Contemporary art overlaps with many other art forms as the lines between contemporary dance and performance art come closer together. It’s tough to see where to draw that line between film and video art — and arguably, there’s no need for a defining line. Linlin Zhu is a contemporary art curator and filmmaker who wants to bring these two worlds closer together by having one foot in either world.
She has curated exhibitions in the UK and China, either working alone or in concert with other curators. Some of the exhibitions are covered below and she’s also working with 12 film museums in China to source props from famous films to populate their collections.
She was one of the curators for an exhibition of International artists, titled ‘Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail’, at the Petitree gallery in Shenzhen, China, June 2024 (pictured below). It took inspiration from a short story by Virginia Woolf titled ‘The Mark on the Wall’, where a single mark on the wall sets her imagination off in different directions. It’s a process that feels fitting for both artists and curators who can often be drawn to a little nugget of information and build up an artwork or exhibition from there, spiralling out to a bigger theme like the spiral of a snail shell.
Many of the Chinese artists in the show graduated from UK art schools and with so many Chinese artists choosing to study in British art schools there’s an opportunity to see how the works of artists from both countries influence each other and have synergies. Linlin was born in China and studied in the UK, so she is in the perfect position to curate shows that bring these artists together.
She also curated the new media element of the exhibition ‘Bodily’ at London’s Silian Gallery, in April 2024. It was a group show of six artists that all create works relating to the body and its presence – whether that be Abdollah Nafisi’s musical performances that connect to the electrical impulses travelling through his body or Jiachen Zeng’s ceramics that reflect the loneliness we faced during the pandemic and how we were all illuminated by the screens we used to interact with the wider world. Tying into these works Zeng also hosted a workshop during the exhibition that invited the audience to feel the bodily feel of her materials and the action of sculpting (pictured below).
Part of Linlin’s curation included a screening of Francesca Hummler’s film “Washing ‘Oma of the Rocks’ Off of My Thigh” where she uses self-portraiture to look at how trauma manifests in the body – in this case, she prints photos of her grandmother onto her skin and washes them off as her way of understanding and reconnecting with her family and their past experiences.
Another London exhibition that Linlin curated, solo this time, was ‘ReClaim’ in November 2023 – where artists all contributed work that drew attention to the plastic waste causing a global environmental crisis. The work included Katrin Spranger’s performance that draws attention to the 1.8 litres of oil we consume per person every day and the innovative use of discarded materials, in particular plastics, to make jewellery, outfits and sculptures.
It was an exhibition on arguably the most pressing issue affecting the world – the climate emergency. Art should reflect the society in which it exists and drawing attention to our dependence on fossil fuels and the productive reuse of waste products is all part of the discussions we are having, and need to continue having, on how we live more sustainably to prevent an environmental apocalypse.
A month before this show she was part of the curatorial team for ‘The Brink’ hosted at the Ugly Duck in Bermondsey, South London. It also had a strong environmental message, with a hard-to-miss sculpture by Abigail Norris of what appeared to be a dead cow hanging in the space – made from reclaimed floor rugs and other domestic materials (pictured above). It made me reflect on how we’re trying to live more sustainably to protect ourselves and other species, but it’s our manipulation of other animals through domestication that is partly responsible for the excess emissions we emit. If we want to stop climate change, then we’re going to have to seriously re-consider our diet and its meat content.
Tying into Linlin’s film-making background, the exhibition also had a screening programme that included Laura Puig’s film on how we fail to appreciate trees, partly because their lives run on a much longer timescale than ours.
Linlin Zhu is a thoughtful curator who brings together contemporary art and film-makers to create group exhibitions that cover the important topics being discussed in the world today, and the artists who are addressing them through their varied practices. She has included artists based in the UK, China and further afield over her short career so far and we look forward to seeing future shows she curates.
You can find our more about Linlin Zhu’s work via her Instagram.
All images courtesy Linlin Zhu.
