible ego” under conditions of marketing. As a kind of artistic research, her work undertakes mental archeology of digital media and its influence on our minds and bodies.
Recent exhibitions include solo exhibition “Could donut save us from drowning?”at Surplus Space, Wuhan, solo exhibition “Feeling Good?” at J: Gallery, Shanghai. Group exhibitions at Airport Biennale Guangzhou, Sifang Art Museum, Minsheng Art Museum, Taikang Space Beijing, Galerie Gerken Berlin, and Flowers Gallery New York. She is among the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 China 2017 in Art and Style and participated in artist-in-residence programs at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel of Shanghai, Flux Factory New York and Kooshk Residency of Iran.

Lin Tianmiao, Iron, 2017, White marble and mixed media, Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
Lin Tianmiao was born 1961 in Taiyuan, China and is a contemporary Chinese artist best known for her large-scale installations of thread-bound objects. Often wrapping or binding synthetic bones or wooden frames with hair, silk, or thread, Lin brings up issues of traditional crafts and gender roles within contemporary society. Lin’s work also studies her own social role and the relationship between identity and social context, questioning women’s identity. During the 1980s, Lin studied in the Fine Art Department of the Capital Normal University in Beijing. Following her studies, she moved to New York with her husband the artist Wang Gongxin. The artist currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Today, her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and the Singapore Art Museum, among others.
Recent exhibitions include Bound/Unbound: Lin Tianmiao, (Asia Society, New York, solo show, 2012-2013), The Same – New works of Lin Tianmiao (Beijing Center for the Arts, Beijing, solo show, 2011-2012), Pulp Stories I (Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore, 2009), APT (Tina Kim Gallery, New York, 2009), Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection (Berkeley Museum of Art, University of California, Berkeley, 2008), Focus (Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, solo show, 2008), Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, solo show, 2008), Lin Tianmiao (Long March Space, Beijing, solo show, 2008) and many others.
Work Synopsis:
Concept: Tools originally have their own specific functions and attributes, with the same exclusive value of "life" as human beings or animals. When they are "grafted" onto bones, their functions and attributes are transformed, and new cultural values arise.

Miao Ying, Hardcore Digital Detox, 2018, Website
Courtesy the artist
Link to work:
https://www.hardcoredigitaldetox.com/
Miao Ying is a Shanghai and New York-based artist who graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from the China Academy of Art's New Media Art department in Hangzhou, China, and earned a Master in Fine Arts degree in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred State College’s New York State College of Ceramics (NYSCC) in 2009. Miao Ying is the first generation of Chinese Internet Artists. The New Media Art department at CAA covers a wide range of disciplines from photography and video to animation and programming, it was the first new media art program in China where Miao Ying studied with Chinese avant-garde pioneers, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi. She continues to create work primarily online, often using GIFs, mixing screenshots and lo-fi visual elements, Second Life, drawing from the visual style of major Chinese websites like Taobao and Baidu.
Her work has been shown at the 12th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, 2018), Shanghai Beat (Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, 2018), All I know is what’s on the internet (The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2018), .com/.cn (co-presented by MoMA PS1 and K11 Art Foundation, 2017), After Us (co-presented by New Museum and K11 Art Foundation, 2017), The New Normal—Art and China in 2017 (Ullens Center For Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2017), Secret Surface (Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2016), Holding a Kitchen Knife to Cut the Internet Cable (Chinese Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2015), etc.
Work Synopsis:
Need an online break from the dominance of multi-billion dollar businesses like Google and Facebook on the internet? Set your virtual private network (VPN) to mainland China, where these websites and apps are blocked, for a relaxing online retreat! This is the satirical concept behind Shanghai– and New York–based artist Miao Ying’s Hardcore Digital Detox. The work is a playful reflection on both the ‘Chinternet’ and World Wide Web, using the concept of a wellness online retreat to comment on issues of global capitalism, online propaganda, and media democracy.
Visionist
M WOODS Mix
Track List:
1. Hymme Panis Angelicus IV
2. VISIONIST - Untitled
3. Aaron Dilloway - Switch
4. Ben Vince - Eclipse
5. Sol Invictus - Heaven & Hell
6. VISIONIST - Homme
7. KK Null - 0500
8. VISIONIST - Passing
9. VISIONIST - Untitled
28:51min
Courtesy the artist
Biography:
One of modern music’s most elusive experimentalists, Visionist has been dissolving all manner of genres down in order to create work to which these terms no longer apply.
In 2015, he released his debut album Safe via PAN records – described as “a personal portrait of anxiety” it dealt head-on with issues of mental health.
Pitchfork: “a statement that feels not just a flexing of experimental techniques, but something rich and human, too”. Further critical praise for Visionist has come from the likes of Resident Advisor, Crack, SPIN, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone, who cited him as an ‘artist to watch’ in 2016.
In 2017, Visionist returned with new album Value, released via Big Dada / Ninja Tune. It explores complex interweaving ideas of artistic value and self-worth while building on the distinct sound of previous releases. The project also features creative collaborations with influential Belgian artist Peter De Potter – on the album artwork and zine and Daniel Sannwald on the artist shots.
Most recently he has put an original score together for Danish fashion brand Heliot Emil AW20 Show.
Work Synopsis:
"I wanted to put together a collection of tracks that represents my listening and creative world of the last few years, a conversation with the past and a reflection on the present I see now... A Delicate Rage."
Visionist

