Endless Documents: Chinese Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practices in Archives

In this chapter, Dong Bingfeng discusses the phenomenon of “archival turn” in recent research on contemporary Chinese art practice. Using two exhibitions, the First Guangzhou Triennial in 2002 and retrospectives of Chinese art from the 1990s at the Guangdong Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2017 as examples, the chapter examines the historical research, institutional strategies and “archival” practices, as well as the cultural game of institutional and subjective consciousness between Chinese and international art institutions. Through a thorough discussion of the idea of “documentation,” the chapter attempts to examine the series of retrospective exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art over the past fifteen years.