红门画廊诚挚呈现《借壳——驻留计划溯源与中国当代艺术进程》群展，由胡超博士和红门画廊创始人布朗·华莱士共同担任策展人，展览时间为2026年10月11日至2026年11月1日。

本次展览以“借壳”为题，聚焦于中国当代艺术史中鲜少被关注和研究的“艺术驻留”机制，梳理艺术驻留在中国的起源，尝试总结这一机制如何进入中国当代艺术发展的内部脉络。

展出艺术家包括 苏新平，王鲁炎，沈少民，尹欣，张亚杰，陈庆庆，郑学武，Jayne Dyer, 谭思考，Guillaume Cochinaire，韩情，蒋巍涛，解国平，陈伟；他们均曾经亲自参与海内外的艺术驻留项目，或因艺术驻留项目改变个人艺术生涯轨迹。

Red Gate Gallery is proud to present Origins of Artist Residencies in China: Another Pathway to Contemporary Chinese Art, co-curated by Dr. Hu Chao and Brian Wallace, Founder of Red Gate Gallery. The exhibition will run from October 11 to November 1, 2026.

Entitled “Borrowing the Shell” — the literal translation of the original Chinese title — the exhibition focuses on the understudied mechanism of artist residencies within the history of contemporary Chinese art. It traces the origins of artist residency practices in China and examines how this institutional model has integrated into the developmental lineage of contemporary Chinese art.

The exhibiting artists include Su Xinping, Wang Luyan, Shen Shaomin, Yin Xin, Zhang Yajie, Chen Qingqing, Zheng Xuewu, Jayne Dyer, Laurens Tan, Guillaume Cochinaire, Han Qing, Jiang Weitao, Xie Guoping and Chen Wei. All of them have participated in artist residency programs in China and abroad, or had their artistic careers transformed by such residencies.

借壳

驻留计划溯源与中国当代艺术进程

胡 超

“借壳”在中文里有多重意味：既让人想到资本市场中的借壳上市，也让人想到生物的寄居、适应与生长。

艺术家驻留是一种现代“舶来”模式。20世纪90年代，这一模式通过国际合作在中国起步，让中外艺术家有机会在异地住下来、做作品，并持续影响着一代代艺术家的成长。为什么这段实践在中国当代艺术史的书写中长期缺少充分讨论？

艺术驻留不只是国际交流活动，也是中国当代艺术形成过程中的一种实践机制。艺术家在异地生活与创作，获得仅凭观看展览、阅读出版物和接触媒体图像难以获得的具身知识（embodied knowledge），并重新理解自身的位置、创作方法以及与世界的关系。这些经验与思考又通过同行交流、展览、讨论和讲学，传递给更多中国艺术家，帮助他们理解并参与20世纪90年代以来的全球化进程。

20世纪80年代，中外当代艺术家的跨国往来逐渐增多。当时虽有出访和旅居，围绕“住下来创作”的持续支持机制仍不普遍。艺术家驻留为这些跨国交流提供了更稳定的组织支持。本展览梳理艺术驻留在中国的起源，考察它如何参与中国当代艺术的形成与发展：

移植 Transplantation

1990年代至2000年代初：艺术驻留机制进入中国。

1991年，澳大利亚 Asialink 开始协调本国艺术家赴华驻留；同年成立的红门画廊（Red Gate Gallery）作为本地画廊提供协助。这些持续开展的驻留实践，为中外艺术家的跨国交流提供了新的组织形式。

嫁接 Grafting

2001年以后：艺术驻留机制在地方文化与本土实践中转化。

2001年，红门画廊创办自己的北京驻留计划，早期延续与澳大利亚机构的合作；厦门中国欧洲艺术中心（CEAC）也于同年启动驻留项目，一面与欧洲艺术界保持密切联系，一面扎根中国东南的地方经验、社会资源和艺术生态。

菌丝网络 Mycelium

2009年至今：艺术驻留进入网络化发展的新阶段。

通过 2013年成立的China Residencies平台，国内驻留计划开始加入世界驻留项目的开放网络，并在不同机构、艺术家和地域之间持续生长。中国艺术家自身的需求，也推动了上苑艺术馆、郑学武的哈德逊艺术中心等本土艺术家自建项目的创新。

梳理中国艺术驻留的起源，为中国当代艺术史补上一条线索，也让我们从另一个角度认识中国当代艺术的形成。艺术家在跨地区、跨国的移动与停留中积累的切身经验，同样构成了这一过程的重要部分。

Origins of Artist Residencies in China

Another Pathway to Contemporary Chinese Art

Hu Chao

“Borrowing the Shell,” the literal translation of the Chinese title, carries multiple meanings. In finance, it refers to a backdoor listing: entering an existing structure, “borrowing” its resources and connections to get where one could not otherwise go. It also evokes the biological processes of inhabitation, adaptation and regeneration. In both senses the shell is ready-made — an institution, a city, a web of relations — and whoever borrows it emerges changed.

