DCAM Annual Symposium - Part I | How Contemporary Art Engages with Historical Sites
On March 29, 2025, the academic symposium "Echoes Through Time and Space: Contemporary Art and Historical Sites," organized by the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum, successfully opened.
Framed by the concept of "anachronism" and drawing on Alois Riegl's exploration of cultural heritage value, the symposium brought together over 10 scholars and artists to delve into three core themes: artistic creation and historical relics, exhibition strategies and spatial-temporal concepts, and temporality and "anachronism." Curated by Fan Bairing from the China Academy of Art and convened by Gao Yuan from the Beijing Institute of Art and Design, the symposium provided a platform for in-depth discussions.
Du Chenyan, Director of the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum, highlighted the museum's academic mission at the opening ceremony. Since its inauguration in November 2024, the museum has been dedicated to the "contemporary expression of Dunhuang culture." Its inaugural exhibition, "Jingxiang Dunhuang," leveraging digital technology, cross-media creation, and immersive displays, transformed this millennium-old cultural heritage into a contemporary artistic language, offering a practical model for the symposium. Du expressed her hope that discussions on the intertextuality between artistic creation and historical relics, the reshaping of spatial-temporal concepts through exhibition practices, and the re-interpretation of historical sites would forge new pathways for the deep integration of traditional culture and contemporary art.
The symposium featured prominent guests including Wu Hongliang, Director of the Beijing Fine Art Academy; Chu Xin, Head of Exhibitions at the Shanghai Museum; Zhou Shiyang, Professor at the China Academy of Art; Chen Yan, Deputy Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Shanghai Normal University; Lu Mingjun, Professor at Fudan University; Xiao Ze,终身 Professor at Stanford University; renowned artist Liu Jianhua; Li Feng, Director of the Beijing Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum; curator Guo Xiaoli; and contemporary artist Pang Hailong. They shared cutting-edge insights on the interaction between historical contexts and contemporary art, spanning theoretical research, curatorial practices, material experiments, and spatial narratives.
In the morning session of the "Echoes Through Time and Space: Contemporary Art and Historical Sites" symposium, Wu Hongliang, Director of the Beijing Fine Art Academy, opened the discussions with a presentation titled "Curation and the Field of Empathy: How Exhibitions Activate Links Between Tradition and the Contemporary." He explored the essence of curation as breaking down the binary opposition between tradition and the contemporary, fostering a bridge of emotional resonance. Noting that curation, though derived from Western concepts, has undergone unique transformation in China, he highlighted the ancient Chinese character for "curation," symbolizing momentum, direction, inspiration, and wisdom. He likened curation to compiling history, linking diverse artworks and concepts to propel artistic continuity and development. Concluding his talk, he quoted Huang Yongyu: "Beauty is fleeting; the mission of art is to retain it."
Chu Xin, Head of Exhibitions at the Shanghai Museum, presented "Contemporary Reflections on Art Exhibition Curation," examining how traditional museums can incorporate contemporary art elements. Sharing recent Shanghai Museum exhibition cases, such as the "Summit of the Pyramids" exhibition, which utilized immersive technology to recreate ancient Egypt, and the "Dialogue with da Vinci" exhibition, which featured Italian sports cars alongside Chinese paintings and calligraphy, she demonstrated how cross-cultural curation expands exhibition dimensions and offers valuable references for the symposium.
Zhou Shiyang, Professor at the China Academy of Art, focused on the "dynamic vitality" of historical sites through the lens of Liao Dynasty architecture. By comparing the structures of the Guanyin Pavilion at Dule Temple in Jixian and the Wooden Pagoda at Yingxian, she revealed the complexity of Liao architecture as a blend of nomadic and Central Plain cultures. She emphasized the creativity of Khitan craftsmen, who, building on Tang Dynasty techniques, employed innovative methods like "forked column construction" and "entwined column construction," resulting in architecture that was majestic yet elegant. Zhou highlighted the contemporaneity of Liao architecture within specific historical contexts, marking a rare moment of unleashed creativity.
Chen Yan, Associate Professor at Shanghai Normal University, analyzed "anachronism" in cross-cultural image translation using Athanasius Kircher's 17th-century "China Illustrata." Kircher's misinterpretation of Chinese bodhisattvas as Egyptian god Harpocrates, though erroneous, fostered Enlightenment-era European cultural imagination of the East, creating new visual expressions. Chen argued that this "productive misreading" holds historical significance and offers inspiration for contemporary art, which should provoke new artistic languages through translation and recreation rather than mere replication when engaging with historical and cultural heritage.
