Exhibition opening: The China Moment. Contextualizing Individualism in Chinese Contemporary Art

The documenta Institute invites you to its first research exhibition at the Kasseler Kunstverein.

Opening: Friday, January 23, 2026
Exhibition duration: January 24-March 22, 2026
Opening hours: Tue.-Sun. & on public holidays from 11am-6pm and Thurs. from 11am-8pm
Location: Kasseler Kunstverein, Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel

With The China Moment, the documenta Institute is devoting itself to a decisive phase in contemporary Chinese art. The 1980s marked the beginning of a period of profound political and economic change. Influenced by Deng Xiaoping's reforms, a new artistic language emerged that combined individuality, social participation and humanistic perspectives. At the same time, China's opening up and increasing international networking offered new spaces for artistic experimentation and exchange with global discourses on individualism and social transformation. The exhibition shows how art not only reflected social developments, but often anticipated them. It makes visible how the relationships between the individual, the state and society shifted and which social energies, collective experiments and individual self-designs emerged during this time.

With archival materials, painting, photography, video, installation, sound and performance, The China Moment is a research project and exhibition that is both archival and narrative. It presents not only works of art, but also the social contexts in which they were created - from spontaneous gatherings and illegal exhibitions in apartments to experimental club and performance scenes. The China Moment spans an arc from the 1980s to the present and examines how art in China reflected society during a phase of profound transformation - against the backdrop of a shift from globalization to the multipolar present.

Participating artists
CAO Fei & OU Ning, CHEN Shaoxiong, Datong Dazhang, HAN Lei, HONG Hao & YAN Lei, JIANG Jie, KAN Xuan, LIN Yilin, Living Dance Studio (Wen Hui), MA Liuming, New Measurement Group (Gu Dexin, Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping), NI Haifeng, SUI Jianguo, WANG Molin, TONG Sze Hong, ZHAO Chuan, WANG Bing, WANG Guangyi, WANG Tuo, WANG Youshen, WU Wenguang, XIAO Lu, ZHAO Yinou, ZHENG Guogu, ZHOU Tiehai, ZHUANG Hui

The exhibition catalog accompanying the exhibition includes new contributions by Mi You, Su Wei and Anna-Lisa Scherfose as well as republished historical texts by Wang Hui, Zhao Dingxin, Qin Hui, Zhang Xudong, Yang Guoqiang, Hong Zicheng and Wang Wei, some of which appear in English for the first time.

Curated by Su Wei, Mi You and Anna-Lisa Scherfose.

documenta Institute:
In its founding phase (since 2020), the Institute was located under the umbrella of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH. On May 13, 2025, the documenta Institut Kassel gGmbH was founded as an independent institute(press release). The sole shareholder is the University of Kassel. The State of Hesse, University of Kassel, Kunsthochschule Kassel and documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH are represented on the institute's supervisory board. The independent, non-university research institution sees itself as a center for exhibition studies and takes the history and current present of the documenta exhibitions as a starting point for transdisciplinary research into the relationship between art, society and politics. In 2021, three professorships for exhibition studies were appointed by the University of Kassel: Liliana Gómez, Felix Vogel and Mi You form the research core of the documenta Institute. further information