Chat Room
Sunday 20 October｜2-3pm
“Independent Publishing from Asia”
Simon Baker, Director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Zhen Shi, Founder of publishing house Maison de Z and photographer
Moderator: Victoria Jonathan, Co-Director of the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival
Image courtesy of Simon Baker
Simon Baker
Simon Baker has been director of MEP since May, 2018. Prior to this he was Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate, London where he curated exhibitions including Don McCullin (Tate Britain, 2019), Shape of Light (Tate Modern, 2018) Performing for the Camera (Tate Modern, 2016), Conflict, Time, Photography (Tate Modern, 2014), and William Klein + Daido Moriyama (Tate Modern, 2012).
His first exhibitions for MEP, which opened in March 2019, were Coco Capitan: Busy Living, and Ren Hang: Love, Ren Hang. Simon Baker has a PhD in History of Art and was Associate Professor of Art History at the Nottingham University (2004-2009). He has published widely on the history of art including the recent monograph George Condo: Painting Reconfigured (Thames and Hudson, 2015). Recent publications on photography include essays for books on Coco Capitan, Antony Cairns, Mari Katayama and Maya Rochat.
Image courtesy Zhen Shi
Zhen Shi
Zhen SHI (b. Shandong, China), visual artist and founder of La Maison de Z.
She employs various mediums and a process that combined photography, book object and fiction-documentary story to construct a maze of narratology. Through her artificial manipulation on individuals' lived experiences and intervention in intellectual legacies such as literature, archival material, theatre and film, Shi's practice attempts to explore the complex relationship between reality and memory under the general proposition “Archive and Fiction” / “Private and Public”. Her practice also seeks to develop a discourse on how time exists and disappears in a soundless way from its historical context continues to adapt to changing existence.
La Maison de Z is an on-going project focusing on Chinese contemporary photography and independent publications. Using publishing as a way of research which explore the artificial scenery between artwork and the frontier of book making, La Maison de Z was founded in 2015 and start to publish their own editions in 2018, the project allows a growing audience discover the most recent works of emerging Chinese artists.
>> ASIA NOW 2019 Book Corner - Independent publishing in Asia
Image courtesy Victoria Jonathan
Victoria Jonathan
Born Paris, France. Lives and works between Paris and Beijing, China.
A graduate from Columbia University (East Asian Studies) and La Sorbonne (Philosophy), Victoria Jonathan is co-director of Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, created in 2015 by Rencontres d’Arles and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Xiamen (China), along with Bérénice Angremy. Together they founded Doors 门艺 Art & Culture Agency in 2017 to grow cross-cultural projects between Europe and China, such as China’s largest ever Picasso exhibition (UCCA, Beijing).
News: 5th Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival (Xiamen), November 22-January 5; « The Stars 1979-2019. Pioneers of contemporary art in China », La Maison de la Chine (Paris), October 7-February 1.