DBN Prelude – Decolonial Gaze

Artists: Lisa Chang Lee, Charlotte Ming + Yangkun Shi, Tang Han, Tangent Collective, yietnu, Musquiqui Chihying

Curatorial Team: Decolonial Being Network

Exhibition Visuals: Cheng Yinhe

Exhibition Period: March 22 – June 1, 2025, 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Closed on Mondays)

 Venue: Goethe-Institut China, Beijing

Address: Creative Square, 798 Art District, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Free Admission

DBN Prelude – Decolonial Gaze presents works by six Sinophone artists/collectives, situating their practices within a global decolonial context. The exhibition examines how coloniality, rooted in modern Chinese history, persists and remains obscured within contemporary social structures. Rather than adhering to a singular narrative framework of time and space, the exhibition weaves together interconnected threads within the artists’ practices, drawing attention to overlooked everyday objects and subtle historical traces. By reconstructing the subjectivity of viewing, the exhibition seeks to unveil how coloniality continues to shape contemporary life through the interwoven forces of material culture, historical memory, and modern technology.

Coloniality is not confined to grand historical narratives but is deeply embedded in the objects of our everyday lives. Tang Han’s Miss Ginkgo series investigates the naming and migration of ginkgo trees, uncovering the colonial origins of modern botanical knowledge. Lisa Chang Lee’s installation Folded Assemblage No.1 juxtaposes Victorian-era botanical collection tools with plant imagery, visualizing the historical tensions between global migration and organic continuity. The extended series World Atlas merges traditional Chinese Gongbi painting with Western colonial history and cartographic representation, offering a multi-layered reexamination of the colonial histories underlying plant migration and classification. Similarly, Musquiqui Chihying’s installation Looty uses the image of the looted Pekingese dog “Looty” as a medium, transforming its likeness into non-fungible tokens. This work exposes how colonial plunder served as the material foundation for Western cultural institutions.

Lisa Chang Lee
Folded Assemblage No.1
Handmade 3-screen free-standing work, silver gelatine (liquid light), gilding, wood
2023

Musquiqui Chihying
The Looty
video installation
NFT, holographic screen, 10 sec on loop
2022
work commissioned by LIUSA WANG Gallery

Colonial history is neither a relic of the past nor a concluded narrative. Through interwoven dimensions of time and space, the exhibition seeks to reveal a hidden footnote to the spectral presence of coloniality within modern technology and the forces of globalization. Yietnu’s mixed-media project Bamboo Dragonfly of Giants intertwines Zhanjiang’s modern history with a semi-fictional travel narrative, delving into the profound ecological impact of energy infrastructure inherited from the French colonial period. The collaborative project Currents by Charlotte Ming and Shi Yangkun links Qingdao and Berlin through three works—photography, video, and postcards—examining how German colonial history continues to shape contemporary urban landscapes.

yietnu
Embryonic Axis Falling Vertically from the Plane of the Wind Turbine (Bottom)
PLA, Metal Connectors, Oyster, Salt Crystals
32 x 30 x 30 cm
2024

Charlotte Ming + Shi Yangkun
Greetings from Kiautschou Street (Grüße aus der Kiautschoustraße)
Postcards
2024

Additionally, presented as a digital archive, the Tangent Collective’s Unstranded Archive establishes a continuous, non-institutional archive that re-anchors the dispersal trajectories of looted artefacts through the intersecting dimensions of epistemology, everyday life, and art. From the naming of ginkgo trees and a looted Pekingese dog to the interweaving and overlapping of dual-city histories, these narratives collectively point toward the deconstruction and reconstruction of self-perception. Coloniality has never truly been distant, and the very act of “re-seeing” becomes the starting point of resistance.

Tangent Collective
11,565 Kilometers Photo Index: Diary of the Wife of the German Envoy
Unstranded Archive
Digital Archive
2022 — ongoing

The exhibition Decolonial Gaze, as part of the DBN: Prelude, is supported by the Goethe-Institut (China) ‘798 Teahouse’ project. During the exhibition, the DBN team seeks to transform the Goethe-Institut’s Grey Box, library, and public spaces into an integrated venue combining exhibiting, archiving, and social networking functions. This space provides participants and audiences with opportunities to learn about decolonial theories and practices while fostering discussions and exchanges on decolonial issues within the Chinese context. Additionally, the first DBN publication, part of the DBN: Prolude project, will be released in May.

For information in German, please visit: https://www.goethe.de/ins/cn/de/ver.cfm?event_id=26514180

For information in Chinese, please visit: https://www.goethe.de/ins/cn/zh/ver.cfm?event_id=26514180

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