Check Out Hindley Wang’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hindley Wang. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Hindley Wang is a writer, curator from Shanghai. She is one of the very few art critics from China who are actively expanding Asian voices and presence in the Eurocentric art world. Her art writings and criticism have been featured in publications such as Frieze, Artforum CN, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, LEAP, and TANC. She is one of the only Chinese writers who has been featured on The Brooklyn Rail 1 x 1 Column. Her article “The Objectification of Yayoi Kusama,” published in Hyperallergic, has garnered heated discussion on social media and was the most popular article of the month. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It is always challenging to find sponsorship for ambitious and creative endeavors. I am still in the beginning stage of my practice and need help spreading the word about my skills and service in text and creative direction. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Besides writing, I am also a curator and creative director. 

My exhibition “Intimacies of Excess” has been shortlisted in the JIMEI ARLES Curatorial Award 2023. This exhibition was inspired by her long-term research project on African-Chinese Diaspora, insinuated from an essay published on LEAP: Sugar, the Unbearable Sweetness from the Caribbean Sea. In this essay, I uncover the entangled legacies of freedom and labor from the sugar plantation since the 19th century, with the introduction of Chinese indentured workers. The general Chinese historical consciousness renders this period of history and strand of legacy invisible in the large part since the community of Chinese workers integrated into the local Caribbean landscape quickly, against the wishes of the colonial regimes. This complex history and its present implications pointed her attention to Chinese-African artists like Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Andrea Chung, who work with the excess remnants of history, discarded by the course of time and neo-imperial orders that persist till today. 

In “Intimacies of Excess,” I reflect on the current global predicaments of warfare and genocides, extreme partisanship, along with the simultaneity and atemporal digital closeness promised by social media. I radically proposed to use “excess’ ‘ as a measure to attend to the works on display as a way to retrieve the unnoticed connections to amend and affront the tensions and the wreckages of our time—and our humanities. The group of artists are from all over the world, some are world-renowned—Pope. L (who unfortunately passed away during the run of the exhibition), Mika Rottenberg—and some are lesser known, from Panama City, along with Chinese artists Shen Xin and Li Liao. 

I have received wide acclaim from experts in the field for the criticality and aesthetic presentation of this exhibition. 

The renowned French publication Quotidien de L’Art took special note of this exhibition at JIMEI Arles for its rare engagement and address of the neo-imperial world and diasporic histories. 

My art historical research focus has always been on affects and ethical gaze in art and the entanglement of esthetics and politics. 

She contributed to the research and produced the audio guide for “Monochrome Multitudes” (2022), Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, U.S. She provided research to Alan Cohen’s work Now (Death Camps – Auschwitz-Birkenau), 1994. 

https://smartmuseumprojects.arts.uchicago.edu/audio/alan-cohen-now-death-camps-auschwitzbirkenau- 

In 2022, she also participated in the Medium/Image symposium at the Smart Museum, were she presented her thesis on ethical gaze in Chris Marker’s Level Five (1997), dealing with the the confounded memory of Okinawa suicides as documented by an American journalist. 

She also provided simultaneous translations to the Contemporary Artist Xu Bing’s lectures in numerous US universities from 2022-2023. 

A recording of Xu’s Lecture: “My Art and Method” at University of California, Davis, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKPasWFXHw&t=918s. 

All the translations were without script. 

Attuned to linguistic intersections, her accurate translation, along with her background in Chinese Contemporary Art, has effectively engaged and expanded the audience in the US for Xu Bing’s Art. She also helped organized Xu Bing Symposium Series at NYU in 2023. The information can be found here. 

She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. 

Alright, so before we go, can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you, or support you?
I write creative copies for multi-sensual experiences. I work extensively with text and image, cultivating taste, awareness, and messaging. I also offer a wide range of artistic consultations, from installation and display of any space for any purpose to acquisition and collection of artworks, etc. 

For collaboration, I am looking for independent art venues for experimental curatorial projects. 

I am looking for sponsorship to carry out a full installment of my exhibition, “Intimacies of Excess.” 

I am also looking for support for my book project, publishing my creative nonfiction manuscripts with my own original watercolor illustrations, with memories and essays about love, theory, travel, and art. 

Pricing:

• Consultation fee is 80 dollars an hour
• Copy commission is billed by the project
• Art writing commission is 100 dollars an hour

Contact Info:

• Website: hindleywang.com

Image Credits
Hindley Wang