Performance and installation artist Huang Yong Ping (b. 1954), is a major figure from the pioneering avant-garde art movement known as China’s ’85 New Wave (八五新潮). A founder of the iconoclastic art group Xiamen Dada, which often employed absurd and paradoxical strategies to interrogate the politics of art, life and society, Huang and his peers published manifestos and staged provocative events in the spirit of Dadaism and Zen philosophy.
Moving to Paris following his first international participation in the seminal exhibition Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the World) in 1989, Huang has continued to make work on contemporary issues, through the lens of Zen Buddhism and Taoism, frequently articulating animals as metaphorical subjects.
In this keynote lecture, the artist will share on his illustrious art practice from the days of Xiamen Dada to present, along with providing further insights into the cultural landscape of China in the pivotal late 1980’s period. Huang will also engage in conversation with Senior Curator Adele Tan, probing deeper into his processes of making, work philosophies, and his work on exhibition for Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s.