Dr Xiaoyi Nie

Xiaoyi’s research investigates curating as instigation, focusing on how artists, curators, and collectives generate new modes of practice and shape cultural ecosystems, particularly in contemporary artists with Sinophone backgrounds. She explores historical, contemporary, transcultural, and transboundary practices, tracing how ideas, forms, and strategies circulate across time and geography, and how creators develop alternative approaches to mainstream art production.

Xiaoyi’s doctoral research, From Curating to Cedong (Instigating), traces the emergence and reinvention of ‘curating' in China since the 1990s by revisiting case studies in cross-cultural contexts. Her research combines archival study, critical writing, and practice-based methods, treating publishing, exhibition-making, and workshops as forms of ‘curating–instigating’. This approach enables her to connect historical precedents with contemporary projects, revealing their relevance and resonance today. She attends to the material, spatial, and relational dimensions of artistic production, examining how practices emerge from creators’ lived experiences while engaging with broader social and institutional frameworks.

A central concern of her work is self-instigation: how individuals and groups initiate projects, form networks, and create alternative infrastructures for artistic and cultural life. By investigating these processes, Xiaoyi seeks to understand how contemporary art produces new forms of expression, encounter, and knowledge. Her research bridges art criticism, curatorial practice, and cultural history, highlighting experimental, imaginative and adaptive practices operating both within and beyond mainstream structures.

From 2021 to the present, Xiaoyi, along with Liu Weitian and Huang Ziyun, has been editing articles, publishing, producing podcasts, and initiating projects under the framework of Qilu Criticism.

In 2025, she co-founded a mapping studio with You Yiyi and Peng Haodong (Scene) and initiated ‘Annotated Shanghai’, to enrich and archive Shanghai's artistic topography.

In 2021, she participated as a researcher in the project ‘Three Contested Sites – The Worldly Fables of the long 1990s' initiated by Times Museum (Guangzhou) and Times Art Center (Berlin). In 2020, she was selected for the AICA-UK (International Association of Art Critics, UK) Emerging Art Writer Fellowship.

Along with her self-initiated projects, she has participated in programmes of many institutes such as OCAT Research Institute (Beijing), Gasworks (London), and Jimei-Arles International Photography Festival (Xiamen). She has shared her research and led workshops at Osf (Guangzhou),ParaSite (Hong Kong), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Institute of International Visual Arts (London), China Academy of Art, Royal Geographical Society, Freie Universität Berlin, Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, and OCAT Shenzhen. Beyond the platforms where she works as an editor, her academic papers, art criticism, and essays can also be found in Yearbook of Contemporary Chinese Art, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and Education, among others.

Xiaoyi’s MA and Ph.D. were fully funded by the China Scholarship Council. From 2024 to 2025, her research was supported by the De Ying Foundation. Since 2022, Qilu Criticism has received support from the Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts.

Academic

• Nie, X. (2025). An Activist Attitude with New Media Art: From Early Video Art Curator Wu Meichun to She. Home. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 22, March 2025.
• Nie, X. (Forthcoming 2025). From Chinese Art Center to esea contemporary: ‘Chinese’ as a Transformative Thread in Self-Organisation and Institutionalisation. Conference Proceedings, Guangzhou Academy of Art.
• Nie, X. (2022). Introducing and Practising ‘Curating’ for Contemporary Chinese Art: The Transnational Trajectory of Lu Jie from London to China and the Development of Long March: A Walking Visual Display. Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 9(3), pp. 269–288.
• Nie, X. (2022). Lost in Ecstasy: Glimpsing China’s ‘Institutional Critique’ through Exhibition Practice. McaM 2015–2021, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, pp. 132–145.
• Nie, X. (2020). Why Are There Short Curatorial Courses during Biennials? A Case Study into Shanghai Curators Lab. Engage: The International Journal of Visual Art Engagement and Participation, 44.
• Nie, X. (2025). Review of Art Criticism of China in 2024. Contemporary Chinese Art Yearbook.
• Nie, X. (2024). Review of Art Criticism of China in 2023. Contemporary Chinese Art Yearbook.
• Nie, X. (2023). Review of Art Criticism of China in 2022. Contemporary Chinese Art Yearbook.

Essays and Reviews

• Nie, X. (2025). As I reflect on myself, I emerge as the water body and soaring birds: On Law Yuk Mui and Ivy Ma. Daoju, 5/2025.
• Nie, X. (2023). Book Review of The Im/possibility of Art Archives and Experience in/from Asia. ArtReview China.
• Nie, X. (2023). Lu Pingyuan: In the Messages of the Whole World. LEAP, SS issue, pp. 34–51.
• Nie, X. (2023). Review of Li Weiyi: Create Dangerously. ArtReview China, Winter 2023.
• Nie, X. (2023). Review of Blue Throat. Qilu Criticism.
• Nie, X. (2023). Review of Kim Hye-jin’s Concerning My Daughter. Jia zazhi.
• Nie, X. (2021). My Grandma’s Yard. In: G. Blackshaw and S. Kivland, eds., CARE(LESS): A Supplement to ON CARE. London: MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, pp. 67–70.
• Nie, X. (2022). Know thyself—if discourse doesn’t fit. LEAP, FW2022, pp. 48–63.
• Nie, X. (2022). In a Beijing Gallery, a Quarantine Party of One. Sixth Tone.
• Nie, X. (2022). Review of Pang Kuan’s Bye Bye Disco in Star Gallery. Qilu Criticism.
• Nie, X. (2020). Book Review on Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000. Art Monthly.
• Nie, X. (2019). From Research to the Curatorial: Chinese Contemporary Art Between the Local and the International. ArtChina.
• Nie, X. (2018). Signpost. Prova, RCA School of Arts and Humanities Research Journal, 5, pp. 124–127.
• Nie, X. (2018). What Is Marching. Prova, RCA School of Arts and Humanities Research Journal, 4.

Exhibitions

(2025) Who Am I: Bios of Art Practitioners. Liquid Art Department, China Academy of Art. Hangzhou, China.

(2025) Three Days. Star Gallery, Beijing.

(2018) Metamorphosis: Art Practices Now Activating Archives and Public Memories. OCAT Institute, Beijing.

(2017) Discovery Award, Jimei-Arles International Photography Season. Xiamen. (2017) Itinerant Assembly. RCA Graduate Project with Gasworks, London