This exhibition uses the metaphor to trace the origins of artist residency programs (or Artist-in-Residence / AiR) in China and raises a question: why has a practice that broadened Chinese artists’ hard-won international experience — especially in the early years of China’s opening-up — remained an overlooked thread in the history of contemporary Chinese art?

Artist residency is more than an international exchange activity at the margins of contemporary Chinese art; it is one of the mechanisms by which that art took shape. Through movement, temporary stays and life across cultures, artists enter unfamiliar environments and gain a kind of knowledge that exhibitions, publications and images alone cannot give — knowledge that changes how they understand their position, their methods, and their relationship to the world. Such experience traveled onward, through exchanges, exhibitions, discussions and teaching, bringing ever more Chinese artists into the globalizing art world.

Chinese artists began going abroad, and foreign artists began arriving in China, in the 1980s — but the exchange was scattered and personal, with no mechanism for organizing a stay long enough to make work. Artist residency became one of the chief organised channels for these

exchanges. Since the early 1990s, artist residencies have developed alongside contemporary Chinese art. Their history is not simply a story of external influence and local acceptance, but a process of adaptation, transformation and mutual exchange among artists, institutions and different cultural environments. This exhibition examines how artist residencies helped shape contemporary Chinese art, tracing their development through three stages:

Transplantation

1990s–early 2000s: the residency model enters China

In the early 1990s, Australia’s Asialink began sending artists to China on residencies. Red Gate Gallery, founded in 1991 by Australian Brian Wallace, helped these artists find accommodation and studio space and connect with Beijing’s art community. This organised form of artist mobility helped residencies take root in China’s emerging contemporary art ecosystem.

Grafting

From 2001 onward: residencies take new forms in local contexts

In 2001, Red Gate Gallery launched its own residency program in Beijing, building on a decade of cooperation with its Australian partners. The same year, the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) started its program in Xiamen, drawing on its European connections. These early local programs put down deep roots — in local cultures, social resources and artistic communities — and developed forms of residency shaped by the Chinese context.

Mycelium

Since 2009: residencies grow into an open network

In 2013, China Residencies launched its bilingual website and went on to publish annual reports from 2014 to 2021, using both to connect residency programs, institutions and artists across China and the world. 

In the meantime, the needs of Chinese artists themselves have driven homegrown experiments: Shangyuan Art Museum, now running multiple sites, and Zheng Xuewu’s Hudson Art Center in the United States.

Tracing these origins adds a missing thread to the history of contemporary Chinese art and offers another way of understanding how it all came to be. The movement, the stays, the border crossings — carried in artists’ own bodies — shaped contemporary Chinese art as much as any exhibition or manifesto.

移植 Transplantation

移植 Transplantation

澳大利亚 Asialink 与红门画廊（Red Gate Gallery）

1980年代末至1990年代：艺术驻留机制进入中国

艺术驻留机制进入中国，是一个“移植”的过程。

中国艺术家走出国门，外国艺术家零星来华，都始于20世纪80年代。但那时的交流是个人的、零散的——有出访，有旅居，没有人把“住下来创作”这件事组织起来。

系统性的变化，从澳大利亚开始。1989年，澳大利亚艺术理事会（Australia Council）发起艺术家驻留计划；1991年，项目移交 Asialink 管理。Asialink 是澳大利亚国家层面的亚洲交流机构，设于墨尔本大学。它与亚洲多个国家开展双向艺术家驻留，也由此与中国建立了艺术联系。随后，Asialink 派往中国的首位澳大利亚艺术家琳迪·李（Lindy Lee）到达北京——成体系的双向国际驻留机制第一次在中国落地。

同样在1991年，布朗·华莱士（Brian Wallace）在北京东便门城墙角楼创立红门画廊。这位1984年就来到中国的澳大利亚人，在创办画廊之前，已在北京古观象台等地为年轻的中国艺术家组织过展览。整个1990年代，他以个人身份义务协助 Asialink 来华的艺术家——帮他们找房子、找工作室，带他们走进北京的艺术圈。这些帮助却是当时国际艺术家在北京所能得到的几乎全部支持。而通道是双向的：同一时期，中国艺术家也经 Asialink 赴澳大利亚驻留。

