This Sunday marks the start of the Chinese New Year, the most important event of the traditional Chinese holidays. This January has also commenced a year long series of events, lectures, discussions and workshops on Chinese Art and culture. University of the Arts Berlin has teamed up with Haus der Kulturen der Welt to invite artists, creatives and intellectuals from the People’s Republic of China to Berlin to take part in the program, which has partially been initiated due to the ongoing student exchange programme between the UdK and China.

 Marcus Appelberg at the Elephant Gate of the Berlin Zoological Garden. Photo: Chris Phillips

Focusing on contemporary Chinese art, the program is designed to explain the multi-faceted layers of China’s turbulent modern art scene, taking into account the social roles of artists in China and recent happenings such as the widely publicised persecution of Ai Weiwei (who has actually been appointed as Einstein-Guest Professor at UdK Berlin). 

The idea behind the series is to enable a more in depth engagement with Chinese art and examine and contrast both Chinese and European perspectives on the subject. Curated by artists and China experts Andreas Schmidt and Bignia Wehrli, the next event in the series will be on February 13th, 2012 and focus on “acceleration and upheavals in China – the art of the 90’s.” Future talks cover topics such as curating in public places in China, Chinese calligraphy and art in relation to social networks – we can’t wait! 

For more information on the events of the series click here. 

Article by Marie J Burrows 

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