Workshop
Art as Social Project: A Workshop with Artist and Writer Jing (Commoning and Art)
20 November 2025 I 10:00 - 15:00 (CET)
Venue:
Room 3.03, Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24, 50931 Köln
Working with nonprofessional Chinese writers, Jing Y. founded the “Writing • Mother” project and co-produced seven books of memoirs, reflections, debates, and statements. It later led to “Sweat! Stop! Rewrite!” (SSR), where she offers free writing and drawing lessons to migrant workers, mostly women from rural China. The collaborations are process-oriented, presented through films, publications, workshops, installations. They advance her method: “using art and documentary approaches to create self-made citizenship” amid political constraint. Together they sketch a dynamic between Party and people: the Party trades the dream of a communist future for capitalism in the present, while people are asked to exchange socialism for the chance to become rich.
Jing received a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal) in 2005 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Since then she has exhibited and lectured internationally, sometimes within, sometimes against established frameworks, probing contradictions within Chinese society and between China and the world. Beyond shows at the Guangdong Times Museum, Para-site, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, many projects appear in artist-run and alternative spaces, often intangible.
Organized by the Thematic Area Commoning: Visions, Resources, Practices of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC).