Carol Yinghua LU

Carol Yinghua LU is an art historian and a curator. She holds a Doctorate in art history from University of Melbourne. She is the director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum (since 2017). She was the artistic director and senior curator of OCAT, Shenzhen (2012-2015), guest curator at Museion, Bolzano (2013) and the China researcher for Asia Art Archive (2005-2007). She has contributed to artist monologues, catalogues as well as a number of art journals, including e-flux journal, frieze, the Exhibitionist, Yishu, Flash Art, Contemporary, and so on. She was a contributing editor for frieze magazine (2008-2018), Chief editor for Chinese edition of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (2012-2013), co-founder and co-editor of Contemporary Art and Investment magazine (2007-2010). She received Yishu Awards for Critical Writing and Curating on Contemporary Chinese Art (2016).

She was a recipient of the ARIAH (Association of Research Institute in Art History) East Asia Fellowship (2017) and visiting fellow in the Asia-Pacific Fellowship Program at the Tate Research Centre (2013). She was the co-artistic director of Gwangju Biennale (2012) and was the co-artistic director of the 8th Yokohama Triennale with Liu Ding (2024). They will co-curate the 19th Istanbul Biennial to open in 2027.

She has acted as a jury member for Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech (2022, 2021),
Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (2022-2019), The Choi Foundation Prize for Contemporary Art (2022, 2021), Gallery Weekend Beijing Prize for Best Exhibition (2022, 2020-2017), Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona Video Art Award Production (2024-2020), abC Art Book Award (2021), Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative (2019), Hugo Boss Asia (2019), International Award for Art Criticism (2014), the Future Generation Art Prize (2012), and the Golden Lion Award at Venice Biennale (2011).

“Little Movements: Self-Practice in Contemporary Art”

By revisiting an exhibition that I co-curated with artist and curator Liu Ding 15 years ago, I want to link the notion of curatorial practice, as well as curatorial learning, to a continuous process of self-education. self-criticism and self-practice. In 2009, Liu Ding and I initiated the research and exhibition project, Little Movements: Self-Practice in Contemporary Art, which sought to re-imagine the art world as a constellation of equal practices based on consideration of their artistic intensity, creativity and relevance to their specific contexts, as opposed to a hierarchical structure of power positions. This reflective theme was a critical response to the emerging shift of the global contemporary art world towards the spectacle, authority and capital. Instead of artworks, we introduced 20 or so practices from past and present, which carried independent values, attitudes and working methods to rethink, resist and reshape commonly perceived values, standards, systematic forces and all forms of inertia. They consciously cast doubt on the discourse of structures and remain in a perpetual state of self-questioning. It’s because of this state that they gain the power and vitality to persevere in their practices. At a time when many institutions of art, such as biennales, art museums, curatorial education, risk losing sight of their initial vision, impulse and thus the intensity and relevance of their being, and becoming forms without purpose, it’s a critical task again to reinvent these forms with new-found purposes and energy.