Queer Video Art in Mainland China

This series of screenings/panel discussions accompanying the SOAS Gallery exhibition ‘In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere’ showcases contemporary video artworks by Sinophone artists along with in-depth discussions about their making and significance with the artists and experts in the field of Chinese contemporary art studies. The screened artworks are aesthetically and technically diverse. They also address a range of issues, including institutional critique, patriarchy, resistance to authority, queer identity, social control, climate change and well-being. Panel discussions at the screenings will be followed by extended audience Q&A.

The videos featured in this series of screenings contrast aesthetically in many cases with those included in the exhibition ‘In-/Visible Spectrums.’ While all the videos in the exhibition are lyrical, poetic and conceptually abstract most of those featured in the screenings involve more explicit narratives and/or forms of social engagement.

This talk will be with Sheng Jinghao 沈靖皓 with Professor Hongwei Bao 包宏伟 and Professor Paul Gladston

This screening/panel showcases a video by the mainland China-based artist Sheng Jinghao. Sheng's video presents a quasi-cinematic performance by the artist addressing queer identity and relationships to traditional Chinese folk culture. The panel will be co-chaired by Prof. Hongwei Bao, an internationally renowned expert on queer art and culture in China.

Exhibition and screenings/panels produced and financially supported by the University of New South Wales Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art (JNCCA).

The event is being held at the Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT) at SOAS, University of London. When you arrive at SOAS, you will need to sign in at the front desk, then you will be directed to the KLT.

Paul Gladston

Paul GLADSTON is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, a Distinguished Affiliate Fellow of the UK-China Humanities Alliance, Tsinghua University, Beijing and a member of the governing board of the journal Third Text. His book-length publications include Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History (Reaktion 2014), awarded ‘best publication’, Awards of Art China (2015), and Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity (Bloomsbury 2019). He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Intellect) and the book series Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics (Palgrave) as well as being the editor of numerous collected editions and special journal editions, including Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art: Cultural Diversity and Tradition (Palgrave 2024) and Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West" Contemporaneity (Palgrave 2021). He was the curatorial director of the exhibition ‘Yique’s Way – Mutuality in Extremes’ (Ugly Duck, London 2024), organizer of a scholarly roundtable accompanying the exhibition ‘Strange Wonders: Jizi and Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Art from China’, SOAS Gallery (2024) and an academic advisor to the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Art of Change: New Directions from China’ (Hayward Gallery-South Bank Centre, London 2012).

Hongwei Bao

Hongwei BAO is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he co-directs the Centre for Critical Theory and Cultural Studies. He is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (NIAS Press, 2018), Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022) and Queering the Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2024). He coedited Contemporary Queer Chinese Art (Bloomsbury, 2023), Queer Literature in the Sinosphere (Bloomsbury, 2024) and the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, 2024). As a creative writer, he has published the poetry pamphlet Dream of the Orchid Pavillion (Big White Shed 2024) and the poetry collection The Passion of the Rabbit God (Valley Press 2024).

Sheng Jinghao

Sheng Jinghao is an artist working across film, performance and installation. Born in 1995 in Sichuan, China, he graduated in 2018 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Master’s degree in Moving Image Art Research. He currently lives and works between Chengdu and Beijing.

Sheng’s recent practice focuses on gender studies in relation to Chinese traditional culture, with particular attention to rural contexts. His work explores the dynamic relationships between the body, gender identity and social environment through contrasting, dislocating and fluid perspectives. Drawing on moving image and performative strategies, he examines how identities are shaped, negotiated and transformed within shifting cultural frameworks.

In-/Visible Spectrums: Contemporary Video Art from the Sinosphere is a landmark exhibition of eleven Sinophone artists working across mainland China, Hong Kong and the diaspora. Featuring lyrical and conceptually rich video works, it explores transcultural aesthetics, everyday experience and shifting identities within the fluid, global Sinosphere. The exhibition opens on Thursday 16th April and is on until 20th June 2026 at the SOAS Gallery. Open Tuesday to Saturday 10:30am-5pm and late on Thursdays until 8pm. Free and open to the public, no booking required.

Header image: Fox and Woman (2024). two-channel video 32:9, colour, sound, with Chinese and English subtitles, 21’25’’, by Sheng Jinqhao

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Host or Publisher Brunei Gallery, SOAS