We are pleased to present the following curator talk:
Zhu Xiaowen: Centering the Margins: Rethinking Contemporary Art and the ESEA Experience
▪Date＆Time: Monday, November 17th, 2025, 18:30 -20:00
▪Venue: Design Commons, Ohashi Campus of Kyushu University
▪Language: English
▪Target Audience: Students and the general public
*If you are interested in attending this event, please register here. Max. 50 people
https://forms.office.com/r/s4EimY54vC?origin=lprLink
Zhu Xiaowen is an artist, curator, and author. She is the director of esea contemporary in Manchester, the UK’s only non-profit art center dedicated to artists and practices informed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cultural backgrounds.
Zhu will begin by briefly introducing her art practice and her professional path between art making and curating, before outlining her ideas for esea contemporary – which she has led since 2022 – and reflecting on how we might imagine East and Southeast Asia today, beyond fixed categories and inherited narratives.
Zhu has led esea contemporary through a pivotal transformation, reshaping its identity with a more inclusive vision rooted in community engagement and cross-cultural dialogue. Under her direction, the organization has expanded its international reach through exhibitions, residencies, performances, digital commissions, and collaborations with partners, including the Liverpool Biennial, Fondazione Torino Musei, the Bagri Foundation, the Henry Moore Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global.
The institution’s ongoing commitment to reimagining the representation of ESEA cultural experiences is also strongly linked to Manchester —a city shaped by migration, labor, and anti-colonial struggle. In her talk, Zhu will discuss how diasporic practices in contemporary art navigate the legacies of British imperialism, industrialization, and global capitalism – and more recently, digital capitalism – while opening spaces for hybridity, translation, and renewal. Zhu further asks how institutions can work more effectively and strategically with artists and communities to grow differently — renewing themselves not through extraction, but through reciprocity and care.
Zhu Xiaowen is an artist, curator, and author who is currently the director of esea contemporary in Manchester. She also serves on the British Council’s Arts and Creative Economy Advisory Group. Previously, she was Assistant Director at Times Art Center Berlin. She has worked internationally in Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Berlin. She is the author of Oriental Silk (Hatje Cantz, 2020) and Encounters (Shanghai Educational Publishing House, 2022). She has lectured widely at institutions including the London School of Economics and Political Science, Goldsmiths, University of London, Heidelberg University, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, University of California, Los Angeles, Tsinghua University, and was named one of Apollo magazine’s 40 Under 40 Asia Pacific Thinkers. Zhu holds an MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University in New York State, USA, and a BA in Film Production and Media Art from Tongji University in Shanghai, which included an exchange stay at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany.