Global Spotlight: Chinese Photography

While just two decades ago very few contemporary Chinese artists were widely known in the West, today the explosion of the Chinese art scene has transformed a wealth of the country's artists into mainstays at international art fairs and art museums around the world. Contemporary Chinese art has become a global phenomenon—a change reflective of both China's changing society and its increasing engagement with Western art and popular culture.

Photographers like Rong Rong & Inri, Liu Bolin, Wang Jinsong, Xing Danwen, Wang Ningde, and Wen Fang don't just bridge East and West, they bridge two significant eras of Chinese modern history. Depicting life in the country from the Cultural Revolution to the current era of extreme capitalism, their photographs serve as an attempt to explain what has happened, and is happening, in present-day China.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Born in San Francisco to a biracial family, Tiffany grew up practicing ink painting and calligraphy, stimulating her interest in Chinese art. After graduating from Brown University with a dual degree, Tiffany moved to China on a Fulbright fellowship, curious to explore the art that she grew up practicing in its native milieu, and to meet the artists revolutionizing the field. Given her strong interest in Chinese antiquities as well as contemporary art, from 2008 to early 2010 Tiffany worked for China Guardian, the country's largest auction house, as their international affairs officer and Chinese ink painting specialist.

Now based in Beijing, Tiffany works with Chinese artists to plan exhibitions and events, and with collectors to sell and purchase works of Asian art. Tiffany's writing on the Chinese art market and contemporary art has been published in local publications as well as Orientations, the Asian Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, and the Wall Street Journal Asia. Her most recent project is a book on emerging contemporary ink painting artists.

CURATOR Q&A

1. What's your favorite piece in your own personal art collection?

My first major art purchase was a pair of calligraphic hanging scrolls by the artist Fung Ming Chip. Consisting of black-and-white Chinese script composed in a completely novel way, the scrolls represent a confluence of the traditional and the contemporary and are a constant source of inspiration.

2. What are your favorite art spaces?

In Beijing, the Three Shadows Photography Center and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art have wonderful curatorial programs. In France, I love the collection at the Musée Guimet and the interaction of art and environment at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul de Vence. In America, the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum offers a very special experience, as does the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

3. If you had an unlimited amount to spend on a work of art, what would you buy?

I would buy a work from the late Wu Guanzhong, who revolutionized the course of Chinese painting.

4. What advice do you have for beginning collectors?

In China, I see many people buying works of art purely for investment and speculation. If you are looking to invest in art, why not make sure that it's also something that you enjoy too? The value of art cannot be quantified.