Lecture & Conversation (EN)
Rossella Ferrari
Transition and Transformation: Contextualizing Art and Culture in Postsocialist China

Guan Xiao uses the metaphor of a teenager to express an unsettled state of personal and social uncertainty, conflict and change. Her choice of objects and materials alludes to past traditions while also hinting at future imaginaries. This approach reflects the ambiguities of Chinese postsocialism as a temporal and cultural condition defined by transition, transformation and overlapping systems of values and symbolic orders. This talk situates Guan Xiao’s artistic work within the broader context of contemporary postsocialist culture and its multiple temporalities, technologies and ideologies shaping life and society in twenty-first-century China.

The event is free with a valid exhibition ticket.

Rossella Ferrari 

Rossella Ferrari is Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on the contemporary theatre and performance cultures of the Chinese-speaking region. She is the author of Pop Goes the Avant-garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (2012), Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (2020), and Performance and Postsocialism in Postmillennial China (2025), and co-editor of Asian City Crossings: Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore (2021). She is the Principal Investigator of the research project, Performing Postsocialism in Twenty-First-Century China, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).