Junyao Chen

Chen, Junyao.jpg
Junyao Chen, Independent Curator, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.

In 2022, 41 contemporary art curators, researchers, and museum directors from 24 different countries were awarded to attend the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference. The CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, titled "The Attentive Museum. Permeable Practices for a Common Ground", was held in Mallorca (Balearic Islands), Spain on 11–13 November, hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.

Junyao Chen's Conference Report

I am Junyao Chen, a participant in this conference, which is funded by the Beijing Public Art and Culture Foundation. Unfortunately, due to the impact of the COVID-19 policies in China, I could not attend this annual conference in person, but I still participated in the conference online. As a young independent curator, my work is full of research on public space and politics. Based on the research direction of space politics, I have extensively collaborated with universities, institutions and galleries in China and led related artists to participate in exhibitions and research projects. In the course of this conference, Suhanya Raffel's report on M+ Art Museum Hong Kong "Seeing is believing", allowed me to learn about the liaison and cooperation methods maintained by M+ Art Museum Hong Kong with the government and various organizations in the process of institutionalization. Based on preserving the independent content production of the museum, as a major component of the West Kowloon Entertainment and Art District, participating in industrial cooperation and collaborative development in the region. The content that Suhanya brings to the table, with open and detailed data, gives us a glimpse of the vision and ambition of a world-class art museum and provides a young but mature model for developing art and cultural institutions in Asia. As an online member of the conference, the above content sharing allows me to directly learn practical experiences beyond physical limitations and make positive and reasonable local transformations of these experiences, which helps me better achieve the goal of "personal institutionalization".

However, not being able to attend in person also brought a lot of regrets, such as my inability to connect with more attendees and generate more potential collaborations. I hope that these regrets can be compensated for in future participation. Once again, I would like to thank the organizing committee for all the efforts they have made for this annual conference, and thank you again to my sponsor, the Beijing Public Art and Culture Foundation, and I hope to meet you in person soon.

Very best

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Junyao Chen | 陈鋆尧

Junyao Chen (b.1995) is an independent curator and part-time research fellow at the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He currently lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing. He graduated from the Department of Digital Media of Beijing Normal University in 2018 and received a master's degree in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in 2020. His curatorial practice and research focus on spatial politics in the context of urbanization, the publicity of digital media, and the digital human landscape in the public environment.

He previously worked for the Barbican Art Group Trust in London from 2019-2020; In 2022, he was funded by the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) Annual Academic Conference 2022, and his curatorial proposal was shortlisted for the 2022 Jimei Arles "Image Curating Award" (Three Shadows Photography Art Center), and his thesis and research project "Urban Regeneration with the Intervention of Industrial Transformation and Curatorial Ideas", A Case Study of Dafen Village, Shenzhen was selected for the International Conference on Global Cultural and Creative Industries and Development (2021) and published in the interdisciplinary journal Telematics and Informatics Reports and has collaborated with several domestic and foreign art institutions and contemporary art galleries, written review articles for several media and artists.