At the end of last month, the Times Museum (Guangdong) unveiled the solo exhibition Han Zishi: Whispers Through the Wall, an artistic exploration of tension and spatial power dynamics. This exhibition originated from the E.A.T. PRIZE, an art award established last year. The award was jointly launched by Guangdong Times Museum, MACA Art Centre, and the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, with support and promotion provided by Morizon Institute.
What draws our attention is the mechanism and process of this award: members of the nomination committee put forward artists based on their respective regions and fields of expertise, considering the works and practice histories of artists they have collaborated or engaged in dialogue with. Through a process of review and mutual evaluation, shortlisted artists were selected. The final jury then assessed, discussed, and worked with these artists to refine their proposed solo exhibition plans, tailored specifically for the exhibition space provided by Guangdong Times Museum. Ultimately, one award-winning artist was chosen to present their exhibition.
If we consider the award’s original intention—to progressively focus on emerging artists at a pivotal stage in their careers and their creative practices—we can observe how the collaborative efforts among different art institutions stimulate in-depth communication and collaborative production among various roles within the art ecosystem. This also reflects their shared vision and expectations for “art in the process of emerging today.”
Indeed, when standing before the exhibition presented by the inaugural award-winning artist Han Zishi, numerous questions emerge that demand our further contemplation and deeper exploration. For instance: How should China’s art ecosystem support young artists? Where does the creativity of the younger generation of artists manifest itself? What diverse issues are they engaging with? What shifts are occurring in their career stages, accumulated bodies of work, and expressive languages? What kinds of practices are lacking among young artists in today’s domestic art scene, and what challenges are they facing? Furthermore, what types of artistic creation and exhibitions does—or should—the domestic art ecology need or currently lack?
Adopting a sustained perspective built through longitudinal observation and multilateral discussion, we sequentially posed these key questions to the five members of the award’s nomination committee (independent curator and researcher Chen Min, curator and writer Chen Xi’an, curator Li Yining, curator and writer Luan Shixuan, and art historian, curator, and critic Wang Xin) and its five final jury members (Cai Yingxi, Academic Deputy Director and Chief Curator of Guangdong Times Museum; Yang Beichen, Director of MACA Art Centre; Zhuang Jiexian, Director and Chief Curator of the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Xiang Zairong, scholar and curator; and artist Wang Tuo). We present their perceptions and judgments regarding the creative practices of young artists, formed during the selection process, to probe what constitutes “effective creation” and an “effective exhibition” within the current artistic context.
In the interviews, the ten jurors not only provided specific and diverse criteria for judgment from their respective standpoints but also demonstrated how, under a sustainable dialogue mechanism, they are reshaping ongoing lines of thought concerning artistic language, ecological support systems, and future possibilities. Together, their insights form a collective response to the questions surrounding the work of the younger generation of artists—a response that is both thought-provoking and grounded in the immediacy of the artistic field.
*Below is the interview in its full version, the interviewee was Roxy Y. Tang (Brief-spell as TANG).
TANG: We understand that the initial selection of artists for the E.A.T. PRIZE shortlist was based on young artists with whom you have previously collaborated. You are also very familiar with their career stage, the volume of work they have produced, the issues they care about, and their artistic language. In turn, this reflects the creative status and concerns of the young artists you yourselves are attentive to. How did you make judgments based on these specific dimensions? Furthermore, how do you view the creative practices of young artists today?
LUAN Shixuan: To be honest, the evolution in their thematic concerns, conceptual focus, and artistic language is more important to me than the other two aspects (career stage and volume of work). Of course, the nature of this award requires us to pay more attention to the relatively younger generation, so there is a general expected range for career stage and quantity of work.
For me, when considering the thematic concerns—setting other factors aside—a crucial point is why a particular issue is important to the artist. Where does this focus originate, and in what direction is it developing? This, to some extent, determines the depth, vitality, and layered complexity of their practice. This perspective stems from my own observations and reflections on my work, which I believe applies to most cultural workers. Therefore, I personally tend to be less inclined towards choices that seem overly shrewd or strategically calculated from a career standpoint, as I believe such an approach will inevitably become a limitation sooner or later.
