Our team

Team

• 

  Amanda Zhang

  Co-Director

  Since 2010, Amanda has been producing creative community spaces for Asian American, Asian diasporic, and queer & trans people of color communities. She is interested in solidarity economics, transformative justice, and art as a medium for collective engagement, and is pursuing an MBA at Brandeis' Heller Social Impact program.

• 

  Cleo Miao

  Residency Coordinator

  Cleo was born in Zhejiang, China, and lived in Boston and New York before moving to Hamburg for an MA. She is a visual artist, film producer, animator, and designer playing with the absurdity and romance of digital tools and culture. She also produces underground electronic music and has been performing and DJing under the name 10_r3n.

• 

  Josue Chavez

  Curator

  Josue Chavez is doctoral student in the Hispanic program at the University of Pennsylvania, focused on contemporary artists from Central America and their relationship to global political economy. He conducted many artist interviews for China Residencies since 2018 and is the co-curator of Meme Tactics.

• 

  Kira Simon-Kennedy

  Co-Founder & Co-Director

  After working at Red Gate residency in 2009, Kira and Crystal started China Residencies to support, promote, and interlink creative spaces in China and beyond. She continues running it to this day in Crystal's honor. Kira is also one of the co-founders of Rivet, and produces independent films.

• 

  Quinn Chen 陈崑怡

  Community Coordinator

  Quinn an artist and recent graduate of Reed College in cultural Anthropology. They previously lived in Shanghai where they wrote for online journalism source Sixth Tone and organized events that promoted queer solidarity. Quinn is also a designer and movement artist interested in the boundaries between material and flesh in an increasingly mechanic world.

• 

  Shahong Lee

  Residency Director

  Shahong Lee is the Artist Residency Director at China Residencies and a documentary film producer. Previously, she has worked as the literary editor of Barakunan, an art collective in Beirut, Lebanon. As a writer, farmer, and artist, Shahong is passionate about building a more sustainable and equitable arts ecosystem for artists around the world.

• 

  Xiaoyao Xu

  Researcher

  Xiaoyao Xu is a contributing writer on the Chinese independent cultural scene. She is an artist and researcher, having done research on temporary clusters with the Sonic Acts Festival Amsterdam. She received the residency research fellowship (2019), working with China Residencies in New York and I: project space in Beijing.

Board Members

• 

  Adam Short

  Advisory Board

  Adam Short is the Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Virginia Tech. He formerly coordinated corporate and foundation efforts in the Northeast region for the American Red Cross, and worked as the Development & Program Manager at the Alliance of Artist Communities, where he worked in tandem with the Asian Cultural Council to organized and lead an exploratory visit to China to survey the burgeoning field of artist residency programs. Adam holds a bachelor of arts degree from Reed College and a master of business administration degree from Bryant University.

• 

  An Xiao Mina

  Governing Board

  An Xiao Mina is a technologist, writer and artist. She leads the product team at Meedan, and is an affiliate researcher at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Passionate about issues of global justice, technology and creative expression, An Xiao is also co-founder of The Civic Beat, a global research collective focused on the creative side of civic technology. An Xiao Mina is author of Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media is Changing Social Protest and Power (Beacon Press, January 2019).

• 

  Christina Xu

  Advisory Board

  Christina is an ethnographer helping organizations understand how their customers incorporate technology into their lives, with over a decade of experience in observing and orchestrating social interactions on the internet and in offline subcultural spaces in China and the U.S. She writes about the Chinese social media landscape for Magpie Kingdom with Tricia Wang & Pheona Chen, and teaches Entrepreneurial Design in the SVA Interaction Design MFA program with Gary Chou. "I believe in translation as an art, empathy as a foundation, and GIF hoarding as a methodology."

• 

  Ian Yang

  Advisory Board

  Ian Yang is currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and works as Advisor China, Japan and South Korea at DutchCulture, centre for international cooperation. Yang was a grantee of the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship by the European Commission (2009-2011). In the past 10 years he has been involved in a variety of artistic and cultural exchange projects between Europe and East Asia, and a freelance art critic and writer for Chinese language magazines and online media. Among others, he worked as assistant curator for the exhibition Snapshots of Tourism at the Helsinki International Artist Program (HIAP) in 2010; curatorial fellow at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam on the exhibition project Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists collaborating with Beijing’s Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art; programmer for CinemAsia Film Festival, Amsterdam (2016-18), programmer of the cultural programme NEDxPO of the Netherlands in South Korea in 2018, curator of exhibition Scene Unseen: contemporary design from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden at He Xiang Ning Art Museum, Shenzhen in 2019.

