Students

• Sichuan University, Chengdu

• aishu.amelie [AT] gmail.com

Ai Shu is a PhD student at the Arts College of Sichuan University in Chengdu. Her research interests centre on the history of museums in China, modern Chinese art and the expanding field of art photography during the Republican period and PRC.

• Zhejiang University, Shanghai

• fanzhensopunk [AT] hotmail.com

Fan Zhen received his B.A. from the Department of Art History and Theory at Nanjing University in Chinese Art History. He is currently studying in the Master’s program of the Art Department of Zhejiang University in Shanghai. Fan Zhen’s research interests include the visual products of Chinese epigraphic studies from the Song dynasty onwards, as well as the transformation of literati painting in the late Qing and early Republican period in China.

In the course of “The Ethnographic Eye”, he will focus on expanding notions of Chinese art in the later Republican period. Fan Zhen analyses how collecting and publishing activities of newly emerging painting societies in Shanghai as well as activities by private painter-connoisseurs like Wu Hufan 吴湖帆 ((1894-1968) interconnected and eventually opened up new approaches towards the definition of Chinese painting and heritage.

• Communication University of China, Beijing

• gaoandre [AT] gmail.com

Gao Chu is a student at the Communication University of China in Beijing. His research focuses on the history of photography in China between the 1930s and 1980s. Having analysed thousands of negatives, photographic prints, letters, manuscripts, private journals and lecture notes of photographers active from the 1930s to the period immediately after the founding of the PRC during the course of his studies, Gao joins “The Ethnographic Eye” with a keen interest in gathering oral histories and in shifting ideas on the role of the photographer in China.

He wishes to focus more strongly on positions in photojournalism and the development of Chinese photography during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

• Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing

• 261574405 [AT] qq.com

Han Yuanyuan is a graduate student at the Humanities Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese art, especially the theoretical positions of art historian Teng Gu 滕固 and artist Feng Zikai丰子恺. More recently, her research focuses on artistic approaches towards depicting national minorities along China’s western frontier during the 1930s and 1940s.

In the course of “Ethnographic Eye”, Han Yanyuan will analyse how the war with Japan (1937-1945) impacted the last phase of cultural policies of the Guomindang and media coverage of the role of the western frontier.

• Heidelberg University, Heidelberg

• lainyo34 [AT] gmail.com

He Renyue is currently studying in the MA-programme at the Institute for East Asian Art History at Heidelberg University.

She is going to combine her interests both in Chinese archaeology and modern Chinese art by tracing approaches and methodological foundations of Chinese archaeological studies and heritage preservation efforts during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

• Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing

• 69342111 [AT] qq.com

Ji Fan received her Bachelor’s degree from the Art Department at Nanjing Normal University, and finished her MA in Chinese Art at Tianjin Normal University. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation at the Humanities Department at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Her research focuses on Qing dynasty court art and early Republican period painting.

She was a curatorial assistant for the Tianjin Museum and the Tianjin Art Museum and organised exhibitions on late Ming and Qing court art (2009), as well as on the development of Chinese painting between 1900 and 1950 (2011). By joining the team of “The Ethnographic Eye”, Ji Fan intends to further pursue her interest in Republican period painting, particularly the impact of political doctrines of the 1940s on the artistic language of refugee artists.

• Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing

• jiangyuehong [AT] hotmail.com

Jiang Yuehong is a PhD candidate at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She studied classical Chinese literature at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Beijing University, at the Department of Literature at the Beijing School of Film Studies and received her Master’s degree in Chinese Art History at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Jiang Yuehong’s research interests are in the interconnections of nationalism, the nation state, and art practice. She has analysed modes of representing industrial development in the art of the early PRC and during the Cultural Revolution and dealt with the creation of national myths in art.

Participating in “The Ethnographic Eye”, she is especially interesting in developing a critical understanding of the reception history of art created in the wartime, i.e. she will examine methods and conditions through which wartime visual material gained access to public collections and a place in large exhibitions.

• Sichuan University, Chengdu

• 157602589 [AT] qq.com

Tang Yi has finished her Master’s degree at the Arts College of Sichuan University and is currently a PhD student at the Arts College. Since 2009, she also works as an assistant at the Sichuan Provincial Museum, where she among others examined hundreds of mural copies by painter Zhang Daqian.

