Cheng Xinhao | 2020 Residency
Switzerland | Visual Arts
April 6 to June 27, 2021 — Visual Arts
Nationality: China
Residency location: Zurich
Partner organization: Gleis 70
Cheng Xinhao was born in Yunnan Province in 1985, where he currently lives and works. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Peking University in 2013. Focusing on his hometown, Xinhao’s works are usually based on long-term field study. With videos, installations, photographs and the presence of the author’s body, these works investigate the polyphonic relationships among logics, discussion, knowledge, participants, and nature/society/history behind them.
His recent activities include solo exhibitions “The Fool’s Gold” (OCAT Shenzhen, 2019), “Three Depictions of a River” (1903 Space, Kunming, 2019); group exhibitions “Re: Everything which exists under the sky” (Gasworks, London, 2019), “How Now · The Life App”(How Art Museum, Shanghai, 2019); “40 Years of Chinese Contemporary Photography” (OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 2018), “Frontier: Re-Assessment of Post-Globalisitional Politics” (OCAT Shanghai/OCAT Institute, Shanghai/Beijing, 2018), and “Notes on Region”, (Contemporary Gallery Kunming, Kunming, 2018). He is the recipient of several awards including Abigail Cohen Fellowship (2017), the 6th Hou Dengke Documentary Photography Award (2017), Shiseido Photography Award (2015), and was shortlisted for the Author Book Award Arles (2017), Aperture First Photobook Award (2016), and Three Shadows Photography Award (2015). His work The Naming of a River was published in 2016 and Time from Different Sources: Images from Ciman Village was published in 2017 by Jiazazhi Press.
In Cheng’s proposal “The Rivers Between” for the residency program, the mountains and rivers of Switzerland, and the links between which and his hometown Yunnan Province remain the core theme. He plans to start from Lucerne, walk upstream, trace the source of the Rhine, and explore the mountains and the landscape shaped by both natural forces and human culture. With videos, photos, installations and his body as media, Xinhao will explore the relations between knowledge and perception, between nature and individual, between Switzerland and Yunnan, and between Europe and contemporary China, which has been deeply influenced by European culture.