• 

  Jason Li

  Advisory Board

  Jason Li is an independent designer, cartoonist and researcher working at the intersection of storytelling, technology and social change. His practice focuses on amplifying underrepresented voices, creating alternative media ecosystems, and making digital safety more accessible. Previous works have appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Asian Art Museum, on the BBC and on the radio in Spain. He also serves as an editor at Paradise Systems, a publisher of exemplary comics from the US and China, and at 88 Bar, a group blog about technology, media and design in the Greater China region

• 

  Jay Brown

  Governing Board

  Jay Brown founded Lijiang Studio in 2004, an arts practice based in a rural farming village in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Since then, Lijiang Studio has facilitated and produced numerous residencies, exhibitions and events in urban, rural, domestic, public, and private settings. These events are co-curated with the artists involved and with members of that local community. Before Lijiang Studio, Jay worked at the Nature Conservancy’s China Program, based in Yunnan, and at various museums including the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jay graduated from Princeton University in 2001 with a degree in Art History and certificate in East Asian Studies.

• 

  Melissa Karmen Lee

  Advisory Board

  Melissa is a literature and visual arts academic, curator, archivist and storyteller with research interests in public art and social engagement. Currently, Melissa is the Curator of Education and Public Programs at Tai Kwun in Hong Kong. Melissa graduated from McGill and Canterbury Universities with a Master of Arts in literature, and worked on the curatorial team of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, as well as on several projects as a freelance curator including curator at large at Slought Foundation, University of Pennsylvania co-curating 2 digital exhibitions on the cloud. Melissa is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Lancaster on the subject of post 1989 transnational Chinese visual art and culture.

• 

  Miles Greenberg

  Advisory Board

  Miles Greenberg is a French Canadian-born and Paris-based young queer artist and curator of mixed Russian/Ukrainian and African-American ancestry. His practice consists primarily of process-based, long-durational performance installations, as well as photography and video. He also has a background in contemporary dance, drag performance, perfumery and film work.

• 

  Minsoo Thigpen

  Advisory Board

  Minsoo works at Microsoft during the day and helps run an online art books publishing collective (hyperlinkpress.com) and paints at night, after she became disillusioned with the euro-centric/exploitative art world. She works in the domain of AI and ethics building tools to help data scientists practice machine learning more responsibly (secret: it's going to take a fucking long time), she used to love traveling a lot but now in pandemic mostly spends time taking care of her vegetable garden and grows perilla leaves. She learned Korean cooking (Maangchi is her hero) to become closer to her mom and feeds her friends yummy things as the ultimate act of love and care. She believes in recuperative art practices and storytelling to give voice to marginalized/erased histories. To share the advantage of her corporate privilege, she organizes donation matching to redistribute corporate money to organizations that most need it : https://tinyurl.com/donationmatching4blm

• 

  Pamela Liou

  Governing Board

  Pamela is an artist and technologist working in Brooklyn, NY. Working with arts organizations such as Eyebeam, Museum of Arts and Design, and PS1 has given her a felt appreciation for both the vibrancy of NYC's artist communities as well as the challenges that organizations face in fostering those they purport to support. As a board member, Pamela hopes to always center the artists' needs so that they can get back to their urgent work with the care and guidance they deserve.

• 

  Rachel Marsden

  Governing Board

  Rachel Marsden is a curator, researcher, educator, bookbinder and arts writer focusing on transcultural studies, cultural translation and curatorial practices in China and the Asia-Pacific. Originally from the UK, Rachel has lived in New York, Shanghai & Melbourne, where she founded and managed the Art Curatorship Partnership Projects at the University of Melbourne. Rachel was awarded a PhD through the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA), Birmingham City University (BCU), UK in 2017.

• 

  Samantha Culp

  Advisory Board

  Samantha Culp is a California-born writer, curator and creative producer based between Los Angeles and Shanghai. She has spent the past decade in greater China, first in Hong Kong, then in Beijing and Shanghai. Samantha is the founder and director of New Territories, an experimental studio for research and production, which develops projects and events spanning art, cinema, and design. She is the founding curator of Tulou Open House, a site-specific creative experiment, residency, and conference at a traditional tulou in rural Fujian Province. She co-founded Paloma Powers, a creative agency developing artist-led solutions for realms far beyond the art world.

• 

  Zara Arshad

  Governing Board

  Zara Arshad is a curator, writer and design historian specialising in twentieth- and twenty first-century material and visual culture from East Asia. She has previously held roles at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Design History Society UK, Beijing Design Week, and Icograda Beijing 2009. Arshad is currently a PhD researcher based between the University of Brighton and V&A, and one half of the studio Geofictions with artist Yaloo.