十年接应，蓄势待发。驻留机制已经传入中国，本土驻留项目也开始萌芽。

在出国是稀罕事、见到外国同行也是稀罕事的年代，一个有组织、可申请的驻留名额，对艺术家格外珍贵。

澳大利亚艺术家 Jayne Dyer 1994年首次来北京参加红门画廊的展览，当即决定申请 Asialink 的驻留计划。次年，她再次来京。她后来又参加了红门画廊的北京驻留项目，并于2007年至2014年间一直在北京生活和工作。长期的在地经验进入她的装置、摄影与雕塑创作——装置作品《蝴蝶效应》（The Butterfly Effect），正是这段经验转化成的艺术语言。

Transplantation

Asialink (Australia) & Red Gate Gallery

1990s–early 2000s: the residency mechanism enters China

Bringing the residency mechanism into China was an act of transplantation.

Chinese artists began going abroad, and foreign artists began arriving in China, in the 1980s — but the exchange was personal and scattered. There were visits and sojourns, but no one had yet organized support for artists to stay and make work.

The shift to organized exchange began with Australia. In 1989 the Australia Council initiated an artist residency program; in 1991 it was transferred to Asialink, Australia’s national centre for Asia engagement based at the University of Melbourne. Asialink organized two-way artist residency exchanges across Asia, establishing artistic links with China in the process. Later, the Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee arrived in Beijing as Asialink’s first resident artist in China. For the first time, a structured, two-way international artist residency system was operating in China.

Also in 1991, Brian Wallace opened Red Gate Gallery in the corner tower of Beijing’s Dongbianmen city wall. An Australian who had first come to China in 1984, he had already organized exhibitions for young Chinese artists at the Ancient Observatory and elsewhere. Through the 1990s he assisted, informally and unpaid, the artists Asialink sent to Beijing — finding them housing and studios, and leading them into the city’s art circles. These efforts provided nearly all the support available to international artists in Beijing at the time. And the channel ran both ways: in the same years, Chinese artists, funded through Asialink, took up residencies in Australia.

A decade of informal support had laid the groundwork.The mechanism had arrived; the soil was waiting.At a time when going abroad and meeting fellow artists from other countries were rare, an organized residency program that artists could apply to was a precious opportunity.

The Australian artist Jayne Dyer first came to Beijing in 1994 for a Red Gate Gallery exhibition — an experience that led her to apply for and be accepted into Asialink’s residency program. She returned to Beijing the following year.She later joined Red Gate Gallery’s own residency program and went on to live and work in Beijing from 2007 to 2014.Her years of living and working in Beijing informed her installations, photography and sculpture; The Butterfly Effect translates that experience into artistic language.

嫁接 Grafting

嫁接 Grafting

2001年以后：艺术驻留机制在地方文化与本土实践中转化

北京红门画廊（Red Gate Gallery）与厦门中国欧洲艺术中心（CEAC）

2001年，红门画廊创办北京驻留计划（Red Gate Residency）——十年义务接应，至此长成了自己的机制：固定的公寓和工作室、可申请的名额、常态化的接待。早期，它与澳大利亚机构的合作继续延伸。

2001年也是整个领域的枢纽之年，厦门中国欧洲艺术中心（CEAC）于这一年启动驻馆项目，中国最早一批常设国际驻留机构在两条血缘上同年诞生。中国欧洲艺术中心（CEAC）由荷兰籍艺术家伊尼卡·顾蒙逊（Ineke Gudmundsson）与厦门大学艺术学院秦俭教授于1999年共同发起，并于2001年正式启动驻留计划。作为中国大陆最早成立并持续运营至今的非营利艺术驻留机构之一，CEAC 标志着艺术驻留机制在中国进入了由单次交流向长期实践转变的新阶段。

这种“嫁接”而来的驻留计划在厦门不断扩展：CEAC 一面与欧洲艺术界保持密切联系，一面将根系扎进本土——与德化白瓷工坊、厦门印刷厂、工坊及实验室建立合作网络，协助驻馆艺术家将概念转化为实体作品；艺术家住在海边和老港区，走进大学课堂，驻留结束时在中心展示成果。二十余年来，四百多位来自世界各地的艺术家驻留厦门。欧洲是接穗，中国东南沿海是砧木，长出来的是两边原先都没有的东西。

