Exhibitions are tightly intertwined with the processes of historiography, creating dynamic and plural relations between and beyond all participants, both human and non-human. Thus they are able to connect different histories while writing history themselves, their reciprocal relationships making them a complex object of and transforming agent in historical research.

Through four essays by critics and curators, as well as texts and images of the works on exhibit—more than eighty works by nearly sixty artists—the book aims to present a vital component of the Chinese art world which is under-represented on the global art scene, namely the contemporary art production from the Pearl River Delta.

This publication focuses on the practice of curating in Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a time of increased global visibility as well as nation and institution building. The diversity of voices in this publication mirrors the complexity of the region itself: its various curatorial spaces, infrastructures, and political systems.

This catalogue presents an art-historical angle on Chen Zhen’s unique way of questioning his experience of globalization through art. It includes documentation of the eponymous exhibition at Rockbund Art Museum (May 30–October 7, 2015), along with detailed sketches of both existing and unrealized projects.

Theater of Exhibitions analyzes “art after the end of art,” questioning whether inherited frameworks of making, theorizing, and exhibiting art still apply to contemporary practice. Drawing from his formation in theater and his own curatorial work, Hoffmann reflects on the spaces of contemporary art and ultimately positions the discipline of curating in the context of a larger cultural sphere shaped by the political, social, and economic conditions of its time.