Artists' Talks | Hangfeng Chen and Jing He | Research Center for Material Culture

Artist Talk | June 27, 2025 | 14.30 - 17.00 | Grotezaal, Wereldmuseum Leiden

The Research Center for Material Culture is pleased to invite you to our upcoming talk with artists Hangfeng Chen and Jing He from our Made in China exhibition. This conversation is a continuation of the conference De-Imperialising Histories and Blazing Forms, which will take place on June 25th-26th.

Photo Credit: On the left; Hangfeng Chen, still from short film An Intertwined Dream, 2024. On the right; Tulip Pyramid - copy and identity, 2016. Collaboration with: Rongkai He , Cheng Guo , Weiyi Li, Dangdang Xing , Dawei Yang

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More on the event

The exhibition Made In China is currently on view at the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (until 31 August 2025). Covering a multitude of forms of making, including art, design, fashion, photography and video, it considers the past and the present of making and what it tells us about being human. Moreover, the exhibition situates its inquiry from the perspective of China, a site often invoked in relation to making, as referenced in the title "Made In China." In distinction to the associations with this phrase, the exhibition showcases the long lineages of making practices that lead into the contemporary moment. In this session, two artists featured in the exhibition, Jing He and Hangfeng Chen, will reflect on their practices in relation to ideas of making and perspectives from China, after which they engage in conversation with the curator of the exhibition, Willemijn van Noord.

Program

14.30 - 14.45	Doors Open
14.45 - 15.00	Introduction by Wayne Modest
15.05 - 15.45	Artist Talk: Hangfeng Chen
15.50 - 16.20	Artist Talk: Jing He
16.20 - 17.00	Discussion moderated by Willemijn van Noord

About the artists

Hangfeng Chen is a visual artist and filmmaker working between Amsterdam and Shanghai. His practice centers on the reappropriation and juxtaposition of archival materials to create a dynamic dialogue between personal memory and historical narrative. This interdisciplinary approach has led him to move fluidly between fine arts and cinema, particularly in the realms of papercut, collage, drawing, and animation. Through this process, Chen explores layered connections that transcend time and geography, reflecting on hybridity and entanglement in the anthropocentric era. Chen studied painting and art history at the Shanghai Fine Art College (BA) and holds a master’s degree from the Netherlands Film Academy. He is currently an artist and researcher in residence at the University of Amsterdam, within the Faculty of Humanities.

Chen's works have been exhibited and collected internationally, including by the Rockbund Museum (Shanghai), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Collective Gallery (Edinburgh), Chinese Arts Center (Manchester), Casino Luxembourg, Cable Gallery (Helsinki), SinArts Gallery, Lissa Art Museum, Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), and the White Rabbit Museum (Sydney). His films have been shown at CinemAsia (Amsterdam), MADATAC Festival (Madrid), N-Minutes Video Art Festival (Helsinki), and the 57th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (MIACA program).

Chen Hangfeng

Hangfeng Chen, still from short film An Intertwined Dream, 2024

Jing He (she/her) is a visual artist and educator currently based in Rotterdam. She is the cofounder of the Tulip Trust Collective. Her interest in culture, politics and the history behind various daily objects, leads to imaginative visual representations involving various materials and mediums. Jing He's works have been included in the collection of The Art of Institute of Chicago (US); Françoise van den Bosch Foundation (NL) collection, which is held by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Design Society Shenzhen (CN).

Jing He

Title: Tulip Pyramid - copy and identity, 2016. Collaboration with: Rongkai He , Cheng Guo , Weiyi Li, Dangdang Xing , Dawei Yang

Willemijn van Noord is curator China at Wereldmuseum. After completing her studies in archaeology and sinology at Leiden University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, she has worked as trainee-curator at the British Museum and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, focusing on Ming dynasty (1368–1644) porcelain and Qing dynasty (1644–1911) glass and snuff-bottles. In 2024, she successfully defended her PhD thesis Materialising China: material culture and perceptions of China in the late seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.

Willemijn van Noord

More on the De-Imperialising Histories and Blazing Forms conference | June 25th-26th

In collaboration with Asia Forum (Annie Jael Kwan, Hammad Nasar, John Tain and Ming Tiampo), we are very pleased to invite you to attend our upcoming conference De-Imperialising Histories and Blazing Forms. This conference will be the second in a series of gatherings aimed at rethinking global art histories through the expansive intellectual space of the “world museum,” which challenges the structures and assumptions of both art history and anthropology through new approaches to material culture.

The conference will be divided in two days, which will bring focus to the following themes: Connectivities, Making, Value and Spirituality.

Visit the exhibition

Made in China

Link

De-Imperialising Histories and Blazing Forms Conference