红门这边的果实，落在艺术家的来路上。2004年，厦门艺术家陈文令经红门驻留来到北京；此后二十余年，一代代中外艺术家经由此处往返。这里展示的红门画廊作品，正是这条通道留下的轨迹——驻留不只提供一间工作室，更提供一段改变创作的社会时间。

Grafting

After 2001: the residency mechanism transforms through local cultures and practices

Red Gate Gallery (Beijing) and the Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen (CEAC)

In 2001, Red Gate Gallery launched Red Gate Residency in Beijing — a decade of informal welcome, grown at last into a mechanism of its own: fixed apartments and studios, programs one could apply to, a standing roster of guests. Its cooperation with Australian institutions carried on through the early years.

That same year proved a hinge for the field as a whole. In Xiamen, the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) opened its own residency program — and China’s earliest standing international residencies, Red Gate’s and CEAC’s, came into being in the same year, on two different lineages.

CEAC had been founded in 1999 by Ineke Gudmundsson, a curator from the Netherlands, together with Professor Qin Jian of the Art College of Xiamen University. Its residency program, running without interruption ever since, is among the longest-standing non-profit residencies in mainland China — the moment when artist exchange in China shifted from one-off visits to sustained practice.

The grafting itself happened in Xiamen. CEAC kept close ties with Europe while putting down roots in the local soil: a working network of white-porcelain workshops in De Hua, printers in Xiamen, factories and laboratories, so that resident artists could actually make their work; apartments by the sea and the old harbor, walk-ins to university classrooms, a presentation at the center to close each residency. Over more than two decades, four hundred–plus artists from around the world have come to stay. Europe was the scion, China’s southeast coast the stock; what grew was something neither side had seen before.

On the Red Gate side, the fruit showed in the paths artists took. In 2004 the Xiamen artist Chen Wenling came to Beijing through Red Gate’s residency; in the two decades since, generations of Chinese and international artists have passed through. The Red Gate works shown here trace that passage — a residency offers more than a studio; it offers a stretch of social time that changes an artist’s practice.

菌丝网络 Mycelium

菌丝网络 Mycelium

China Residencies与网络时代的驻留生态

2009年至今：艺术驻留进入网络化发展的新阶段

2009年前后，在红门驻留项目中认识的 Crystal Ruth Bell 与 Kira Simon-Kennedy 开始系统考察全国散落各处的驻留计划。2013年，两人创办 China Residencies——一个非营利的驻留信息平台：中英文双语网站收录全国的计划与机构，年度报告（2014–2021）逐年记录这个领域的变化，至今仍是这一领域最系统的公开档案。散落各地的节点，由此连成一张开放的地图。China Residencies 自己不设驻留、不接待艺术家——它做的是连接本身。

这个网络的出现，也因为这一时期正是驻留计划在中国生长最密的年份。三影堂摄影艺术中心的国际艺术家驻地（2008）、成都A4国际驻留艺术中心（2011）、上海斯沃琪和平饭店艺术中心（2011）、四川美术学院的青年艺术家驻留计划（2012起）、重庆十方艺术中心（2013）、新时线媒体艺术中心（2013）——美术馆、学院、商业品牌、独立空间，各自成节点。

本土的力量同时在自建。诗人程小蓓与二十余位诗人、艺术家于2000年共同发起上苑艺术馆，以志愿者方式运营，2007年起接待全球艺术家驻留，其后扩展至海南、黄山、景德镇；艺术家郑学武在包括红门在内的机构支持下赴美驻留，2006年在北京联合创办驻留计划，2018至2019年间又在美国纽约创办哈德逊艺术中心（Hudson Art Center），为中国艺术家量身设计驻留内容——把借来的壳，转手递给下一批出发的人。

运营驻留三十年后，Asialink 于2020年将重心转向机构间合作。项目出现、转型、消失，或以新的形式继续——菌丝网络正以此方式生长：不依赖单一中心，在平台、机构、艺术家和地域之间蔓延。

本展览呈现的，只是这张网络中的一部分节点。我们向所有推动过艺术驻留的机构、组织者与艺术家致敬；更多驻留计划、机构资料与历史线索，见展览图册。

Mycelium

China Residencies and the residency ecology of the networked age

Since 2009: residencies grow into an open network

Around 2009, Crystal Ruth Bell and Kira Simon-Kennedy, who met while working around the Red Gate Residency, began systematically surveying this scattered field. In 2013 they founded China Residencies, a non-profit information platform: a bilingual website cataloguing the country’s programs and institutions, and an annual report (2014–2021) that documented the field year by year and remains its most extensive public record. The scattered nodes were drawn, at last, into one open map. China Residencies hosts no residents of its own and receives no artists — what it does is the connecting itself.

