• Installation view of Long March Project - Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone at Long March Space, Beijing, 2018. Image courtesy of Long March Project, Beijing. Photo by ARTEXB

    Installation view of Long March Project - Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone at Long March Space, Beijing, 2018. Image courtesy of Long March Project, Beijing. Photo by ARTEXB

  • Installation view of Long March Project - The Deficit Faction at Long March Space, Beijing, 2019. Image courtesy of Long March Project, Beijing. Photo by ARTEXB

    Installation view of Long March Project - The Deficit Faction at Long March Space, Beijing, 2019. Image courtesy of Long March Project, Beijing. Photo by ARTEXB

  • Installation view of Long March Project - Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone at the Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2018

    Installation view of Long March Project: Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone at Long March Space, Beijing, 2018. Image courtesy of Long March Project, Beijing. Photo by ARTEXB.

Zian Chen (Taiwan) is a writer and curator working on “critical science fictioning” – a hermeneutics on the discourse of technocracy and technology in East Asia. While these threads were developed during his time as a researcher at the Long March Project, Beijing, he has introduced this practice in a number of subsequent co-curated projects, namely the Long March Project: The Deficit Faction (Long March Space, Beijing, 2019), Planet Marx Reading Club (various locations in Beijing and Shanghai, 2019), and Long March Project: Building Code Violations III – Special Economic Zone (Long March Space, Beijing and Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2018).

Zian is the first Asymmetry Art Foundation Curatorial Fellow at the Whitechapel Gallery where he will be researching the institution’s archives and working alongside curators on forthcoming programmes. During his residency, he will also further develop his own independent project: a library-exhibition titled Production Fever 2008, which reflects on the boom in art production in China that preceded the global financial crisis of 2008.

Zian’s writing primarily take the form of the guidebooks to his curatorial projects, however he has also contributed fiction writing to Future Histories: Mark Dion and Arseny Zhilyaev (Mousse, 2016), The Two-Sided Lake: Scenarios, Storyboards and Sets from Liverpool Biennial (Liverpool University Press, 2016), and has published a pamphlet A FanThesis on Ray Brassier’s Prometheanism (Salt Projects, 2018). In 2015 he received the Contemporary Art Writing and Critical Thinking Award from Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco.

* Due to Covid-19, Zian Chen was unable to fully take on the position as Asymmetry Curatorial Fellow at the Whitechapel Gallery in March 2020 and returned from London to Taiwan for safety reasons. As his professional schedule clashes with the upcoming fellowship dates, all of the partners hope to collaborate with Zian again in the future.

In partnership with

Asymmetry Art Foundation Curatorial Fellowship at the Whitechapel Gallery *

and additional support from

Delfina Foundation’s Network of Asia-Pacific Patrons

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Please note all residents biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit their website.

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