Summer Internship

• 

  Angel Tillery

  2018

  Angel is an artist, designer, and curator based in Beijing. She graduated from Bowie State University, where she studied digital media arts and studied abroad for three semesters in Harbin at Heilongjiang University and served as the President of American Students of the International Student Association. Angel interned at W. W. Norton & Company in NYC before moving to Beijing.

• 

  Hong Zhang 张弘

  2013

  Hong is currently a senior visual designer at Alibaba in Hangzhou. She studied visual communication at Virginia Commonwealth University and has an undergraduate degree from Jiaotong University in Shanghai.

• 

  Jialong Li 李家隆

  2015

  Jialong Li 李家隆 graduated from CUNY, Queens College, with Master degrees in Urban Studies in 2015, and holds a BA in Publishing & Arts from Sichuan University in Chengdu. He is originally from Beijing and has lived in New York since 2013.

• 

  Julia Malleck 李慧

  2014

  Julia interned for China Residencies during the summer of her junior year at Tufts, where she graduated with a major in International relations & English, and spent time studying abroad at SOAS in London. After graduation, she worked at think tanks and nonprofits in Washington, DC, and is currently a Princeton in Asia fellow in Beijing.

• 

  Mandy You 游祎豆

  2020

  Mandy is a sophomore at Wellesley College studying philosophy and computer science. She was born and raised in Wuhan, China and enjoys cooking, writing poetry, and upcycling vintage clothing in her free time. She is passionate about serving the local immigrant community in Boston.

• 

  Marvis Zou 邹晓童

  2015

  Marvis Zou has recently graduated from Columbia University with a Master's Degree in Nonprofit Management. She is currently looking for opportunities in the nonprofit sector in New York City. Marvis is a steelpan musician (you might see her perform on the subway platforms), sailor, and Iyengar yogi. She is an advocate of diversity.

• 

  Sally Yi Cao

  2013

  Sally Yi Cao is the Curatorial & Education Program Manager at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg. She studied accounting as an undergraduate in Beijing and earned a masters in Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon.

• 

  Sophia Wu

  2015

  Sophia graduated with a B.A. in Economics from St. Mary's College of Maryland then studied Journalism at Georgetown. She is a designer, writer, photographer, and creator of the independent magazine QING.

• 

  Yixin Sam Gong 龚翊鑫

  2016

  Yixin (Sam) Gong is a curator and researcher originally from Xiamen. After working at Organhaus in Chongqing, he moved to New York to study Art History at Rutgers University. In 2015, he completed the curatorial internship at Bangkok University Gallery contemporary art projects between Japan, China, and Thailand. He co-curated Roadside Picnic at Chambers Fine Arts in NYC, "a celebration of the state in flux as our global world rattles anxiously and attentively."

Past Board Members & Contributors

• 

  Former Board Members

  We thank and remember the many wonderful board members who contributed advice over the years:

  Nancy Murphy, Brian Wallace, Kristin Congdon, Catherine Croll, Ed Dadey, Gordon Laurin, Joanne Wei-ching Chen, Daniel Szehin Ho, Emma Karasz, Ming Lin, Thea Baumann, Maïa Sert, Christina Yuen Zi Chung

• 

  Freelance contributors:

  Contributing Writers, Filmmakers, Illustrators, Researchers & Editors

  Film & Video: Li-Lian Ahlskog-Hou, Nathaniel J. Brown, Grace Naw / Beijing Program Manager: Jennifer Lindsay / Writing & Editing: Rebecca Catching, Fei Liu, Iona Whittaker, Yang Yiran, Willem Molesworth / Illustration: Diane Zhou

• 

  Mikail Wright Kwon

  Co-Curator & Designer

  Mikail is a Visual Artist, Designer and Researcher from the Washington D.C. metro area whose practice focuses on intercultural interactions, folk art and queer communities. His family business, The Jackson Family Art Show, an arts management company in the area sowed an interest in the arts from a young age. After studying abroad at Heilongjiang University in Harbin, China for three semesters he transferred to the University of Maryland, College Park to complete his undergraduate degree in Chinese Literature. He is currently learning to code to pursue a new path as a web developer and game designer.

• 

  Shaonan Xi 郗少男

  Beijing Fellow ~ January - July 2019

  Shaonan is interested in queerness, biopolitics, planetarity, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Shaonan is originally from Kunming and is now based in Shanghai after studying art history at Macalester College in Minnesota.