Interview
Lost at Home: Jenny Chen interviews fellow curator Ara Yun Qiu

Ara Yun Qiu is a curator and researcher currently based on Hainan Island, China, specializing in the study and curation of the contemporary practices and historical narratives of women artists. Qiu is incubating a space in Haikou called “aware house” [好屋] to showcase works by women artists.

Moving between Beijing, New York, Shanghai, Berlin and Haikou, Ara Yun Qiu’s trajectory has, over time, formed a personal diasporic landscape. In her work with moving images and exhibitions, institutions and communities, female identity and cross-cultural experience, she addresses the living and working conditions as well as the inner drives of a generation of young art practitioners.

From Beijing to New York

Jenny Chen (JC): Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and telling us about your educational background and overseas experiences.

Ara Yun Qiu (QY): I was born in 1989 in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, and did my BA in broadcasting and directing for television at the Communication University of China in Beijing. I went there for my undergraduate studies in 2008 partly because I was excited about the upcoming Olympic Games and partly because I aspired to become a journalist. I was a “small town girl” and a member of the last generation to be raised on TV: television was my way of seeing the world, and I longed to be closer to the “center” of the world. [...] For graduate school, I attended the Art and Public Policy program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The program integrates art with social issues. Its emphasis on socially engaged artistic practice aligned with my interest in public policy. And the move from Beijing to New York was certainly another attempt to get closer to the “center”. 
 

New York, Shanghai, Berlin

JC: Did you know at the time about 798 [an “art district” with a thriving artistic community in a complex of abandoned factory buildings in Beijing]?

QY: [...] I first began to engage systematically with contemporary art in New York. I learned a lot about contemporary art in my internships there at MoMA and the Asia Society. After returning to China in 2015, I got my first job as a curator at Shanghai Long Art Museum, where I was put in charge of the large-scale James Turrell retrospective – an experience that showed me what a positive role I could play in collaborative international projects. [...]

In 2019, during a spell of rapid growth in Shanghai’s contemporary art scene, I joined the UCCA [Center for Contemporary Art] and helped get its Edge museum started. But our daily efforts were beset with unprecedented difficulties when the pandemic struck. [...] Eventually, in the summer of 2022, my team and I put together Thomas Demand’s first solo exhibition in China at the UCCA Edge. After that I felt like leaving the country again and decided to quit. Despite all the difficulties I had to contend with, I’d made plenty of new friends there and got a chance to work closely with several mentors, which significantly enhanced my professional skills and grew my professional network.

In early 2024, I got a German Chancellor Fellowship to spend a year researching in Berlin, during which I also gave some thought to the direction I wanted to go in the future. [...] In early 2025, after going back to China again, I started making preparations for an art space in Haikou to be called “aware house”. This was the first time I’d actively distanced myself from the center – with a plan to develop a new project in a city far from the hubs of the art world. After experiencing the anxieties and fatigue of living and working in several such hubs, I longed for a creative life infused with a sense of diaspora and setting its own rhythms and pace.
 

Curatorial practice as a woman

QY: So you’ve moved back and forth several times between New York and Shanghai. After participating in some key developments in Shanghai’s contemporary art infrastructure, you went back to New York and then later moved to Germany. Do you think the changes and mobility you experienced during those phases of your life could also be regarded as a form of personal “diaspora”?

QY: My experience of “diaspora” hasn’t been particularly intense. But I have felt a sense of rootlessness. The small town I’m from has gradually become unfamiliar to me, and I’ve yet to find another place to really settle down. [...] I’ve noticed that younger artists in China nowadays are just like their counterparts in other industries: they inevitably get caught up in the “rat race”, anxiety about growing older and peer pressure are omnipresent. In Europe, by contrast, a better welfare system offers artists a more relaxed environment for creative endeavor and the long-term conditions necessary for growth. [...] I don’t think either system is better than the other. [...] Constant movement has led me to continually challenge the criteria used to define a “successful” artist.

JC: Could you also talk about the process of your feminist awakening?

QY: [...] I began to notice gender differences in society as I was entering adolescence. Social pressure on young women could be felt almost everywhere you went. The first time I had a strong feeling of being objectified was at university. The campus felt like a theater with all kinds of “gender performances” taking place on stage.

Gender issues resurfaced when I started working. I realized I wasn’t just a curator, but a “woman curator”. For a time I gave up dresses and makeup in order to play down my femininity and avoid being sexualized – only to find myself constantly trapped in what might be called “Mulan’s plight”. Eventually I decided not to “perform masculinity”. I have always believed that in a healthy workplace, leadership hinges on professional competence, not masculinity. [...]

