Roundtable discussion: Contemporary Chinese ink painting and the persistence of Daoism

This round table discussion, which takes place in association with the SOAS Gallery exhibition ‘Strange Wonders - Dreams, Desire and Daoism: Jizi and Other Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Painting from China’, will explore the relationship between Daoism and ink painting in contemporary China. 

This event will discuss the continuing relationship between Daoism and Chinese ink painting and its implications for cultural resistances to authority, individualism, transcendent spiritualty, care for the self and respect for nature in an authoritarian-materialist post-revolutionary China now officially aligned with Confucian-related aspirations toward social harmony. 

Also discussed will be the situating of contemporary Chinese ink art as part of the now conspicuously pluriversal conditions of early 21st–century contemporaneity downstream of post-Cold War globalization. The extent to which the relationship between Daoism and ink painting can indeed be talked or written about will be addressed given Daoism’s ultimate recourse to ineffable feeling rather than cognition as a way of gaining insight into the ontology of the cosmos.

About the speakers

Participants in the roundtable include its moderator Prof. Paul Gladston, the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art, Dr. Katie Hill of Sotheby's Institute of Art, London and the curator of ‘Strange Wonders - Dreams, Desire and Daoism - Jizi and Other Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Painting from China’, and Prof. Wang Chunchen of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing who is the son of the artist Jizi, also known as Wang Yunshan [1941 – 2015].

An opening presentation by the moderator and discussion among the participants will be followed by an audience Q&A.  

Venue

SOAS Alumni Lecture Theatre (SALT), 1st Floor, SOAS Senate House North Block, Malet Street, London WC1H OXG

Free Admission – Booking tickets required via Eventbrite. Free and open to the public.