This also informs my answer to the second question. At this stage, I am more interested in understanding those ‘stubborn’ creators who do not design their artistic practice solely through the lens of career advancement.
Chen Min: To be honest, by today’s standards in the social job market, neither I nor the artists I nominated are particularly young anymore. The reason we’ve entered this industry and stayed is that we believe art remains, for now, an effective channel to deliberate on issues we care about today. Objectively speaking, I’m not a standard “professional curator” either, so I have relative freedom to choose topics that interest me and artists I wish to collaborate with, maintaining long-term discussions and exchanges to explore more dimensions and depth in projects. I was honoured to participate in the initial nomination and selection for this award. For me, regardless of an artist’s career stage, what’s important is that the dynamism of their creative work and thinking can be seen by more people within the field, creating more opportunities for collaboration and dialogue.
Beyond the specific issues, I deeply care about the artist’s understanding and mastery of their chosen medium, whether that medium is clay, dreams, or AI. The medium is the “proxy” of the artist’s agency. Without an understanding of this “proxy’s” historical position and its role in our lives today, one cannot find a suitable position from which to act. During this selection process, I sometimes discussed the issue of the creator’s craftsmanship with the organizers. If the art world has recently rediscovered its emphasis on artistic language, it doesn’t mean we should retreat into the comfort zone of linguistic ontology, or merely respond to calls for “artisanal spirit,” or use it as a basis for measuring a work’s market value. The recent wave of interest in philosophy of technology has shown us that technique and craft have always been intrinsically linked to questions of human existence and creation.
As Wittgenstein once said, “The meaning of a question is the method of answering it. […] Tell me how you seek, and I will tell you what you are seeking.” Whether an artist chooses a currently prominent issue or one with longer-term relevance, the key for me is: what kind of “reality” do they want us to see, and how should we respond to the gaze of worry/expectation/anger they cast upon us? Due to current constraints, I haven’t had much opportunity to meet and engage with the younger generation of artists. But from my observations, as the surrounding world becomes increasingly wrapped in information cocoons, within this overarching structure, no matter how peculiar the issues, media, and techniques a creator concerns themselves with, I believe they can find their dialogue group—if not today and here, then tomorrow and elsewhere. With whom should a creator communicate, and how can they achieve effective communication with those people? This is a question both simple and complex. In any era, creators should strive to generate new artistic situations.
TANG: A crucial point we noted is that during the preliminary review, each juror scored artists nominated by the other jurors. This inevitably meant each preliminary juror had to draw upon their own expertise and experience. In your respective observations and evaluations, what different issues did you see young artists concerning themselves with? (Each preliminary juror is based in a different global location). What are your views on the linguistic approaches they employ to develop work around these issues? Where do you find consensus and points for discussion with the issues you yourselves focus on in your work? For example, discussions of different global cultural contexts, the relationship to the artist’s own experience, the creativity of artistic language, etc.
Wang Xin: I have complex feelings about the “topicalization” of artists’ work, though I do not doubt the sincerity and sensitivity most artists bring to their chosen issues. Young artists often enter the discourse relatively quickly through certain topics and labels, connecting with suitable curators and institutions—sometimes this isn’t even entirely within their subjective control. What worries me is the habitual thinking brought about by “topicalization,” which is reflected in how many artists articulate and present their work, including the effects of the misuse of “research-based art.” What I often treasure is work that cannot be easily summarized or defined by a topic, yet possesses the capacity to profoundly investigation and imaginatively broaden our understanding of life. Because so-called topics are merely distillations of political, historical, and cultural life, and no one can truly operate outside them. Although the jurors are situated in different regions, facing somewhat different cultural contexts and realities, the art world is still relatively small; we actually have many overlaps. The so-called real differences might not be as large as imagined. However, the deliberation process, for me at least, was very rewarding in discovering and learning about new artists recommended by the other nominators.