I started delving into feminist literature relatively late. Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 was the first book I’d read that confirmed my sense that East Asian women have experiences in common. Since then I’ve read essays by scholars like Chizuko Ueno, Silvia Federici and Dai Jinhua, and engaged with the writings of Tao Yongbai and Liao Wen in my research.
 

Mobility and settling down

QY: In Western contexts, my identity as an Asian often overshadows my identity as a woman. In other words, when I get “othered”, gender takes a back seat to ethnicity and even social class. This typical experience of “intersectionality” has given me a more comprehensive understanding of gender issues.

The “old money” system is particularly prominent in the art worlds of Europe and the US. A job will offer moderate pay but require high levels of taste, academic competence and social resources – qualities that are usually contingent on long-term capital accumulation and can hardly be achieved through individual efforts alone. I didn’t become aware of these “invisible thresholds” till rather late. When faith in the old notion that “hard work pays off” collapses, it’s natural to feel empty and frustrated.

[...] Everyone in the field is facing an “unspoken” reality: a lack of funding. It’s the elephant in the room: impossible to ignore, but hard to get round. [...] In 2020, the German government launched “Neustart Kultur”. I was deeply impressed by the speed and scale of this public funding for the arts. So I applied for a German Chancellor Fellowship to look into how non-profit art institutions in Berlin were doing during the pandemic. In late 2024, when I was about to leave Germany, Berlin announced plans to cut its budget for culture and the arts by €130 million in 2025. It drove home to me the fact that, although large-scale financial support can boost cultural vitality in the short run, its sustainability and stability remain uncertain in a time of recurring crises.
 

Intersecting race, gender and culture

QY: In the course of my research in Berlin, I found Berlin’s art ecosystem somewhat exclusionary. Despite the diversity of exhibition content, institutional staff are mostly native German speakers. [...] Fundamentally speaking, Germany is not an immigrant nation and lacks diversity in its cultural DNA. It’s challenging for an Asian woman to try to find her place in this system. While a handful of individuals manage to overcome these hurdles, this line of thinking inevitably draws me back into the trap of meritocracy. Then again, wasn’t my move here motivated precisely by the desire to escape the endless cycle of self-justification and to pursue new opportunities?

JC: Did you come up against any other cultural hurdles?

QY: The issues East Asian feminism addresses seem a bit old-fashioned in the German context. Issues that are still urgent to East Asian women and that I’m still living with seem to be history here. I feel that within the global feminist movement, there are indeed significant lags and gaps between different cultures. In Berlin, I often felt I wasn’t “cool” enough. As a heterosexual Asian woman, I seemed to be at the bottom of the tacit hierarchy of coolness. [...] But, probably thanks to my experience of moving in and out of communities with such different value systems, I’ve gradually come to realize that if I do try to adapt to these constantly changing rules, there will be no end to it. So, the only solution is to set my own criteria.

Aware house

JC: I’d like to talk about the relation between “home” and “identity”. I feel your family has been very supportive, but your approach to identity probably comes more from experience outside the family. Though I wonder if the family you grew up in may have influenced another dimension of “home” for you, namely the importance you attach to close personal relationships.

QY: I come from a fairly “matrilineal” family in which my mom has always been the decision-maker. I’m very close to her, and I make a conscious effort to maintain that closeness. [...] At first, she was anxious about my decision not to marry and have children. But we kept in touch and she gradually came to understand my choice, that is wasn’t mere obstinacy. [...] She is one of the reasons I decided to return to China: we’ve always been a source of mutual support and nourishment for each other.

JC: [...] It seems you’ve chosen an alternate path: not rupture, but reconstruction. Rather than abandoning the idea of “family”, you try to re-situate it in a freer and softer context. So I’d like to conclude our conversation today with this question: How do you view your current “diasporic” way of life? Is the decentralized life a response to your past experience?

QY: I’m not an adventurous person. I’m even a bit conservative, looking for stability. I was actually surprised myself by my decision to launch “aware house” in Hainan Province. But amid growing uncertainties, I’ve come to realize that pursuing stability passively by just staying put won’t really alleviate my inner unease.

As for “diaspora”, those who can actively choose to leave are lucky compared to those who are forced to. My own “diaspora” or “migration” is a small, personal response to the conditions of our time, an attempt to engage with the present by changing my surroundings. The point is to create some breathing room while retaining my sensitivity to and curiosity about the world around me. That’s actually enough. [...] “Aware house” can also be read as “a warehouse”, in other words a space that resonates with both mind and body. Ideally, “aware house” won’t be merely an exhibition space, but also a community to support woman’s artistic practice and research. It embodies my vision of building connections - with my mom and with other women. I hope “aware house” can become a place away from the “center” that sustainably empowers and nourishes people.