To Be Continued...
With Contributions By:
aaajiao
Allora & Calzadilla
Annika Eriksson
Babi Badalov
Basim Magdy
Cerith Wyn Evans
Cheng Ran
Chulayarnnon Siriphol
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Éléonore Saintagnan & Grégoire Motte
Fan Xi
Fang Di
Guido van der Werve
Haroon Mirza
Hu Xiaoyuan
Huang Rui
Jonathas de Andrade
Katja Novitskova
Laure Prouvost
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lawrence Lek
Li Binyuan
Lin Tianmiao
Li Tingwei
Liu Shiyuan & Kristian Mondrup
Lu Pingyuan
Lu Yang
Miao Ying
Michael Najjar
Nabuqi
Oscar Murillo
Patty Chang
Raqs Media Collective
Reynier Leyva Novo
Richard Tuttle
Robert Zhao Renhui
Rodrigo Braga
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Solange Pessoa
Stephanie Comilang
Sun Xun
Tania Bruguera
Timur Si-Qin
Victoria Sin
Visionist
Xiang Jing
Xie Nanxing
Yang Zhenzhong
Yu Ji
Zadie Xa
Zhang Enli
Zhang Peili
Zhao Zhao
M WOODS Scholarship

Application Dates: July 30th – Sept 4th 2020
Application deadline: September 4, 2020, 11:59pm
The M WOODS Scholarship is a new fully-funded scholarship for two deserving applicants from China, or of Chinese descent, to attend a two-year program of their choice at The New Centre for Research & Practice. M WOODS is a leading independent non-profit art museum in Beijing with two museums, M WOODS 798, and the newly opened M WOODS Hutong. Through this scholarship, M WOODS hopes to make education more accessible for those who wish to peruse a career in the creative industries.
To apply for the M WOODS Scholarship for any two-year Graduate-level Certificate Programs at The New Centre, please complete The New Centre's Application Form and select M WOODS Scholarship. The application process has been streamlined to take less than ten minutes to complete.
Applicants for the M WOODS scholarship should submit all materials in English and Chinese in a single PDF. All applicants to the M WOODS scholarship must have a strong command of English to participate.
Applicants can choose from the following Two-Year Certificate Programs:
• Art & Curatorial Practice
• Critical Philosophy
• Transdisciplinary Studies
“The M WOODS Scholarship is an extension of the museum’s mission to make art free and accessible to all. This initiative with The New Centre for Research & Practice is the first of several actions to come to help support those who wish to continue their education, or to pursue an education that will enable careers within the industry, for free” says M WOODS Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Victor Wang.


About The New Centre for Research & Practice:
One of The New Centre for Research & Practice’s central mandates has been to provide new possibilities for our members and students, especially those who practice their work outside or in-between existing institutional frameworks in the Arts, Humanities, & Sciences. We help those transitioning between one degree and another, or between one institution and another, to expand their research networks beyond what can be offered by any single institution. Our members and certificate students enjoy access to face-to-face, real-time engagements with emerging thinkers and scholars, collaborating with them and with each other while producing new forms of knowledge.
All of the seminars are conducted online via Google+ Hangouts, enabling participants to engage from anywhere in the world. Our Certificate Students automatically become Members of The New Centre and thus receive all members’ benefits, including access to our twelve Research Groups, our Writing Centre, our Member Symposia, reading groups, and roundtable events, as well as opportunities to publish their research on our &&& platform.
More information
David Hockney: Works from the Tate Collection
30 August 2019 - 5 January 2020
M WOODS - Hutong

With a “big splash” at the heart of Beijing, M WOODS proudly announces both its most anticipated show of the year and the grand opening of its second location, M WOODS - Hutong. In partnership with Tate, M WOODS – Hutong presents as its inaugural exhibition “David Hockney: Works from the Tate Collection”, the artist’s first museum survey exhibition in China.
As one of the world’s most influential and popular artists, David Hockney holds the record for the highest auction price for a painting by a living artist. Born in Bradford, UK in 1937, Hockney attended Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, before going on to make some of the best-known images of the last 60 years. Since his first retrospective exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1970 when he was only 33, Hockney has continued to attract widespread critical and public attention.

Drawing on many different sources including popular imagery and the works of old and modern masters, Hockney’s subject matter concerns the traditional themes of art – still life, portraiture and landscape – and his principle obsession with representation and perspective. With nearly 100 works, the exhibition spans his career from the mid 1950s to the present, and demonstrates the range of possibilities in his work, not only within the traditional areas of painting, printmaking and drawing, but also in his more recent use of photography and digital technologies. Works are drawn primarily from the Tate’s collection in the UK and include some of Hockney’s most iconic paintings including A Bigger Splash (1967), Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970-71), andMy Parents (1977).

In accordance with M WOODS’ founding philosophy that all art should be F.A.T. (free, alchemical and timeless) this exhibition explores for the first time Hockney's relationship with China. Hockney first visited China in 1981 with Stephen Spender, a British poet, and the two collaborated on the book China Diary (1982) chronicling their journey. Hockney went on to explore his fascination with traditional Chinese scroll painting in the 1987 film A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or: Surface Is Illusion But So Is Depth. In the film, Hockney examines the pinnacle of Qing dynasty court painting The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour painted by a group of artists led by the master Wang Hui, guiding viewers through the vastness and subtlety of the scroll and its dynamic lesson in time and space. The exhibition reveals how Chinese painting has continued to have a profound influence on Hockney's practice in terms of painting theory, technique and perspective. Presenting the rarely shown The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour (Scroll 6) alongside Hockney’s ‘Moving Focus’ series of prints and more recent works in paintings and photography, it follows Hockney’s remarkable journey through the myriad ways he has interrogated the nature of looking and representation, from his days as a promising student to his place as one of the finest artists working today.

M WOODS would like to express deep gratitude to Tate and its team, as well as the individual lenders who loaned their works to the exhibition. We would also like to sincerely thank Pace Gallery for its support, and David Hockney Inc. for its involvement – without which this exhibition would not have been possible.

The presentation of David Hockney: Works from the Tate Collection is a collaboration between Tate and M Woods.





