The Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale has appointed the team of Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu as Artistic Director of Yokohama Triennale 2023, the 8th edition of the tri-annual event.
Based in Beijing, Liu and Lu, an artist and an art historian respectively, have individual practices in the global art scene, but also have worked on joint-curatorial projects since 2007. In a time of historical flux, their curation seeks out kernels of wisdom for surviving the present in both the minutiae of individual endeavor and the grand turning points of history, Their frame of reference transcends time and place, as they seek ideas in everything from traditional oriental philosophy to the globalized lifestyles of the 21st century.
“Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu’s proposal was particularly suitable for an art festival in Yokohama, a city that is open to Asia,” comments Asada Akira, the Chairperson of the Artistic Director Selection Committee. “Rather than repeating the fashionable themes often seen at international art festivals, it takes Lu Xun’s* prose poetry collection Wild Grass, which is well known in Japan, as a starting point for a journey that goes deep and broadly into the imagination.”
Liu Ding, an artist and a curator, creates artworks using text, photography, installation, painting, performance and other media based on his research into the interplay between art, culture, and politics in modern and contemporary Chinese history. His recent solo exhibition includes Reef: A prequel, Bonnefanten, Maastricht (2015). He’s participated in biennales including Busan Biennale (2018), Yinchuan Biennale (2018), Istanbul Biennial (2015), Asia Pacific Triennial (2015), Prospect 3 New Orleans (2014), Shanghai Biennale (2014), Taipei Biennial (2012), Chinese Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), Media City Seoul (2008) and Guangzhou Triennale (2005). His work has been shown at numerous major art institutions, including Castello di Rivoli, The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), MOMA PS1, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai Power Station of Art, Astrup Fearnley Museet, ZKM, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthalle Wien, Sao Paulo Museum of Art, and Tate Modern, among others.
Carol Yinghua Lu is an art historian and a curator. She is Director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, where she’s recently curated Wang Youshen: Codes of Culture (2022). She was Artistic Director and Chief Curator of OCAT, Shenzhen (2012–2015) and Co-Artistic Director of Gwangju Biennale (2012). She was a contributing editor for frieze magazine (2008–2018), one of the first recipients of ARIAH East Asia Fellowship (2017) and the first visiting fellow in Asia-Pacific Fellowship Program at Tate Research Centre (2013). She has acted as a jury member for many art prizes, such as Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (2019–2022), Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative (2019), Hugo Boss Asia (2019), International Award for Art Criticism (2014), Future Generation Art Prize (2012), and Golden Lion Award at Venice Biennale (2011).
They commenced their joint curatorial activities in Beijing in 2007, and have curated exhibitions at art institutions across China, such as Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and Beijing 798 Creative, as well as co-curated Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art, OCAT, Shenzhen, MUSEION, Bolzano and Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2011–2015), among others.
The Yokohama Triennale welcomed Raqs Media Collective as its first non-Japanese Artistic Director for its 7th edition in 2020. Since then the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 and war have shown us just how inextricably interconnected our world has become. For the 8th edition, it once again welcomes as Artistic Director a team that is active on the global stage, and with them it will create an event that is open to the world and that takes advantage of the port city’s role as a crossroads of people and culture.
The Yokohama Triennale 2023 is slated to be open from December 9, 2023 to March 10, 2023, at the Yokohama Museum of Art and PLOT 48 in Yokohama, Japan.
Yokohama Triennale 2023
Artistic Director: LIU Ding [Artist, Curator], Carol Yinghua LU [Art Historian, Curator / Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum]
Dates: December 9, 2023 - March 10, 2024
Venues: Yokohama Museum of Art (3-4-1, Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan), PLOT 48 (4-3-1, Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan)
The Yokohama Museum of Art is currently closed due to large-scale renovations. It will reopen to coincide with Yokohama Triennale 2023.
Organizers: City of Yokohama, Yokohama Arts Foundation,
Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK),The Asahi Shimbun,
and Organizing Committee for Yokohama Triennale
*Lu Xun (penname of Zhou Shuren, 1881–1936) is a writer who is considered the greatest modern writer in the history of Chinese literature, and one of East Asia’s most important thinkers at the turn of the 20th century.