Li Yining: The preliminary review process was full of delightful discoveries. Having been based in Hong Kong for nearly a decade, and now in London overseeing an international residency program focused on the Global South, my curatorial work hasn’t afforded many opportunities to closely understand the new generation of artists based in mainland China. Some nominated artists, such as Ge Tairan & Dandeng Damei and Pan Caoyuan, particularly caught my eye. The issues they focus on and their creative methods profoundly reflect the influence of their own ethnicity, beliefs, and local cultural identities. I hadn’t encountered much of this before, but upon reflection, their concerns share common ground with artists from various countries I usually engage with. For instance, Ge Tairan & Dandeng Damei’s research into the “Lhasa Fish” sold by street vendors in Tibetan areas, constructing an exhibition blending reality and fiction, resonates with the approaches of artists from other countries who use food as an entry point to address complex social issues like ecological crisis and population mobility—such as the Turner Prize-nominated London-based artist duo Cooking Sections. As a preliminary juror, my greatest gain was the opportunity to deeply exchange views with the other four jurors on the twenty-five nominated artists across different contexts, learning about many artists who impressed me. I look forward to finding opportunities for collaboration and exchange with them beyond this award.
Zian Chen: The distinctive feature of this award is its focus on exhibition-making. Therefore, the selection criteria were not based solely on an artist’s current level of activity, but focused more on the depth of their practice between creation and display. Overall, even though there were a few shortlisted artists working primarily with painting, the longlist of 25 did not include painters who have been commercially very active in recent years, heading straight for blue-chip status. Instead, a significant proportion consisted of overseas artists using more humorous, low-cost methods to leverage creative and critical space, as well as young artists conducting field practice within China in recent years. My judgment criteria focused on different artists’ understanding of exhibition-making and how well their work matched the spatial context for display. How do artists translate individual experience to explore artistic language? Many shortlisted artists demonstrated considerable exploration and commitment in this direction. The selected artist, Han Zishi, showed a particularly brilliant attempt at navigating between research and creation. However, overall, due to the information gap between domestic and international scenes, it was indeed difficult to compare artists from both sides directly. To some extent, perhaps ten years ago, young artists of different nationalities were closer to each other in their understanding of creative practice.
TANG: A key aspect of the final selection process was that shortlisted artists submitted solo exhibition proposals tailored to the exhibition space structure of Guangdong Times Museum. Could you both discuss what different understandings can be gained from observing a young artist’s practice through the different formats of a solo exhibition versus a group exhibition? What challenges does this pose for young artists today? Does a “solo exhibition” also tend to more easily expose the lack of certain experiences, threads, and creativity in today’s art scene and in young artists’ practices?
Zhuang Jiexian: The difference between a “solo exhibition” and a “group exhibition” is not just a matter of presentation format; it’s a matter of how the work is viewed, and how the artist is interpreted within a structural framework. In group exhibitions, the presentation of an individual artist’s work is often easily fragmented (though some artists’ work only truly functions within group shows). A solo exhibition challenges more how an artist approaches a project. You could say that in a solo exhibition, the artist lacks the “collective shelter” or the supplementary curatorial text of a group show. But this doesn’t mean a solo exhibition better reflects an artist’s “completeness” or “maturity.” On the contrary, a solo exhibition more easily exposes the art system’s premature expectations of young artists. Do we overemphasize that young artists must establish a “complete, legible creative system” at a specific stage? Many fascinating, creative artists in their early practice are often “unfinished,” messy, and full of contradictions. In a richer artistic environment, a solo exhibition is not just a display, but an artist’s in-depth experimentation with a concept, a viewing experience they actively create. But domestically, solo exhibitions for many young artists often remain a step to “prove themselves,” rather than an opportunity to “open up questions.” This means that when evaluating a solo exhibition, we shouldn’t judge solely by whether the artist has “completed” the exhibition, but rather by whether they have generated genuine intellectual tension within it.
