Join us for a talk by Hammad Nasar reflecting on Making New Worlds, an exhibition that spotlighted the life and work of artist, poet, and curator Li Yuan-chia.
Hosted at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends (Nov 2023–Feb 2024) told the story of the extraordinary activity at the LYC Museum & Art Gallery in Banks, Cumbria, between 1972 and 1983. The LYC Museum was the single-minded effort of the artist and polymath, Li Yuan-chia (1929–94), who moved to the rural north of England by way of London, Bologna, Taipei, and Guangxi.
The exhibition and its accompanying publication establish Li’s work at the LYC as a mode of world-making, offering a fresh account of his practice in relation to twentieth-century British art. Its interventions connect Li’s ink paintings to his conceptual art practice, an interest in participatory artworks and friendship, and his engagement with nature and landscape. Making New Worlds follows a distributed, collaborative, and propositional way of exhibition-making as a platform for reparative art history, and is the culmination of the multi-year London, Asia research project, co-led by Hammad Nasar and Sarah Victoria Turner at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (part of Yale University).
Making New Worlds was curated by Hammad Nasar, Sarah Victoria Turner, and Amy Tobin.
Free and open to the public with registration.
Hammad Nasar is a curator, writer, and strategist based in London. Known for collaborative, exhibition-led inquiry, his recent exhibitions include Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now (2023–24); British Art Show 9 (2021–22); Turner Prize (2021); and Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play (57th Venice Biennale, UAE Pavilion, 2017).
Nasar was Co-founder of the pioneering London art space Green Cardamom; Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; and has held Senior Research Fellowships at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute and Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre. He is a Board Member of the Henry Moore Foundation (UK) and Mophradat (Belgium), and a Council Member of Asia Forum. He was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in 2023.
