Bio-Exempt | Joni Zhu

is a curator who works at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, cultural analysis. Her ongoing curatorial engagements are concerned with questions surrounding minoritarian discrimination and social injustice, opacity and the illusion of diversity, ecologies of care and decolonising nature, machinic conditioning and enslavement, pluralised and diasporic subjectivities, speculative fiction and inventive methods, multiple futures and the collapse of monoculture, decentralisation and alternative imaginations, organisational collaboration and cooperation. bjonizhu@gmail.com

Info +

Joni Zhu is a curator who works at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, cultural analysis. Her ongoing curatorial engagements are concerned with questions surrounding minoritarian discrimination and social injustice, opacity and the illusion of diversity, ecologies of care and decolonising nature, machinic conditioning and enslavement, pluralised and diasporic subjectivities, speculative fiction and inventive methods, multiple futures and the collapse of monoculture, decentralisation and alternative imaginations, organisational collaboration and cooperation. bjonizhu@gmail.com

03.2023Chated with Xin Liu about her work and intimacy at the Courtauld. 02.2023Artforum/Bassam Al-Sabah: The seduction of CGI and the limits of the self 06.2022Silk, Wars, Asias in Viscose Journal. 06.2022Chaired the conference panel Life after the ruins: Precarity, labour, work infrastructures at UCL. 06.2022JSC Worldbuilding exhibition catalogue - Lawrence Lek, Nepenthe Zone 06.2022In dialogue with Lawrence Lek about friendships and futures. 04.2022I gave a talk on Bassam Al-Sabah's exhibition I AM ERROR at De La Warr Pavilion. 12.2021A Text on skin-ego, simulation and regenerative futurism for Jinseung Jang's solo show Réalité Simulée at Onsu Gonggan, Seoul. 10.2021CIRCA: Destination, Circulation, Where Are We Going? 09.2021I talked about technological optimism in relation to the COVID-19 machine on the panel discussion of Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise at Chinsenhale Gallery, London. 06.2021Currently on Vdrome 05.2021Plastic Love / 塑胶爱 02.2021I talked about how Advanced Practices in the arts explore, invent and restage knowledge formats at Visual Cultures Public Lecture, Goldsmiths, University of London 04.2020Submitted PhD thesis titled Cyber-Proletariat and the New Subaltern Space. 11.2019I started a post-doc role, working on the AHRC funded project Bio-Exempt. 09.2019I responded to Shanzhai Lyric’s "FREEDON (and on and on)" at the Women’s Art Library. 03.2019I produced a CGI film. 06.2018Latin America Subaltern Studies Group 10.2017I took part to organise (X) An Evening of Performances at DRAF. 09.2017I read Chinese Sci-fi for CAMPerVAN at Jupiter Woods. 03.2017I organised and presented at the International Curatorial Workshop: Curating and Social Change. 09.2016I contributed to An Anecdoted Archive of Exhibition Lives that was exhibited at Bergen Assembly, organised by freethought. 11.2015I started researching a PhD at Curatorial/Knowledge, Goldsmiths. 07.2015Black Box Formula. 01.2015Are we working too much? 10.2014I talked to Valerie Steele about obsessions. 05.2014Introspections is an artist moving image programme I curated in collaboration with LUX and BFI at London’s Picturehouse. 01.201413th Istanbul Biennial: Mom, Am I Barbarian? 05.2012An exhibition investigating creative resistance was curated and exhibited at the Guardian. 03.2012Circular Facts 03.2011I took part in the process of recovering and re-activating a pedagogic experiment: the ‘A’ Course with MayDay Rooms.

11.2019

Working with Dr. Zach Blas, Bio-Exempt: Art in the Age of Digital, Networked Surveillance is a three-year research project investigating digital, networked surveillance in transdisciplinary contexts, focusing on visual arts and minoritarian politics (queer, feminist, anti-racist). The project engages media theory, surveillance studies, and digital arts to produce public knowledge exchanges between artists, scholars, technologists and government workers who have the ability to affect policies and work towards eliminating social and cultural biases that are programmed into technical devices.