Location:  Central Gallery & New Gallery, UCCA Beijing

“Slide / Show” examines the role of projected photography in the development of Chinese contemporary art. In the 1980s—during the Deng Xiaoping era and its aftermath—art historical texts and images from beyond China’s borders began to filter into the country, introducing new cultural references. Portable and reproducible, the photographic slide was central to this expanding landscape of exchange. In the era before the Internet, slides gave artists, historians, and curators new views onto art produced elsewhere; many likewise adopted the medium as a tool to share their work more broadly. Simultaneously, the export of artworks by emerging Chinese artists into the global market meant that they entered the wider contemporary art discourse for the first time. “Slide / Show” presents a unique perspective on this period of Chinese art history by exploring the various applications of projected photography spanning from the Cultural Revolution to the 2010s. Organized around key characteristics of the slide medium—its transparency, refraction, and use in transmission—the exhibition guides the viewer through the history of projection in China and elucidates a genealogy of the medium in the post-Mao context.