HOU HANRU TO DIRECT CHINA’S PAVILION IN VENICE
Hou Hanru, arguably the art world’s most active international curator of Chinese origin, has been tapped to direct China’s third national pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale this summer. Significantly, this year’s pavilion is organized not by the Ministry of Culture but rather by the private (albeit Ministry of Culture–owned) China Foreign Cultural Exchange Company. The pavilion will be staged outdoors and produced by Universal Studios-beijing, an alternative space in Beijing directed by curator Pi Li and Berlin stalwart Waling Boers.
The 2003 pavilion was canceled due to the SARS outbreak; the pavilion in 2005, with National Art Museum of China director Fan Di’an as commissioner and artist Cai Guo-Qiang as curator, featured the work of five artists, including Peng Yu, Sun Yuan, and Xu Zhen. Although the artist list for this year’s Chinese Pavilion isn’t likely to be announced until March, Hou says that it will be similar in size to that of 2005.
At a press conference held in Beijing last week, Hou explained to the local media that he hopes to “avoid at all costs the current market stars of Chinese art and get far from the assembly-line art of the current market.” The Beijing Youth Daily ran the story of China’s pavilion under the headline “Hou Hanru: Auction Records Do Not Represent Art’s True Worth.” The Beijing News also reported the story.
Hou, a Guangzhou native who studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before leaving for Paris in the early ’90s, recently began his tenure as director of exhibitions and international programs at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2000, he curated China’s first major international exhibition, the Third Shanghai Biennale, at the Shanghai Art Museum. With Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Guo Xiaoyan, he curated the Second Guangzhou Triennial in 2005, and he will direct the upcoming Istanbul Biennial, which opens in early September. This is not Hou’s first Venetian venture: In 2003, he curated “Zones of Urgency” as part of the 50th Biennale, and in 1999, he curated the French Pavilion at the 48th Biennale. —Philip Tinari
