In the next installation of the “Curated by...” series, UCCA steps outside the traditional bounds of painting and sculpture to invite accomplished multi-media artist Zhang Peili as our featured guest curator. Fondly referred to as the “founding father” of Chinese video art, Zhang Peili has been producing powerful and realistic video works since the early 1980s. In this exhibition, he introduces the work of his former student, Shanghai-based experimental artist Lu Yang.

What are the similarities between Leonardo da Vinci's depiction of the Virgin Mary breast-feeding the infant Jesus and Harry Harlow's controversial psychology experiments on infant isolation and infant/mother separation? What would happen if people took traditional tales of Thai sorcery literally? Lu Yang’s enticing combinations of macabre science-fiction, deadpan scientific instruction manuals and social commentary serve as visual demonstrations of the hypothetical terror of these questions. Treading a fine line between humor and horror, Lu Yang is a provocateur who makes the viewer complicit in her art, thereby forcing us to examine the state of our society, our science and our souls.

Just a year since earning her master’s degree in New Media Studies at China Academy of Art in Shanghai, Lu Yang has emerged as one of the most promising voices in a new generation of Chinese experimental artists.