Eight Moments

China has pioneered a type of censorship that works by stealth. In this system that leaves no paper trail, organizations are tasked with either carrying out government orders—or face grave if unarticulated consequences. Tinari’s talk juxtaposed the removal of select artworks out of a major China-focused exhibition he had freshly co-curated at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, (through external pressures) with eight moments from his past six years of making exhibitions at UCCA in Beijing, when the institution encountered external pressure to alter or censor the content of its exhibitions, and how, working with artists, it responded.

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Philip Tinari , Eight Moments, 2017. Lecture documentation FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Project, November 14th at Asia Society.

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Philip Tinari has served as director of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), the museum at the heart of Beijing’s 798 Art District, since late 2011. In his six-year tenure, he has mounted more than sixty exhibitions and organized a wide range of public programs and development activities. His program has introduced to China major international artists including Robert Rauschenberg, William Kentridge, Taryn Simon, Tino Sehgal and David Diao, and has tracked the evolving Chinese art scene through retrospectives and surveys of artists including Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Xu Zhen, Wang Xingwei, Kan Xuan, and Gu Dexin, as well as initiatives focused on emerging artists such as the 2013 survey “ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice,” the international group exhibition “The New Normal: China, Art, and 2017,” and the ongoing exhibition series “New Directions.”

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I-XVIII, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013.