Carol Yinghua Lu

Carol Yinghua Lu is a curator, art critic and writer who lives and works in Beijing.

Early life

Carol Yinghua Lu was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong, China, in 1977. Yinghua graduated from the critical studies programme of Malmö Art Academy at Sweden’s Lund University in 2005 and served as a China Researcher for Asia Art Archive from 2005 to 2007.

Career

She is currently a contributing editor at Frieze (magazine), a London-based art magazine, co-founder and co-editor of Contemporary Art & Investment magazine, and sits on the editorial board for the Arnolfini Art Center’s Far West magazine.

Lu writes essays on contemporary art research for many international art journals and magazines, including e-flux journal, The Exhibitionist, Yishu, and Tate. Her texts on contemporary art have also appeared in many art catalogues, books, publications, and critical readers. Lu's writing focuses on providing documentation of contemporary art trends in Asia, as well as reflection on the impact of political, financial and creative conditions on Asia's artists, critics, curators and gallerists.

From 2009-2010, Lu was the founder and Art Director of SUITCASE ART PROJECTS, a project space of Today Art Museum. In 2007 she was one of three curators of the 7th Shenzhen Biennale, titled “Accidental Message: Art Is Not A System, Not A World” and conceived to include two subthemes: “Unexpected Encounters” and “What You See is What I See”. As the starting point for her curatorial research, Lu, along with her colleagues Liu Ding and Su Wei focused on experimental art practice in China since 1989 to 2000 to shape an observation of a local history, trying to look back on individual practices and art itself during this period of time. "Little Movements: Self-Practices in Contemporary Art", the project she and Liu Ding initiated and curated together, was exhibited at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Shenzhen in September 2011, and will go on an international tour from 2012.

In 2011 Lu was part of the selection panel for the 54th Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale. She has curated artists including Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Béatrice Cussol, Chen Man, Jan Saudek, Rosemarie Trockel, Andy Warhol, Gao Yu, Zhuang Hui, Chen Shaoxiong, Leng Wen, Yan Xing, Lu Zhengyuan, Boris Groys, Jörg Heiser, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Martha Rosler, Gao Shiming, the Raqs Media Collective, Hu Fang, Jan Verwoert and Dan'er. Lu's book on the work of Chinese artist Wang Yin (born 1964) situates his work within the historical context of twentieth-century Chinese painting, as well as broader shifts in modern Chinese culture.

Lu was a Co-Artistic Director of ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale (Korea, 2012) through which her focus developed around the ways in which the de-bordering and loosening of economic, sovereign, social, cultural and historic frameworks by digitization, global trade and political movements challenges our ideological and national logics.