Wang Tuo: If we look purely from the perspective of the artist’s personal practice, solo exhibitions and group exhibitions are two different things. The subject of a group exhibition is more the curator’s work. It’s like writing: words form sentences, sentences organize into paragraphs, and paragraphs argue a concept. An artist’s work in a group exhibition is often used as words or sentences; it’s sliced up and abstracted into smaller units, sometimes even reshaped in reverse—though this isn’t inherently good or bad. In a good, constructive exhibition, the potential benefit is gaining some discursive dialogue, provided the exhibition also maintains the integrity of the individual works, not completely stripping them of their context.
A solo exhibition, or rather the sequence and structure of personal creation, is what concerns the artist more. Here, the problematics, language, and aesthetic logic are not isolated or subject to comparison; time is also placed within a broader framework. An interesting solo exhibition requires inviting the audience to start by recognizing a syntax outside any established system, to try to engage with a whole new logic. Solo exhibitions also constantly infer and relate to one another.
Of course, there’s another way: just create, don’t exhibit. Or, just care about how to pose and solve problems, and be indifferent to how it’s displayed. Unless the creation itself is about space, or the display itself is political.
Personally, I feel that whether in China or abroad, the problems seem greater with group exhibitions. I have a sense that group exhibitions have been shaped by many unclear mechanisms into a value system worthy of examination and discernment.
TANG: After the final jury discussed the artists’ proposals and suggested revisions, the shortlisted artists modified them before the final selection. This process, to some extent, reflects the demands placed on young artists to fully present their creative clues through a solo exhibition by institutions, curators, and scholars, the collaborative work undertaken, and the exchange of exhibition experience. How did you communicate and discuss with the shortlisted artists? What common aspects and noteworthy points did you observe? What aspects of the exhibition presentation did you prioritize most in this process? From the perspective of your respective fields, how should institutions and curators communicate and assist these young artists in fully connecting the conceptual expression of their themes to the presentation of their works and exhibitions? What kind of creations and exhibitions by young artists does the domestic art ecology need or lack?
Yang Beichen: An important metric that distinguishes one award from another is the uniqueness of its mechanism. Domestic art awards generally suffer from imperfect selection mechanisms and unclear positioning. What makes the E.A.T. PRIZE quite unique is its rigorous setup—the process from preliminary to final review is complete and thorough, especially the communication session between the final jury and the artists before the formal proposal submission, which can be considered a special innovation.
In one-on-one dialogues with the shortlisted artists, I clearly felt the differences among them, partly because they are at different career stages, and partly due to the different ecosystems they face—you can distinctly perceive how the ecosystem acts upon the artists’ creations. This leads to a topic: does the current domestic art ecology provide a favourable environment for the growth of young artists? Personally, I believe the domestic shortcoming lies in the incompleteness of the entire chain. Apart from the commercial system continuously absorbing new artists, other components are noticeably lacking, or rather, the “relationships” the ecology can offer artists are relatively impoverished. This, of course, involves a certain “underlying” logic: the art ecology and the broader social ecology cannot resonate in sync, and may even conflict.
Here, the E.A.T. PRIZE demonstrates another innovation. Using an “institutional alliance” format to discover and present the work of young artists, this institutional “endorsement” provides a guarantee of “visibility” to counter dominant social or commercial logics. I would even say it’s a form of “protection” for an already very fragile ecology. This also brings to mind the previous “Hua Yu Youth Award.” It must be said that a successful award can create a micro-environment within the macro-environment, building a platform and a barrier for young artists—a supportive “relationship.” From this perspective, the endeavour advanced by the E.A.T. PRIZE is truly very important and worthy of cherishing.
The E.A.T. PRIZE is an award based on the exhibition as the unit, so the final presentation effect of the exhibition was something I cared deeply about. Overall, the installation of “Whispers Through the Wall” is quite brilliant. Han Zishi’s creations are often based on a “systemic” thinking mode, treating the entire exhibition as the work itself, which is very evident in this exhibition. Clearly, as the first award winner, he sets a sample for future participating artists: this newly established award seeks artists with an experimental and exploratory spirit, who are courageous in creating problems and challenging the site.
