RU Talk: New Family

Wednesday, March 28, 2018
6.30pm (free and open to the public)
Residency Unlimited (RU)
360 Court Street (enter the Church through the main entrance)
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Wu Jianru’s upcoming New Family project features the urgent tendency of diversifying relationship structures in East Asia. With the phasing out of the one-child policy in China, an irreplaceable national biopolitical experiment, the millennial generations’ unborn siblings await historicization. Monogamy, the core of the traditional family is menaced by the dramatic rise of Sangs (a generation of giving up), while professional affection, friendship, filial piety, apology, and comfort are available and affordable through mobile apps. In the presentation at RU, Wu will share her curatorial research regarding this evolving formation of Asian families followed by a conversation with Zoe Jiang Meng, the Ph.D. candidate of cinema study in NYU, while showing the work by NY based artist Dachal Choi.

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Wu Jianru is a critic and curator based in Beijing, she previously worked as a senior editor at LEAP magazine, is also contributing to Artforum international and the Art Newspaper China. Wu Jianru organized exhibitions, talks, art fair events within China. 2015, she co-founded a non-profit space “THE OFFICE” in Beijing focusing on the art and economy environment in China. Wu Jianru is the Asian Culture Council Fellow and current curator in residence at RU.

Dachal Choi is a New York based artist born in Seoul, Korea. As part of the millennial generation in Korea where the youth have a loose group consciousness yet still holds a strong need for public display and affirmation, her interest lies in the estrangements existing in a sense of community and personal identity. From Christmas as propaganda, to instant family, to rented friendships, her practice sews ambivalent values together to question instability and uncertainty within individuals and the societies of which they are members to. Her work has been presented at Triangle Arts Association, Socrates Sculpture Park, Franklin Street Works, Hyundai Motor Studio, Seoul Art Space Seogyo, among others. She is a recipient of Artist Community Engagement Grant from Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Individual Grant from Asian Cultural Council, George R. Bunker Award and Lipson Allen Scholarship Award. She holds a B.F.A from School of Visual Arts and an M.F.A. from Yale University.

Zoe Meng Jiang is a New York based critic and teacher from China. Her writings appear in the Brooklyn Rail, Artforum China, LEAP, Indiewire, Chinese Independent Cinema, among others. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at NYU Cinema Studies.

Jianru Wu’s residency is made possible with support from the Asian Cultural Council (ACC).