Xiaowen Zhu

Director, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester

In June this year, Zhu was appointed director of the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art – a UK non-profit based in Manchester that works to promote artists of East and South East Asian heritage, and has staged exhibitions of major artists including Samson Young and Patty Chang. Formerly assistant director at Times Art Center in Berlin, Zhu has worked on a number of major exhibitions, including Wong Ping’s solo show ‘Earwax’, curated by Hou Hanru, as well as overseeing public programming at the centre. She is also a documentary film-maker, author and critic. Her first book, Oriental Silk, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2020, and drew on many years’ research into the work of the Los Angeles-based silk trader Kenneth Wong (also the subject of a documentary film by Zhu in 2015). Zhu’s criticism has been published in ArtReview, Asian Review of Books, and many other magazines and journals; she has lectured widely across China, Europe and America.

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