This network appeared, in part, because these were the years when residency programs multiplied fastest in China. Three Shadows Photography Art Centre’s international residency (2008); A4 International Residency Art Center in Chengdu (2011); the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai (2011); the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute’s residency for young artists (from 2012); Dimensions Art Center in Chongqing (2013); Chronus Art Center (2013) — museums, academies, a commercial brand, independent spaces: each a node.

Local forces were building on their own account. The poet Cheng Xiaobei, with more than twenty poets and artists, initiated Shangyuan Art Museum in 2000; run by volunteers, it opened to international residents in 2007 and later extended to Hainan, Huangshan and Jingdezhen. The artist Zheng Xuewu, supported early on by Red Gate among others, took up residencies in the United States, co-founded a program in Beijing in 2006, and around 2018–2019 founded the Hudson Art Center in New York, with residencies designed for Chinese artists — passing the borrowed shell, in turn, to the next ones setting out.

After nearly three decades of running residencies, Asialink shifted its focus to institution-to-institution partnerships in 2020. Programs emerge, transform, disappear, or continue in new forms — that is how the mycelium grows: no single center, spreading across platforms, institutions, artists and regions.

What this exhibition presents are only some of the nodes in that network. We salute every institution, organizer and artist who has pushed residencies forward; more programs, archives and historical threads can be found in the exhibition catalogue.

关于策展人 About the Curator

胡超 Hu Chao

胡超是艺术史学者、策展人与文化写作者，广州美术学院新美术馆学研究中心副研究员、中央美术学院博士。他的研究关注东南亚、中国及更广阔地区之间的艺术联系与交流历史，将历史研究与当代艺术讨论相结合，尝试从跨区域的历史脉络中理解亚洲艺术的发展。

他较早从中国与东南亚相互关联的艺术史视野系统开展“南洋木刻”研究，关注中国新兴木刻在东南亚的传播与在地发展，以及木刻展览推动对东南亚历史的重写。

他也长期研究文化记忆与身份建构，关注博物馆、美术馆、艺术创作与视觉文化如何参与历史书写。著有《国民身份的建构：新加坡的国家博物馆和美术馆》（广西师范大学出版社）。相关学术论文结合不同国家的案例，讨论国际博物馆合作如何在海外展厅中构建“文化领土”，以及族群记忆与国家历史、华人民俗与国家非遗等话题。

他的策展项目多由学术研究发展而来。围绕1930至1950年代以东南亚为中心的艺术交流，他考察墨西哥、中国与东南亚艺术家的往来及其相互联系，并据此组织历史材料与当代艺术作品，联合策展了第二届泛东南亚三年展中的《巴厘岛：雨林外的艺术与世界》（2026，广州美术学院美术馆）。

在对中国当代艺术发展进程的研究中，他较早梳理艺术驻留计划的历史及其国内外交流脉络，并以此为基础联合策展了本次展览《借壳：驻留计划溯源和中国当代艺术进程》。

他的公共写作从视觉文化与历史研究进入当代社会议题，发表于《南华早报》《亚洲时报》《泰晤士高等教育》及 Critical Asian Studies 的 Commentary Board 等平台。

Hu Chao

Hu Chao is an art historian, curator and cultural writer working across China, Southeast Asia and other regions. He is a Research Associate Professor at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and holds a PhD from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

His systematic research on Nanyang woodcuts examines the circulation and local development of China’s New Woodcut Movement in Southeast Asia, and how exhibitions contribute to rewriting regional history. His work on cultural memory and identity explores overseas museum galleries as “cultural territories”, ethnic memory and national history, and Chinese folk traditions and national intangible cultural heritage. He is the author of Constructing National Identity: National Museums and Galleries of Singapore, 1965–2015, published in Chinese by Guangxi Normal University Press.

His exhibitions develop from academic research. He co-curated Bali Island: Art and the World Beyond the Rainforest (2026, GAFA Art Museum), part of the Second Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial. He also co-curated the present exhibition, Origins of Artist Residencies in China: Another Pathway to Contemporary Chinese Art (“Borrowing the Shell”), drawing on his research into artist residencies and their networks of exchange.

His public writing brings visual culture and historical research to contemporary social questions. His essays have appeared in the South China Morning Post, Asia Times, Times Higher Education and Critical Asian Studies Commentary.