The University of Chicago Center for the Art of East Asia

The University of Chicago Center for the Art of East Asia The Center for the Art of East Asia supports scholarship, collaboration, and student exchange through the studies of East Asian art and visual culture.

Please join us in welcoming Shasha Liu Shasha Liu, CAEA’s new Postdoctoral Fellow at the rank of Instructor!Shasha speci...
09/10/2026

Please join us in welcoming Shasha Liu Shasha Liu, CAEA’s new Postdoctoral Fellow at the rank of Instructor!

Shasha specializes in modern Chinese art and visual culture, with research interests spanning Dunhuang, photography, exhibition history, animation, and the politics and technologies of reproduction. Her work explores how images travel across media, borders, and historical contexts—and how those movements shape our understanding of Chinese art.

At CAEA, Shasha will contribute to the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP), bringing her research into conversation with the Center’s curatorial and digital humanities initiatives.

Shasha received her PhD in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and is a 2026–27 Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Flexible Early Career Fellow in China Studies. She is currently developing her first book, Dunhuang as Method: Media, Knowledge, and the Making of Modern Cultural Heritage, which traces the mediation of Dunhuang through photography, mural copying, exhibitions, cinema, and digital technologies across China, Taiwan, Japan, and Eastern Europe.

We’re thrilled to welcome Shasha to the CAEA community!

09/10/2026

The Six Steeds of Zhaoling are now displayed in museums in Xi’an and Philadelphia, where they are often encountered like wall reliefs. Their original design, however, offered a very different viewing experience.

At Emperor Taizong’s mausoleum, the six works stood as freestanding stone screens beside the Northern Sima Gate. Their fronts, sides, pedestals, orientation, and surrounding architecture all shaped how visitors moved through and understood the site.

DCADP’s reconstruction therefore recovers more than the objects—it restores lost relationships among artwork, architecture, and viewer.

Explore the spatial reconstruction:

The Six Steeds of Zhaoling: Recovering an Original Spatial Form

Watch the digital reconstruction of Zhaoling’s Northern Sima Gate:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1E83A6zEZe/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=10c2cde4113308992551a2…

DCADP is a collaboration between CAEA and Xi’an Jiaotong University, and generously supported by the Cyrus Tang Foundation.

Created to commemorate six warhorses ridden by Emperor Taizong during the campaigns that helped establish the Tang dynas...
09/09/2026

Created to commemorate six warhorses ridden by Emperor Taizong during the campaigns that helped establish the Tang dynasty, the Six Steeds of Zhaoling remained at his mausoleum for centuries.

In the early twentieth century, the sculptures were cut, removed, and dispersed. Four originals are now in Xi’an, while two—Saluzi and Quanmaogua—are held in Philadelphia. Digital reconstruction now brings the six works together again, opening new ways to examine their intertwined history.

Explore the project: 
https://caea.lib.uchicago.edu/dcadp/en/sixhorses/intro/

The Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP) is a collaboration between the Center for the Art of East Asia (CAEA) and Xi’an Jiaotong University, with generous support from the Cyrus Tang Foundation.

What does it mean to curate contemporary Chinese art at a moment when perceptions of China are rapidly shifting?In a new...
09/03/2026

What does it mean to curate contemporary Chinese art at a moment when perceptions of China are rapidly shifting?

In a new interview for Sixty Inches From Center, Xiao Faria daCunha speaks with CAEA Associate Director Ellen Larson about curating Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart and the challenges of presenting contemporary Chinese art in the era of “Chinamaxxing.”

Their conversation considers how exhibitions can complicate familiar narratives about China rather than reinforce them—making space for humor, experimentation, memory, identity, technology, migration, and the diverse experiences of artists working within and beyond China.

“My hope is that Beyond Boundaries encourages viewers to recognize that contemporary Chinese art isn’t a single style or political position.”

The conversation also reflects on CAEA Director Wu Hung’s curatorial legacy, Chicago’s Chinese artistic communities, and the importance of asking better questions about contemporary Chinese art.

Read the full bilingual interview via the link in our bio.

Xiao Faria daCunha, “Curating Chinese Contemporary Art in the Era of Chinamaxxing,” Sixty Inches From Center, September 2, 2026.

07/07/2026

The exhibition “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple” is now open to the public!

