Chang Tsong-zung

b. 1951, Hong Kong

Independent curator, art critic, gallery director

Chang Tsong-zung opened the Hanart T Z Gallery in Hong Kong in 1993 and Hanart (Taipei) Gallery in Taiwan in 1988, the latter having changed its operations in 2001, becoming a curatorial and consultancy service. Over the past twenty years, Hanart has represented a large number of contemporary Chinese artists, including Ju Ming from Taiwan, Luis Chan from Hong Kong, and, from mainland China, the 85 New Wave [Art] Movement artist Wu Shanzhuan and ‘China’s New Art Post-89’ artists such as Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Qiu Zhijie.

Chang has also played a major role in curating and promoting contemporary Chinese art since the 1980s. In this capacity he first began to organize exhibitions of Hong Kong and Taiwan art, expanding by the late 1980s to include art from mainland China. In early 1989, Chang organized ‘The Stars: 10 Years’ on the tenth anniversary of the first unofficial art exhibition held in China after the Cultural Revolution.

In 1993 with Li Xianting, he co-curated and organized the seminal exhibition ‘China’s New Art, Post-1989’ in Hong Kong, one of the first large shows of experimental art. In 1994 and 1996, he curated the Special Chinese Exhibitions for the 22nd and 23rd São Paulo Bienniels in Brazil, and, in 1995 he selected the Chinese artists for the Venice Biennale centenary exhibition. In 1996, with Graeme Murray he curated ‘Reckoning with the Past: Contemporary Chinese Painting’ (Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland), the first exhibition to present to an overseas audience artists from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other major exhibitions include: ‘Faces and Bodies of the Middle Kingdom’ (Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, 1997); ‘Power of the Word’ (Taiwan Art Museum and various US venues, 1999); ‘Polypolis: Art from Asian Pacific Megacities’ (Kunsthaus, Hamburg, 2001) and ‘Magic at Street Level’ (Hong Kong-China Exhibition, 49th Venice Biennale, 2001); and, with Jean-Marc Decrop, ‘Paris-Pekin’ (Espace Cardin, Paris, 2002), the largest exhibition to date of Chinese art in Europe. An advocate of the presentation of artistic movements rather than just individual artists, Chang has also written numerous articles and catalogue essays, including ‘Into the Nineties’ (China’s New Art, 1993), The Other Face’ (Identity and Alterity, 1995) and ‘A New Era for Chinese Art’ (Made by Chinese, 2001).

ALICE MING WAI JIM