Date: Thursday, 26 October 2023
Time: 5:00PM – 6:30PM
Location: Lecture Theatre 106, F10A New Law Building Annex, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006
Contaminated Art in Contaminated Times: Jes Fan at 2020 Sydney Biennale
This talk considers sculptural installations at the 2020 Sydney Biennale by the artist Jes Fan that incorporate biological materials like melanin, blood, and semen. But it also considers the Biennale’s decolonial interventions at the curatorial level, and how the significance of using biological materials in art changed with the onset of the pandemic. Heinrich argues that the 2020 Sydney Biennale anticipated this fundamental transition in uncanny ways, perhaps most significantly in its attention to location on Indigenous land and its disruption of linear viewing practices.
About the speaker
Ari Heinrich is a Professor at the Australian National University and Director of the Gallery at the ANU’s Australian Centre on China in the World. He is the author or co-editor of a number of books on the body in Chinese and transnational visual cultures and art, as well as a translator of queer Taiwanese literature.