On June 5, the exhibition kicked off with a joint talk co-organized by UChicago CAEA, UChicago Hong Kong Campus, and 香港故宮文化博物館 Hong Kong Palace Museum.

Don’t miss “Fragmented yet Connected,” on view at UChicago’s Hong Kong Center through December 4, 2026.

“Beyond Boundaries” reviewed on Artforum China! “From the bodily experiments of the East Village to the virtual beings i...
06/24/2026

“Beyond Boundaries” reviewed on Artforum China!

“From the bodily experiments of the East Village to the virtual beings imagined by Lu Yang, ‘Beyond Boundaries’ presents not only a history of contemporary Chinese art as narrated through an institutional framework, but also a story about how art historical knowledge itself continually confronts new objects of study. The timeline records the formation of that framework, while the artworks reveal how many of the themes once central to contemporary Chinese art have taken on new forms under changing technological and cultural conditions. How museums might curate, collect, and narrate these emerging forms may ultimately be the central question that ‘Beyond Boundaries’ poses.”
 
“从东村艺术家的身体实验到陆扬创造的虚拟生命，“超越边界”所呈现的不仅是一段中国当代艺术在机构叙述下的发展历程，也是一套艺术史学科知识框架不断面对新对象的过程。展厅中的时间轴记录了这一框架的形成，而展览中的作品则显示出，当身体与记忆进入数字空间之后，那些曾经构成中国当代艺术核心的主题在新的技术条件与文化环境中已经演变出新的形态。如何策展、收藏和讲述这些新的对象，或许正是“超越边界”提出的问题。”

Review by: Clover Xuesong Zhou

Check out our link in the bio for the complete review (in Chinese)! Plan your visit before the exhibition closes on July 5!

Smart Museum of Art ❤️

Did you know there are less than THREE WEEKS left to see “Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art a...
06/22/2026

Did you know there are less than THREE WEEKS left to see “Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart”before the exhibition closes on July 5, 2026.

Plan your visit today! Admission is always free!
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10am-4:30pm (closed Mondays)

Smart Museum of Art ❤️🌈

CAEA is thrilled to announce that Seonghee Ha (second year PhD student in the Department of Art History) is the recipien...
06/12/2026

CAEA is thrilled to announce that Seonghee Ha (second year PhD student in the Department of Art History) is the recipient of the 2026 Liu Cong Memorial Prize for the Best Essay on East Asian Art and Visual Culture.

Ha’s essay, “In Her Heart of Hearts: Reconciliation of the Erotic and the Intellectual in Sin Yunbok’s Beauty,” examines Beauty (see below) , a life-size portrait of a courtesan by Sin Yunbok (ca. 1758–after 1817). Although noted for its portrait-like qualities, it has not been linked to late Chosŏn portrait discourse due to its erotic connotations. This period saw growing skepticism about portraiture’s ability to convey the sitter’s spirit. This essay argues that Sin responds to this concern by mobilizing erotic sentiment—typically excised from the discourses on portraiture—as a source of vitality that animates the image. Positioning romantic feeling at the center of its signification, Beauty challenges the assumption that the erotic and the intellectual are mutually incompatible.

The Liu Cong Memorial Prize recognizes excellent scholarship in East Asian art and visual culture by graduate students at the University of Chicago and encourages the developing of writing skills for publishable essays. CAEA established the prize in 2010-11 in memory of Liu Cong (1979-2008), former graduate student, and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History.

Thank you to all who attended the opening reception for “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple....
06/07/2026

Thank you to all who attended the opening reception for “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple.”

“Fragmented yet Connected” is open at UChicago’s Hong Kong Center now through December 4, 2026.

“Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple” is organized by Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago and curated by Dr. Mengge Cao . Co-organizers include the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University and Center for the Three-Dimensional Arts at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Generous funding support has been provided by Cyrus Tang Foundation, The University of Chicago campus in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and University of Chicago Department of Art History.

First look at “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple.” On view at UChicago’s Hong Kong Center ...
06/06/2026

First look at “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple.” On view at UChicago’s Hong Kong Center until December 4, 2026.

“Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple” is organized by Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago . Co-organizers include the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University and Center for the Three-Dimensional Arts at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Generous funding support has been provided by Cyrus Tang Foundation, The University of Chicago campus in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and University of Chicago Department of Art History.

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