Tang Yi’s research interest is on Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art, with a special focus on the painting of the Republican period.

Tang Yi wishes to enrich her previous research in the work of Zhang Daqian by more thoroughly examining his activities at the Dunhuang Caves during the 1940s.

• Sichuan University, Chengdu

• 476470662 [AT] qq.com

Wang Kexin is a MA student at the Arts College of Sichuan University in Chengdu. Her research focus is on Pre-modern Chinese Art and Art Theory.

She currently works on the figurative programmes surrounding Guanyin statues of the Song dynasty within the Sichuan region.

Through her participation in “The Ethnographic Eye”, Wang combines her training in pre-modern Chinese Buddhist art with her interest in the reception of Buddhist material culture in the early 20th century. She focuses on Buddhist studies during the 1940s and the work of the Northwestern Art and Cultural Relics Research Team along China’s frontier zones.

• Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing

• sanmutang [AT] 163.com

Wu Xueshan is currently a PhD student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing with a special focus on the visual culture of the immediate pre-war and wartime period in China, in particular symbolism in the art of the time.

His previous research has led him to analyse works by Xu Beihong and Ye Qianyu, as well as the role of the expanding mass media in early 20th century China on the popularisation of art.

Wu wishes to conduct research in the ways art and the Chinese mass media intersected during the wartime period and how the “War of Resistance” and notions of a unified Chinese nation were communicated during the 1940s.

• China Academy of Arts, Hangzhou

• 2634997139 [AT] qq.com

Xin Chen is a MA student at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where she researches the craze in antiquities exhibitions in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th century. Her other research interests focus on pre-modern Chinese painting, as well art and ritual architecture in China.

In the course of “The Ethnographic Eye”, she will shift her attention to painting during the wartime period. At the heart of her project is the relation between the way painters approached the frontier in art, their exhibition strategies during the 1940s, and the readings that their work received after the war through specific methods of museum display.

• Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou

• 549963279 [AT] qq.com

Yang Fanshu is a MA student at the Humanities Department at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. After practising art herself and focusing on guohua during her undergraduate studies, Yang Fanshu now pursues art historical studies and specialises in Modern Chinese Art.

Her research focuses on the peculiarities of art circles and art production in the Guangdong region during the early 20th century.

As a participant of “The Ethnographic Eye”, Yang plans to analyse the vast travels throughout the frontier and the resulting landslides in the artistic ideals of painter Liu Xiongcai – a member of the so-called Lingnan School of Painting centred in the Guangdong region.

• Northwestern University, Chicago

• yangxiao812 [AT] gmail.com

Artists with first-hand experience in European art trends of the early 20th century, particularly French-trained painters, and their discovery of Western China’s minority regions during the 1940s.

• Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing

• ydwcafa [AT] sina.cn

Yin Dingwei received his Bachelor’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. At the moment, he is a MA student at the Department for Art Theory at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.

Yin is interested in pre-modern, as well as modern Chinese painting, in particular the work of Pan Tianshou. His research deals with the history of modern design in China and the work of painter-designer Pang Xunqin.

Through his participation in the “Ethnographic Eye”, Yin will immerse himself further in the study of Chinese design in the Republican period and deal with the new impulses artist-educators such as Pang Xunqin received through their flight to West China.

• Sichuan University, Chengdu

• chuanda2007 [AT] qq.com

Zhao Shuai is a MA student at the Arts College of Sichuan University in Chengdu. His research focuses on the history of design and design education during the Republican period in China.

In the course of “The Ethnographic Eye”, Zhao Shuai will examine the impact that cultural products by local minority groups and newly excavated archaeological relics had on coastal artists. Approaching the issue from the angle of design history, Zhao Shuai deals with the way ideas of artistic “nativism” shifted and how new artistic stimuli from the frontier shaped reforms in design curricula during the wartime.

• Heidelberg University, Heidelberg

• Muyu_Zhou [AT] msn.com

Zhou Muyu received her Bachelor’s degree at the Art History Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Guangzhou. Currently, she is a MA student at Heidelberg University.

Building upon her earlier coursework and research, Zhou will examine the travels of photojournalist Zhuang Xueben along the south-western and western frontier of China during the late 1930s and 1940s. She seeks to trace the implications of his widely received work, his photographic techniques, ideals and aesthetics for the artistic languages of his contemporaries.