Tracing the history of contemporary Chinese art in Italy. Exchanges and relations between 1989 and 2009

• Autores: Veronica Di Geronimo
• Localización: Storia dell'arte, ISSN 0392-4513, Nº. 163-164, 2025, págs. 215-227
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a trend that parallels the Chinese art diaspora in France, Australia and the United States, a small group of Chinese artists moved to Italy after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989. Based on bibliographical research, interviews and primary sources from artists' personal archives and documents held at the Asia Art Archive (AAA) documentation centre in Hong Kong, this paper offers a historical reconstruction and a periodisation of the presence of Chinese art in Italy between 1989 and 2009. The research proposes two distinct key phases that follow some significant changes in the 'global turn' of Chinese art and reveal the specificity of a locally based phenomenon. The first section traces the early developments occurring at the beginning of the nineties. The second tackles the beginning of the new century, which witnessed the rapid growth of interest and commercialisation of contemporary Chinese art. In order to provide a historical reconstruction that underscores the specificity of the Italian context within the diaspora framework, the study considers Venice Biennales as catalytic moments of the phenomenon rather than the main focus.