Lu Mingjun, Professor at Fudan University, started with Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing" to explore how art renews itself by "negating" traditional forms. Linking this to John Cage's "4'33''" and Nam June Paik's "Zen for Film," he analyzed how these works, despite their "blank" or "erased" forms, attempt to "purify" artistic language and reconstruct expressive possibilities amid the dual tension of technological iteration and empathetic needs. Lu stressed that contemporary art should not solely pursue formal innovation but return to the everydayness of creation—suggesting that perhaps, like Dunhuang craftsmen, artists should view creation as daily labor, awaiting inspiration in dialogue with history.
Following the morning presentations, Fan Bairing moderated a roundtable discussion on "Anachronism in Art History and Theory."
Zhou Shiyang, Professor at the China Academy of Art, opened with Aby Warburg's "afterlife" theory, arguing that artworks gain true vitality through their "migration and rebirth" across time and space—the Dunhuang murals, still inspiring contemporary imagination after a thousand years, exemplify the eternal value of "moments of creativity." Wu Hongliang, Director of the Beijing Fine Art Academy, responded with the concept of "boundary-less curation," citing the Shanghai Museum's Dongguan branch as a case for breaking down barriers between tradition and the contemporary: "When Qi Baishi's ink washes coexist with new media installations, audiences no longer question the divide between ancient and modern but directly perceive the resonance of beauty." Museum transformation became a focal point of discussion. Chu Xin, Deputy Head of the Exhibitions Department at the Shanghai Museum, admitted that traditional exhibition models are being overturned by the "shared cultural space" concept: among six thousand museums, "shell museums" without collections compel a redefinition of "true heritage"—whether it lies in the artifacts themselves or the public dialogue they inspire. Professor Lu Mingjun sharply noted that contemporary art faces "double disenchantment"—the dissolution of avant-garde under technological dominance and the loss of creative dignity amid capital entanglement. "If art must 'live,' it may need to return to the craftsman spirit. Liu Jianhua's "Everyday·Fragile" series served as an example—the fragility of porcelain converses with historical fractures, with the material itself staging a silent declaration.
This discussion ultimately arrived at a consensus—that in today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, the vitality of art stems both from deep exploration of historical "strata" and the courage to break down disciplinary boundaries.
In the morning session, scholars explored the dynamic nature of historical heritage as a "time capsule" from the perspectives of art history, philosophy, and curation—it bears civilizational memory and offers a gene pool for contemporary creativity.
The afternoon session focused on translating theory into action: artists and curators, through cross-media creation, digital technology, and community engagement, reimagined historical sites as living cultural organisms.
Li Feng, Director of the Beijing Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum, showcased an immersive narrative featuring 406 artifacts, 5 replicated caves, and 43 contemporary art pieces in "Camel Bell Rings: The Silk Road Art Exhibition." He proposed a "boundary-breaking" philosophy, collaborating with over 60 cultural institutions and Harvard's China Art Lab to merge Sogdian manuscripts from Xinjiang with digital installations, crafting a multi-dimensional map of civilizational fusion. Li emphasized that museums should bridge past and future, not serve as civilizational cold storage.
Curator Guo Xiaoli analyzed the creative transformation of cultural heritage in contemporary art through multiple artist practices. Using Xu Bing's "Book from the Sky" as an example, she noted its reinvention of canonical formats through pseudo-Chinese characters, challenging the authority of cultural symbols. Cai Guoqiang's "Sky Ladder" elevates gunpowder—a ancient invention—into a contemporary ritual connecting cosmic imagination, with its blast site in Quanzhou recreating a spatial-temporal dialogue of the "heavenly ladder" myth. Creation cases like Zhang Xiaogang's metaphorical "Big Family" symbols, Wang Guangyi's industrial heritage reconstruction in "East Wind·Golden Dragon," and Peng Wei's transformation of Dunhuang niche structures through installation all demonstrate dialogues between history and contemporary art. Guo highlighted that these creations, through deconstruction, translation, and cross-media experiments, transform static displays into an "active gene pool" that activates contemporary thought, offering multi-dimensional insights into civilizational inheritance.