Xiang Zairong: Selection is a rather elusive matter, involving many factors. How the importance of these factors is ranked determines whether an award’s outcome is effective, or whether it can achieve the effect we desire. As the first iteration of this award, the desired effect was something we constantly reached consensus on during the judging process, rather than being pre-set. The shortlisted artists had already passed the first round. Before the second-round interviews, we each spoke with the artists individually. In this process, the issue I paid most attention to was how clearly and effectively the artist could express their creative intention methods, and the overall conception of their proposal. This returns to the “many factors” I mentioned first: for instance, could an excellent proposal be disadvantaged by sluggish verbal expression? Or conversely, could an artist very skilled in eloquent talk gain more attention? For a new talent award, to what extent should we encourage young artists to pay attention to verbal expression skills (and other aspects beyond artistic research and creation itself, like portfolio presentation, language used, etc.)? To what extent should we consciously guard against excessive “self-packaging”? Another aspect we discussed and considered extensively was whether the first award result should “set the tone” for the award or be just one tone among many? (Don’t worry, we didn’t reach a consensus on this; the next award’s selection might be very different from this one—which brings us back to the paradoxical, non-pre-set cyclical relationship I mentioned earlier).
Nikita Cai: This process was something we specifically added when discussing the award setup, and it was a key review step we emphasized to the preliminary jurors and all nominated artists during the initial nomination stage. This is because the award hopes to provide artists with experimental space beyond market and conventional consumable exhibitions. Post-pandemic, the number of exhibitions has exploded, but for young artists, opportunities to trial and error under appropriate conditions, to think and advance their practice, have actually decreased. So, in my communication with artists, I focused on the artist’s self-awareness regarding their positionality and creative stage, and hoped to see that their proposals and statements, beyond aiming to win the award, remained open to their personal career and future development.
I feel that artists’ education nowadays provides them with ample “professional guidance.” But realistically, a young artist needs a sustained 10-15 year creative career after leaving school to complete the transition from “emerging” to “mid-career.” Only a minority gain attention through “price” or “internet-flow” during these 10 years. Most artists should accumulate the ability to communicate and collaborate with different practitioners during this decade, and while refining their artistic language, learn to introduce and present their work to more people—likely those with different cultural or social backgrounds. Therefore, when discussing with shortlisted artists, I expected them to propose forward-looking rather than retrospective plans, and to avoid excessively appropriating existing academic concepts or discourses when describing their work. I also hope artists have a certain sense of reality; while viewing me as a professional audience capable of deep dialogue, they also see me as a node connecting to other entities, such as general audiences, the space, budget, suppliers, etc., to fully mobilize their own agency in negotiation and ensure the integrity of the creative concept and work implementation.
The proposals shortlisted this time were all highly complete, but during the jury’s discussion, we didn’t prioritize technical issues like whether the models and dimensions were precise; everyone was more concerned with whether the artist, in the next 5 to 10 years, could avoid resting on established themes and language, and instead, through participating in discussions across different exhibitions or cultural contexts, construct the independence and sustainability of their own creative practice. This quality of persevering amidst uncertainty might be what our era requires.
Between the work of institutions, curators, and artists, understanding and trust are the foundation. The artist’s creative process is full of uncertainty, running counter to the mainstream values of meritocracy. “Working with artists” sounds simple but is often challenging in practice. Curators often need to provide both emotional and material support for artists. But from my work in recent years, I feel that helping young artists see each other, and establishing concrete connections through works and exhibitions with institutions and the world beyond art, is also one of the institution’s responsibilities.
Artists’ creations have always been rich and diverse. The fundamental problem is the homogeneity of the domestic art ecology, which breeds a homogeneity in audiences’ cognition and expectations of art. Our general audience still expects art to be formally beautiful and conceptually modernist. Younger, more educated audiences, while capable of understanding complex concepts through language, aren’t necessarily familiar with or recognized contemporary art’s forms of expression. Furthermore, if exhibitions all become self-financing cultural consumer products, then artists are also reduced to suppliers. Under this logic, it’s hard to expect artists to view exhibitions as an important medium of expression and communication, let alone expect them to persist in working with difficult media or topics.
*Originally published on the Special Issue of Art-Ba-Ba (04-14-2025)
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 