In the history of modern China, some of its greatest artists trained in art schools overseas. In each generation, these artists took with them the great social challenges facing their homeland, learned strange and new artistic skills, and returned home to reinvigorate the nation. Just as it has been for over a century, today a generation of young artists born in the Mainland have been training in the art schools of the United States and Canada—NYU, MIT, RISD, SFAI, Simon Fraser University, Columbia—and jockeying in the art world centered in New York city and its many far-flung sites of artistic practice. Nanhai Gallery in this exhibition presents five artists in the midst of this journey. We do not know where they will go and we do not know how it will end, but we are being given a glimpse into a future. Will it be a troubled one? Will it be a beautiful one?
for Nanhai Gallery, 2019
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