Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and CHANEL have joined forces to empower curatorial practice and creation in the fields of photography and moving image, supporting promising young Chinese curators and researchers on their paths of growth and development. Following the successful conclusion of the 2025 Jimei × Arles “Curatorial Seminar”, the “Curatorial Engine” phase—the core advanced segment of the “Curatorial Programme for Photography and Moving Image”—is now officially launched. Five proposals stood out from the thematic responses of twelve young curators and will receive project support, with industry experts from both domestic and overseas facilitating the in-depth development of these proposals.
With a commitment to support young creative forces in photography and moving image, Three Shadows and CHANEL jointly launched the “Curatorial Programme for Photography and Moving Image” in 2025. Building on the practice of the Jimei × Arles “Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image” hosted by both parties from 2021 to 2024, the programme adopts a mentorship-driven, stepped nurturing model: “Seminar for Inspiration + Engine for Empowerment”. It aims to provide emerging Chinese curators, researchers and art project managers with a solid growth path, aiding the incubation of excellent exhibition proposals and further expand the exchange and presentation of new voice in contemporary photography and moving image curation. Over the past four editions, the award has attracted more than two hundred curators to participate in interdisciplinary research and curatorial practice in the field of photography and moving image, with related outcomes presented in Xiamen, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Kyoto and other locations. During this period, the “Curatorial Master Courses” invited 9 senior curators to offer free online courses open to all award participants. The Jimei × Arles “Curatorial Seminar for Photography and Moving Image”, held from 2024 to 2025, has attracted 89 applicants, and 23 members have been invited to participate in the in-person curatorial exchange and study led by mentors and share their curatorial perspectives and course notes with the public.
During the preceding 2025 Jimei × Arles“Curatorial Seminar,” the 12 participating members immersed themselves in a week-long intensive program featuring lectures, panel discussions, local field visits, proposal reviews, and activities during the opening week of the Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival. Each participant developed their own curatorial proposal in response to the theme “Transcending the Lines,” which were ultimately presented to the public in the form of “Proposal Sketches” presentations. Invited reviewer Christoph Wiesner, Director of Les Rencontres d’Arles, commented: “Rather than treating ‘lines’ as fixed boundaries, the proposals approach them as shifting conditions—across images, bodies, territories, and systems of belief …… This body of work reflects a curatorial approach grounded in reflection and experimentation. By privileging experience, and process, the projects invite viewers to inhabit questioning, reaffirming the role of photography and exhibition-making as spaces for critical reflection, dialogue, and shared engagement in contemporary cultural contexts.”
This edition of the “Curatorial Seminar” has invited a critique panel composed of scholars and practitioners in the field of image and curating for the proposal review session:
Senior art journalist, curators, documentary film director, president and publisher of Meta Media’s art platform, Cao Dan
Curator, art critic, Dong Bingfeng
Photography and visual culture researcher, writer, curator, Joanna Fu
Associate Professor at Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, filmmaker and curator, Pan Lu
Contemporary photographer and the co-founder and co-director of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, RongRong
The advanced list for 2025/26“Curatorial Engine” was nominated by the critique panel. Combining feedback from invited reviewers, five proposals excelled in aspects such as issue awareness, academic potential, and narrative approach. The project has strategically matched each proposal with a “dual advisor” mechanism and supports their further development. The list is as follows:
Curatorial Proposal: The East Asian Body in the Post-Body Era: Practicing Existence at the Virtual-Real Junction
Situated within the global curatorial discourse of “the body as method,” this exhibition proposes the core concept of the “Resilient-Buffering Interface” to address the dual pressures on the contemporary East Asian body: the instant exploitation of platform capitalism and the deep-seated corporeal traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Through two sections, “Collective Wandering” and “Human-Deity Interaction,” the exhibition demonstrates how the body navigates between horizontal digital networks and vertical transcendent structures. By employing subtle self-regulatory tactics—such as delay, translation, and ritual—the body carves out vital interstices for critical potential, practicing an art of existence based not on direct confrontation but on continuous modulation.
Curator: Gaia Group（Moham Zheng Wang, Ziqing Zhao）
A down-to-earth yet refreshing experimental crew
Advisors:
Gwen Lee
co-founder & director of DECK Photography Art Centre, co-founder & director of Singapore International Photography Festival
RongRong
RongRong (contemporary photographer and the co-founder and co-director of Three Shadows Photography Art Centre
Curatorial Proposal: Between Two Times of Seeing
This exhibition approaches “cracks” as both a perceptual structure and a way of seeing, focusing on Asian artists who move back and forth between homeland and foreign contexts. Across multiple languages, cultures, and geographies, they continually migrate and reconstruct memory. Structured around the juxtaposition of time, each artist presents an early work alongside a recent one, allowing artistic trajectories and historical contexts to reflect upon one another within the exhibition space. The distance and rupture between the two works become part of the process through which images generate meaning. Here, moving images do not function to repair or represent, but act as threads running through the fissures of time and experience—guiding viewers to form new experiences and memories through acts of re-seeing.
