Fei Contemporary Art Center presents "Precariously Yours: Gender, Class, And Urbanity In Contemporary Shanghai"

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2014.12.2

非艺术中心喷绘海报

Rapid reforms in China have resulted in increasing inequalities and disjunctures. While Shanghai is transforming into a global mega-city, like many other big cities in Asia, its dwellers are often confronted with a way of life enabled and disabled by precarity. This precarity is generally perceived to be along the lines of labour and class, characterised in Guy Standing’s term “Precariat,” or those with short labour contracts and poor working conditions.

In Precariously Yours, Fei Contemporary Art Center extends the notion of precarity towards the domain of gender, love and sexuality. In particular single women serve as a prism to explore the complexities surrounding precarity, urbanity and class. For instance, the derogative term shengnü – “leftover women” – gestures towards a group of women whose singlehood at their late 20s seems to be enough to evoke intense stigmatization and reiteration of societal demands regarding love and family life. Precariously Yours wonders: How do single women negotiate the multiple expectations and demands that society imposes upon them? What are their tactics of resistance against normative gender roles and expectations? How to imagine the city as a more intimate and fragile space? What is to be lost and gained in remaining a single woman?

Precariously Yours explores these questions through an art exhibition, lectures and public debates. The workshop will particularly zoom in on how tropes like shengnü can be read as imaginations of a “new” Asian femininity, how different modes of loving and desiring are being explored in diverse creative and sexual cultures in Asian cities and how art and activism attempt to intervene in hegemonic understandings of love, gender and sexuality. Precariously Yours engages not only with Shanghai, but also with other Asian cities as to foster a comparative approach and allow reflections upon the lives and hopes of single women in a rapidly changing Asia.

During the workshop, international scholars, activists and artists will share their experiences with colleagues in China. The exhibition will feature works by LIANG Yue, GUO Qingling and Lise YUAN.

Research Workshops

2014.12.04Rockbund Art Museum

17:00 – 17:30

Workshop Opening

Opening by 3 Project Leaders

Prof. Dr. Christiane BROSIUS

(Heidelberg University )

Prof. Dr. Jeroen de KLOET

(University of Amsterdam)

Dr. Melissa BUTCHER

(The Open University, UK)

17:30 – 19:00

Public Keynote Lecture

Sex and Women in the Metropolis:

A Communitarian / Narrative View

Speaker

Prof. Dr. Josephine HO

(National Central University)

Discussant

Dr. CHOW Yiu Fai

(Hong Kong Baptist University )

Venue: 2F No.133 Yuanmingyuan Rd. Huangpu District, Shanghai

2014.12.05Meta Gallery

10:00 – 11:30

Public Keynote Lecture

Precarious Autonomy: Chinese Women Students (Re)negotiating Gender through Educational Mobility

Speaker

Dr. Fran MARTIN

(The University of Melbourne )

Discussant

Dr. Lucetta Yip Lo KAM

(Hong Kong Baptist University )

12:00 – 13:30

Public Panel Discussion: Shengnü & New Asian Women

Chair – Dr. Wayne MODEST

(Tropenmuseum )

Dr. Leta Hong FINCHER

(Hong Kong University of Science and Technology )

3 Project Leaders

Dr. Lena SCHEEN (NYU Shanghai)

15:00 – 16:00

Public Panel Discussion: Love & Desire

Chair – Prof. Dr. Christiane BROSIUS (Heidelberg University )

Dr. SHEN Yifei (Fudan University )

WU Xiaoyan

(Shanghai Institute of Arts) &

CAI Luo Yi (Feminist Activist)

16:30 – 18:30

Film Screening & Sharing by Director Walker Lee:

Women (2012)

Venue: Meta Gallery, No. 7 Lane 212 Wuyuan Road

2014.12.06Meta Gallery

10:00 – 11:30

Public Keynote Lecture

I’m Not a Feminist But...! Young Women in Urban India and Gender Politics in a Time of Globalisation

Speaker

Dr. Shilpa PHADKE

(Tata Institute of Social Science)

Discussant

Dr. Wayne MODEST

(Tropenmuseum)

12:00 – 13:30

Public Panel Discussion: Art & Activism

Chair– Dr. Melissa BUTCHER

(The Open University, UK)

Evie WU

(NVAI Representative)

Sheba CHHACHHI (Individual Artist)

Kevin MAY (NGO Worker)

13:30 – 14:30

Lunch

14:30 – 15:00

Closing

Venue: Meta Gallery, No. 7 Lane 212 Wuyuan Road

About the exhibition

Opening: 06 Dec, 2014 at 6pm-8pm

Exhibition Date: 07 Dec - 27 Dec, 2014 (11am-5pm Closed Sunday & Monday)

Venue: 709 Lingshi Road (near Wanrong Road), Building No. 40-2F, Shanghai

Artists: Guo Qingling, Liang Yue, Lise Yuen

Curator: Yiu Fai Chow

Producer: Li Xiaofei

Organisers: Fei Contemporary Art Center (FCAC), and HERA Joint Research Programme “Cultural Encounters” - Creating the ‘new’ Asian woman: entanglements of urban space, cultural encounters and gendered identities in Shanghai and Delhi [SINGLE]

Sponsor: Netherlands Embassy and Consulates, China

Venue Acknowledgements: Rockbund Art Museum, Meta Gallery

For enquiries, please contact Ms Penn Ip on 13122252089.

Courtesy of Fei Contemporary Art Center.