January 31–June 27, 2021
On January 31, 2021, Design Society announced the winning proposals and shortlists for the Curating Design Plan 2020. Yixuan Cai won the Design Society Curator Award for her proposal Mysterious Air, Vibrating Cloud. The exhibition will be held in the Park View Gallery at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center.
Three Design Society Research Fellows are Julian Luo and Anouchka van Driel, Anne Zhou, and Wang Xiaoyong, Ren Yue and Fang Minglu. Design Society will continue to support their curatorial research. The other two shortlisted curators are Zhang Tiangang and Miao Zijin.
Curating Design Plan: “We appreciate super pioneering and imaginative proposals. And it’s okay to be immature.”
Since the announcement of the open call on August 24, 2020, the Curating Design Plan 2020 had received proposals from both academies and the public. Individual curators and curatorial groups are about half/half. Around 30% of the submissions come from abroad. The jury, which was composed of eight international and domestic jurors—Ole Bouman, Bryony Shepherd, Hang Jian, Hou Hanru, Joseph Grima, Song Xiewei, Tong Lan, Marisa Yiu—conducted three rounds of selection: shortlist, semi-final evaluation and final evaluation. The Design Society Curator Award and three Design Society Research Fellows were selected from six shortlists.
As Song Xiewei, the juror and Professor and PhD Academic Supervisor of School of Design at Central Academy of Fine Arts stated: “We appreciate super pioneering and imaginative proposals. And it’s okay to be immature.” The jury provided candidates feedbacks regarding their curatorial concepts, relevance of subjects, narratives, public engagement to help them optimize their proposals.
In the following months, Design Society will continue to support the winners and shortlists to further develop their proposals and research, and to encourage their adventure in the field of curating design.
The winners and shortlists see the values of design beyond the surface. They speak through the medium of exhibition to share their insight, imagination, methods and actions, to rebuild connections and lead the public to discover new solutions, and to open new critical dialogues.
Curating Design Plan: “To contextualize design in a specific social background and artistic momentum.”
As an ever-evolving discipline, the definition of design is in a constant flux. It has long since expanded from the creation of objects with aesthetic and functional value, to a tool and a way of thinking used to identify and to solve problems. It is gradually manifesting itself as an aspect of critical thinking in the process of solving and analyzing problems. As China’s first comprehensive cultural platform with design as its theme, Design Society has continuously broken the barriers of the design industry, and expanded the definition of design to build the relevance of design development for society and culture, and to popularize design thinking and leadership. Through “Curating Design Plan” and its inaugural theme of Design (Re-)union, Design Society built an effective mechanism to allocate curator talents. Hou Hanru, the juror and Artistic Director of MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Art and National Museum of Architecture), stated: ”The specialty of Curating Design Plan is not about design in the conventional sense of the term, instead, how to develop curatorial exhibitions, contextualizing design in a specific social background and artistic momentum, hence resulting in expanding the field of design itself. This is the mission statement of Design Society itself, and unique, which will also help to build its identity as an institution.”
The Curating Design Plan 2020 will soon kick off follow-up online jury talks and workshops, as we anticipate the opening of the exhibition Mysterious Air, Vibrating Cloud on April 23, 2021 in the Park View Gallery at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center. The exhibition will be on through June 2021.
Initiator & Organizer: China Merchants Shekou (CMSK) | The Sea World Culture and Arts Center
Presented by: Design Society
Co-organizer: C Foundation, China Merchants Foundation, Design Society Culture and Arts Foundation
Supported by: Zhaoshang Sub-district Office of Shenzhen Nanshan District
Partners: School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA); Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought, School of Inter-Media Art, China Academy of Art; Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
