“Re-Asia Project: Prologue” marks the first offline gathering following the launch of the “Re-Asia Project” announced at the Beginning of Spring (Lichun) earlier this year. The metaphor of ‘casting a brick to attract jade’ (Pao Zhuan Yin Yu) framed our dialogue – initiating with personal explorations (the ‘brick’) to draw out collaborative visions (the ‘jade’).
“Re-Asia Project: Prologue” selectively revisits prior works by two of its initiators. Architect Liang Chen presents Front Post – a spatiotemporal palimpsest that layers his childhood home, a border sentry post, a room in the Zhonglian Hotel along the Yalu River, and the telescopic view from the Broken Bridge observatory. These spatial investigations, anchored in personal memory, military governance, espionage narratives, and geopolitical spectacle, are materialized through an interplay of media including archival documents, maps, soundscapes, photography, video, and installations.
Pu Yingwei, Atlas: the fiction about a certain shape, 2015-2018
Artist Pu Yingwei contributes Global Life Archives, which traces his research on socialist architecture during his residency in France, interrogations of Chinese and ethnic minority identities, and recent global expeditions that map transnational cultural intersections.
Pu Yingwei, Archives of “Dam Theatre”, 2015-2021
Together, these works provide a discursive foundation for the “Re-Asia Project”, inviting critique and dialogue around its embedded public themes, ethical frameworks, and methodologies. The imperative to contextualize these elements within specific communities – for ongoing debate and refinement – underscores the project’s critical ethos. To ignite such polyphonic exchanges remains the core ambition of this “Prologue”. Emphatically, the “Re-Asia Project” retains its fluidity and openness. Its contours will sharpen only through collective participation, ultimately weaving a pluralistic yet shared historical narrative. We embrace this moment, anticipating that “the jade will refine the brick”.
Pu Yingwei, Re-Asia Project Logo, woodcut. Courtesy of the artist
About Artist
Liang Chen(Architect, Artist)was born in 1987 in Dandong, Liaoning, graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Jilin Institute of Architectural Engineering in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, he worked at ZhiXiang Architecture, serving as a director. As a project architect, he completed the Aranya Library (also known as the”L Library”). In 2017, he began his independent architectural and artistic practice and founded Aleph-Liangchen (www.aleph-liangchen.com). Notable architectural works include “The Black Ark”and “Innerflow Gallery.” He has held solo exhibitions at A4 Art Museum and DRC No.12, and curated exhibitions such as “Spatial Discipline” at OCAT Shanghai (2020), “From Antung to Dandong——Rafts, Broken Bridges and Strangers on the Yalu River”at Wind H Art Center in Beijing (2022), “Elges as the Center, Riverine borders, Bridges and Memory Spaces between China, Mongolia, North Korea and Russia” at Nanjing G Museum (2023), and “Endless Annotation”at the Yalu River Art Museum (2023-).
Pu Yingwei was born in 1989 and currently lives and works in Beijing. As a representative figure of China’s new generation of conceptual artists, Pu Yingwei has creatively reconstructed the socialist art lineage in a critical manner, aiming to articulate the fluidity of Chinese identity in the context of globalization. Through a cross-cultural narrative framework, he explores the profound impact of China’s modernization development model on the global landscape. Pu’s works span multiple mediums, including painting, video, design, writing, and lectures, and he has pioneered a “new internationalist” art language based on eastern civilization. In recent years, Pu has deepened his global research path, with his artistic footprint covering numerous countries and regions, including Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean, as well as conflict-ridden areas such as the Balkans and Ukraine.