Contemporary Chinese artist Liu Jianhua shared his exhibition practice at the Suzhou Wu Culture Museum, combining Song Dynasty official kiln porcelain shards with laser engraving to create the "Broken Vessels" series. Contemporary creations and historical artifacts are displayed together in the same museum showcase, exploring the possibility of integrating contemporary art into historical museum spaces from the details of exhibition labels with curator Ling Lin. Liu Jianhua stated that porcelain is both a carrier of civilization and a container of time. The fragmentation and reconstruction of "Broken Vessels" echo the visual characteristics of the overlay of Dunhuang murals across generations.
Professor Xiao Ze from Stanford University systematically reviewed his interdisciplinary practices since 2017, when he was invited by the American Dunhuang Foundation to join the Dunhuang Academy. Viewing the The Thousand-Scripture Caves as a "time capsule" bearing multi-dimensional civilizational codes, he extracted its cosmic model attributes from Buddhist cosmology, mandala geometry, and astronomical metaphors. Using millimeter-level 3D scanning technology to precisely capture the material traces of murals, combined with the digitization of mandala mathematical laws and calligraphic brushwork, he reconstructed the spatial order in Buddhist philosophy and simulated the historical layering process with dynamic light shadow technology. He proposed a "research-based creation" methodology: after three years of research on the literature of the Dunhuang The Thousand-Scripture Caves, he discovered the possibility of the three-dimensional form of Tang Dynasty mandala images, and reconstructed the "Mandala" series of installations through architectural history, Buddhist rituals, and mathematical laws. This interdisciplinary practice, based on archaeological evidence and artistic imagination, pioneers a new dimension for the contemporary expression of cultural heritage.
Artist Pang Hailong presented a methodology for reconstructing historical sites through installation art, video documentation, and community interaction, using the "Zhai Sheng Ji®" project as a case study. In Shanghai's Ruihua Apartment, he recreated scenes from cultural celebrities' lives through residents' oral history and installation art. In Fuzhou's Qishan Lake Ancient Residence, he used the "seed sprouting metaphor for cultural transmission." At the Nanhai Earth Art Festival in Foshan's Yanqiao Village, he achieved coexistence between historical sites and works by 42 contemporary artists. Pang Hailong proposed that the revitalization of historical spaces requires breaking linear narratives. For example, in Singapore's Bukit Timah Conservation Area, he juxtaposed pre-war architecture with contemporary creations, making residents co-narrators of history.
At the afternoon roundtable on "The Practice of Displaying Contemporary Art alongside Historical Artifacts and Sites," host Gao Yuan guided discussions on interactions and innovative practices between contemporary art creation and historical cultural heritage. Participants explored translating academic research into public exhibitions and emphasized multisensory experiences (e.g., Tang Dynasty incense reconstruction, 3D projection technology) to vividly present history. The critical and experimental nature of contemporary art was highlighted, such as Liu Jianhua's ceramic reconstruction of traditional crafts and Xiao Ze's fusion of mathematics and historical imagination in the Dunhuang cave project, demonstrating art's breakthroughs in spatial-temporal dialogue. The discussion called for moving beyond static museum displays, referencing industrial heritage activation cases (e.g., Rome's Monte Martini Museum), and introducing dynamic arts (dance, theater) and cross-disciplinary collaborations to revitalize historical spaces' humanistic vitality. Roundtable guests agreed that balancing technological and human-centric expression is key, advocating for exchange mechanisms between cultural and museum systems and encouraging young artists to blend international perspectives with traditional foundations to explore contemporary cultural heritage narratives.
The academic insights and innovative practices shared at the symposium have enriched the discussions and laid a solid foundation for the upcoming "Implications Beyond the Sound" annual lecture series. The Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum will launch the "Implications Beyond the Sound" lecture series, featuring twelve sessions throughout the year, with the second part of the annual symposium also in active preparation.
Looking ahead, the Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum will continue to build dialogue platforms to promote the creative transformation of cultural heritage. We believe that the convergence of historical heritage and contemporary art is not an endpoint but the beginning of a new narrative.
The Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum extends sincere gratitude to all scholars, art practitioners, and cultural institution representatives who attended the "Echoes Through Time and Space: Contemporary Art and Historical Sites" symposium. Special thanks go to Fudan University Library, Fudan University Institute of Calligraphy, Painting, and Seal Art, and Fudan University Institute for the Protection of Ancient Chinese Books for their deep collaboration, as well as the Dunhuang Studies Institute at Lanzhou University, Shanghai Yangpu Innovation and Creation (Group) Co., Ltd., Dunhuang Culture and Tourism Group, and Applied Materials (China) Co., Ltd., for their support.