Slide/Show

中文

Slide/Show , Film screenings and contemporary art in China
Group Exhibition Institut pour la photographie, Lille, France

Date: 04.10, 2026 - 08.30, 2026

Artists: GENG Jianyi 耿建翌 | WANG Youshen 王友身 | ZHU Jia 朱加 |

Featured artists:
Song Dong (1966-), Wang Gongxin (1960-), Zhu Jia (1963-), Lin Jiahua (1953-), Geng Jianyi (1962-2017), Liang Juhui (1959-2006), Zhang Peili (1957-), Lin Tianmiao (1961-), Wang Wei (1972-), Li Yongbin (1963-), Wang Youshen (1964-).

Curator:
Holly Roussell, Curator, UCCA Centre for Contemporary Art (Beijing)

Co-produced by the Institut pour la photographie and the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), where it was shown in 2023, Slide/Show. Projections and Contemporary Art in China is coming to the Frac Grand Large (Dunkirk) for its European premiere.
Through 15 major installations by contemporary Chinese artists, most of which are being shown in France for the first time, previously unseen archival documents and several hundred colour slides (originals and reproductions), the exhibition reveals the influence played by photographic projection in the rise of contemporary art in China.

Bringing together leading figures in contemporary Chinese art, the exhibition highlights the fundamental role of the slide in the development of contemporary art in China, from the Cultural Revolution to the 2010s.

From the 1980’s onwards, China entered a period of transformation and openness to international exchange. Texts and images relating to art history from the rest of the world began to circulate throughout the country.

The reopening of art schools and new opportunities for national and international exchange fostered the emergence of independent artistic groups on a national scale. This boom, often referred to as the ‘85′ New Wave’, was characterized by a clear desire to break with prevailing orthodoxies and by a strong commitment to experimentation, the affirmation of the individual and new conceptual practices.

In this context, the slide—a medium that is both portable and easily reproducible—emerged as a central element within a rapidly expanding artistic landscape. Initially a vehicle for transmission and exchange, it also established itself as a strategic tool for structuring the discourse of the artistic avant-garde. The projected image thus becomes the prism through which a new history of the early days of experimental art in China takes shape.