Curator: Jin Qiuyu
Working in Tokyo and Shanghai, curator, researcher
Advisors:
Taous Dahmani
art historian, curator at the Photographers’ Gallery
Pan Lu
Associate Professor at Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, filmmaker and curator
Curatorial Proposal: Sites of Precariousness
In a world of continuing upheaval, individual destinies are tightly bound to the tides of history. A lingering sense of disorienting uncertainty shadows our understanding of and response to reality. In Precarious Life, Judith Butler proposed the notion of "shared precariousness" as a way to rethink human society. Precariousness is the very premise of coexistence: we are interconnected through relations that sustain us, yet we are also vulnerable to being wounded by those same ties.
In this exhibition, seven participating artists lead us into different "sites of precariousness" through video, installation, and photography. Here, precariousness cannot be eliminated; instead, it is understood, embraced, and transformed into a powerful force for connection.
Curator: Jiawen LI
PhD candidate, curator
Advisors:
Liu Ding & Carol Yinghua Lu
curator, artistic director of the 8th Yokohama Triennale
WU Mali
Professor Emeritus of Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art at Kaohsiung Normal University, practitioner of socially engaged art
Curatorial Proposal: Afterglow
On the ancient land of Northeast Asia, the once abundant energy resources have nearly been exhausted, leaving behind silent factories, sunken mines, and vanishing ethnic groups. These symbols of post-industrial ruins carve out a forgotten history of development. Titled "Afterglow," this exhibition brings together visual artists who either live in or have long focused on this region. Among them are established creators who have consistently documented Northeast Asia’s ecology, as well as grassroots practitioners whose work carries a raw, untamed energy. Like scattered embers, they grow from fractures and remember in oblivion, confronting complex issues such as resource politics, labor memories, and ecological transformation.
Curator: Rachel Wuang
Independent curator
Advisors:
Dong Bingfeng
Curator, art critic
Bas Vroege
Curator and producer, founder and director of Paradox, a platform based in the Netherlands
Curatorial Proposal: Rhododendron, Lemon, Palm, Cypress
What are the invisible, "dark" zone underneath the plant specimen and hidden within the archives？The dark portions of plants beneath the flattened specimens are always hidden in drawers, boxes and shadows. Rhododendron, lemon, palm, and cypress——these four plants, grow in different regions of China, were disseminated globally through the collecting activities of Western botanists. This exhibition, through the works of four artists, responds to four plant hunters and their related archival documents, attempting to unveil the "black box" of these plants within colonial history and the imperial gaze, and to rediscover the "camera obscura" behind the global circulation of plants.
Curator: Zhang Wen
Curator and writer
Advisors:
Joanna Fu
Photography and visual culture researcher, writer, curator
Yao Jui-Chung
Artist, curator, part-time professor at School of Fine Arts, Taipei University of the Arts
“Curatorial Engine” relies on the aforementioned mechanism, with an advisor panel providing targeted guidance on key dimensions such as core concepts, narrative logic, and practical feasibility. It is dedicated to refining the curators' creative vision into mature and rigorous curatorial proposals, thereby driving a dual enhancement of their professional abilities and the quality of their proposals. Additionally, it allows the outcomes to serve as independent research and expression platforms, leaving open space for diverse future presentations and practices. The refined proposals will be released on Three Shadows's official platforms in mid-year, and have the potential for showcase at the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival. Meanwhile, Three Shadows hopes to leverage its global collaboration network to actively expand more opportunities for showcasing and practicing high-quality proposals.
Three Shadows and CHANEL has gradually refined an organic nurturing model spans from immersive inspiration to targeted empowerment through Curatorial Programme for Photography and Moving Image. This lays a solid foundation for emerging curators and researchers in the field of photography and moving image to pursue exploration, expression, and access broad development platforms. Both parties anticipate that through sustained dedication and effort, this initiative will not only generate positive change and far-reaching resonance within the art world, but also inspire profound reflections on art and culture across wider society, injecting enduring momentum and boundless possibilities into the artistic ecosystem of the future.