Architect and urbanist Jiang Jun, founder of the magazine Urban China, a pioneering publication in the critical analysis of the urbanization process in China, will be in Macau to talk about architecture curatorship at the "On Home" talk, promoted by Docomomo Macau, at Macau Art Garden, on Saturday, May 18.
"Curatorship is an emerging issue for architecture, because it has to do with something that has become increasingly important for architects, which is the communication of architecture and its different dimensions to a wider audience," according to architect Rui Leão, president of Docomomo Macau. Jiang Jun, founder of Urban China magazine, will be in Macau for the talk "On Home", sponsored by Docomomo Macau, to discuss curating and creating exhibitions as spaces and platforms for meetings and debate in Macau Art Garden, on May 18. Hong Kong designer and professor Joshua Roberts will be moderating the talk.
As founder and editor of Urban China magazine, Jiang Jun has contributed significantly to the study and knowledge of China's architecture, as this was perhaps "the only publication in China that began to make an analysis and mapping of urban phenomena when the country began the industrialization phase" explains Rui Leão. The interest of the "international critical community linked to architecture", which has followed and studied China's development from the standpoint of architecture and urbanism, "is very much because of him, because Jiang Jun began to make a critical analysis of what was happening in China, the process of industrialization and urbanization," he adds.
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2000, counted on the contribution of Jiang Jun in the study and survey of the work integrated in the "Great Leap Forward" project – "a kind of bible on the recent urbanization of China", as described by Rui Leão. In turn, the work of Rem Koolhaas "is very important for China to be part of our general architectural culture".
The talk will review three exhibitions curated by Jiang Jun, held over the past five years, "Mountains beyond Mountains", 2014, "Shekou Roundtable: 2025", Shenzhen, 2015 (6th Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture – UABB) and "On Home in Wuzhen" in 2018-2019. In the vision of the Chinese architect and urbanist, born in Hubei in 1974, "curatorship is an attempt to build a 'strong relevance' not only between individual exhibitions, but also between the location of the temporary exhibition and the socio-political realities”, according to the official statement on the talk.
The internationalization of China "goes a long way in this curatorial work that is done by people like Jiang Jun and by studios in Beijing who, in addition to architecture, curate," says Rui Leão. "It is a work that is not just about studios and projects, it has to do with the ability to understand and show cities and the transformation of cities. " For China, this is a relevant work, "because, politically, architecture did not have great importance until a certain point in the 20th century, and then came to have since the 1990s (…). And because architecture is not just an exercise in design, it is an exercise in understanding the city, and it is a critical exercise in how you can create capital gains and how you can think of people while generating a program, how can more comprehensive answers be given, and also more politically interesting".
Rui Leão highlights how, in China, curatorship in the area of architecture is important, "in the critical qualification of architects" and in allowing "to ensure architectural quality without having to import architects." Since "this investment was not made first in universities, Chinese architecture faculties reacted next, because there was a certain critical mass among the architects, which only then moved on to training. And this projection of a critical sense of Chinese architecture is equally important abroad with curatorial projects outside China."
In Macau, and in this context "of the sector expansion and investment in the creative industries that is so important for the Macau Government and also for the Greater Bay area, the teachings of Jiang Jun can contribute to a reflection that has to do with the creative industries and what curatorship can be as a way to look at the city in a more comprehensive way," Rui Leão concludes.
