Wǒmen (我们): Contemporary Chinese Art was the inaugural undergraduate curatorship offered as a part of the two year Greenberg Fellowship at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, where we explored the fastest-growing segment of the art market today. My co-curators, Danielle Wu and Samantha Allen, were a small interdisciplinary team focused on broadening the understanding of what it means to be a Chinese female artist today. Our show unified works that displayed hyperrealities and visual artificiality, addressing themes of individualism, gender, modern technology, globalized societies, and isolation. 

The first show of it's kind on the region, the exhibition's title encapsulates its transcendence above normative gender-based categorization. While the word Wǒmen (我们) can be read as “women” in English, it literally translates more broadly to “us” in Chinese. By locating their artistic practices outside of gendered politics, the featured artists maintain and project individual perspectives on issues that affect not only themselves but also the Chinese population as a whole: the formation of Chinese identity in a globalized society, rapid urbanization, and the incursion of sociocultural reforms into the fabric of everyday life

 

To see some of the artworks from the show visit the Kemper's exhibition summary. We were fortunate enough to be featured in numerous publications and blogs during the show, including Beijing's prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). In preparation for the next round of Greenberg fellows, I wrote a short reflection on my time with the Kemper for their blog, Palette Scrapings.
 

Our group organized and hosted a family-oriented craft designed to teach children about Péking Opera Masks and Chinese theatre. We also read traditional Chinese folk tales in the gallery space throughout the day.

As an internal side project for our team, I designed a map of our gallery that coded our curatorial themes to each artwork. 

Danielle, Sam & I discuss the themes of Wǒmen (我们) and the artists we individually studied alongside their work in the gallery space.

Our team wrote the essay and artist biographies in the show's publication, as well as the extended labels and introductory wall text present in the exhibition. We collaborated with our wonderful academic advisor, Kristina Kleutghen, and Kemper curator, Meredith Malone, on editing our writing and the exhibition gallery layout. Following the opening, Danielle and I presented our work in the Washington University Undergraduate Research Symposium, and our team hosted a series of gallery talks, community outreach events, and Greenberg applicant info sessions.
While we curated all the images in the show, we do not own the rights to any of them. The publication was designed by Michael Worthington in 2013.