In March 2020, the visual artist JJ Chan was assembling video footage for a group exhibition scheduled at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester. Centred on family VHS tapes, and titled A New Constellation: Chinese Diaspora Now, the artwork was an exploration of Chan’s emotionally complex relationship to Hong Kong, their parents’ birthplace. When Chan asked for guidance after the sudden departure of the initial curator, the artist discovered that the gallery did not employ anyone who was Chinese: 12 out of the 13 staff members were white, while most of the front-facing (unpaid) volunteers were of Chinese descent.
Fearing their art would be shaped through a white lens, Chan withdrew and published an open letter to the centre, writing: “My experience, and my trauma, are being used as a leg-up into an industry for an already overrepresented demographic.” Later that year, the organisation recruited seven artists of Chinese heritage to address the lack of diversity before that initiative was cancelled when the artists raised issues surrounding institutional racism with the gallery. The artist-led working group subsequently petitioned for an international boycott of the institution resulting in the resignation of six board members and several employees. After closing due to Covid in 2020, the arts space never reopened.
Two years on, after reattaining public funding (and capital investment to maintain the building), Shanghai-born artist Xiaowen Zhu relaunched the venue in 2023 under a new name, esea contemporary – incorporating the wider east and south-east Asian diaspora – alongside a new team primarily made up of first- and second-generation migrants. The director’s ethos, defined following a series of artist surveys and community focus groups and seeks connectedness in an increasingly polarised world.
As part of a year-long programme celebrating its 40th anniversary, the charity is hosting Two Improvisations, the first UK institutional solo exhibition by London-based, Wuhan-born Chris Zhongtian Yuan. There’s also an online interview series tracing the gallery’s shift from a community-oriented Chinese visual arts festival to its role today as the UK’s only non-profit gallery dedicated to local and global art informed by east and south-east Asian cultural backgrounds. In addition, Japanese film-maker Umi Ishihara’s experimental film Nocturnal Melody will preview on 9 October.
Zhu believes the four-decade milestone presents an opportunity for reflection, as well as for clarity: who is esea contemporary accountable to, and why does it exist?
“We want to demonstrate that an organisation rooted in Manchester can contribute meaningfully to global artistic conversations while remaining deeply accountable to its communities,” says Zhu, who is based between Manchester and Berlin. Explaining that east and south-east Asian perspectives are underrepresented in UK institutions, particularly within major galleries and permanent collections, she adds: “Our role is not simply to provide visibility but to create the conditions for artists to develop ambitious work on their own terms.”
Yuan’s Two Improvisations – an original experimental film – bleeds punk. A pair of obscured musicians sing loudly. The band’s frontman, projected as a dark shadow, represents the “Yeren”, a lingering mythical Chinese misfit creature rumoured to roam the mountainous regions of Hubei. Adjoining the film, which shows musicians singing lyrics about deception and marginalisation, is an installation of Yuan’s architectural models of urban houses and skyscrapers (some built in China, and others handmade in the UK) which sit on an illuminated stage in the gallery foyer, mirroring Manchester’s Northern Quarter outside the window.
For Zhu, the showcase – like much of the work exhibited at esea contemporary – illustrates the dual reality of living between cultures, and across borders, while challenging certain narratives. Typically punk is not associated with Chinese people in the west, who are often stereotyped as reserved, “or worse, powerful”, Yuan tells me. “And Wuhan is always the city people talk shit about,” he adds. By drawing cultural comparisons with Manchester, both past and present, Yuan encourages the viewer to question traditional narratives about rebellion in China, as well as in his home town. Yuan relates to the Yeren, he tells me: living in the diaspora, the artist is deemed an outsider.
Alongside the gallery’s physical exhibitions, 40 Years, 40 Voices continues the celebrations online, inviting artists, stakeholders and longstanding collaborators to reflect on the organisation’s legacy and future. Art worker Kwong Lee, now director of London’s Deptford X festival, recalls participating in Beyond the Chinese Takeaway in 1992, marketed as “the first exhibition of its kind researching the innovative works of contemporary artists of Chinese origin living in Britain”. Meanwhile, trustee Xu Wenkai, a digital artist known as aaajiao, hopes “esea contemporary remains a space where Asian artists don’t have to justify themselves – where the work speaks first”.
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It’s a marked change for a venue that – long before 2020 – had been embroiled in controversy. During the late 90s and 00s, the gallery changed dramatically due to China’s growing cultural and economic influence. In 2013, the Riba award-winning space launched Conservative MP George Osborne’s Manchester China Forum, playing host to global trade deals and geopolitics.
According to Chan, the British government’s pro-China policy determined and ultimately restricted the artworks that were exhibited: “The gallery couldn’t be directly critical of the people the government were trying to do business with,” they say. “Galleries are shaped a lot by the political landscape, that’s where their money comes from. There’s often a manipulation of information.”
Today, Zhu has re-rooted the institution within the community. Her popular Esea art outreach programme encourages east and south-east Asian residents over 50 to create art, combating loneliness and providing an opportunity for migrants to speak their native language. She also invests in local talent: the organisation’s events and visitor experience manager was initially hired as front of house while working as a cashier at Wing Yip, a nearby Chinese store. At the same time, Zhu intends for the gallery to appeal to a broader audience, and uses more “accessible” artforms – including video, music, food and games – to do so.
It’s a marked change for an institution that had been embroiled in controversy. “The place lost its way for a while” says the artist Gayle Chong Kwan, who presented her first solo exhibition at the gallery in 2002 – and who facilitated the boycott in 2020. “Thankfully, that change happened.”
Chris Zhongtian Yuan: Two Improvisations is at esea contemporary, Manchester, to 13 September.
