Locating Figure and Ground in Contemporary Photography from China

The Pauline and Joseph Degenfelder Distinguished Lecture in Chinese Art

Tags For: Locating Figure and Ground In Contemporary Photography From China
  • Lecture
  • Ticket Required
Sunday, November 9, 2025, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Stephanie Hueon Tung, Byrne Family Curator of Photography, Peabody Essex Museum
Location:  Gartner Auditorium
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Free; Ticket Required
Zhang Huan, Zhang Huan are posing for a picture

About The Event

Chinese artists used photography to create a bold new visual language at the turn of the 21st century. This avant-garde photography is not easy to characterize, hovering between performance art and documentation of the dizzying social and political changes underway in the country. This lecture considers the relationship between figure and ground as a means to orient our understanding of this work. What conditions made this daring photography, in which individual actions and desires became the focus of attention, possible?  

Speaker

Sponsors

All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Principal support is provided by Dieter and Susan M. Kaesgen and Gail C. and Elliott L. Schlang. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Medical Mutual of Ohio, the Edwin D. Northrup II Fund, Shurtape Technologies, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by Gini and Randy Barbato, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, Linda Harper, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., Susan LaPine, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, the Pickering Foundation, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Suzanne Cushwa Rusnak and Jeff Rusnak, Ellen and Lowell Satre, in memory of Dee Schafer, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Trilling Family Foundation, Jack and Jeanette Walton, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

    The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

    Education programs are supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.