Wan Hai Hotel | Joni Zhu

is a curator who works at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory and cultural analysis. She works interdisciplinarily and is interested in constituting new objects of knowledge that are in the field of Visual Cultures, where the object of study can be evacuated from disciplines and forms of knowledge territorialisation. She is the director of CHERUBY (cheruby.com), which operates at the intersection of art and fashion through residency, exhibitions, and public programming. She is the Arts Editor at Large for Dazed China. Until 2025, she was the Head of Programme, Research and Initiatives at Rockbund Art Museum. bjonizhu@gmail.com

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Joni Zhu is a curator who works at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory and cultural analysis. She works interdisciplinarily and is interested in constituting new objects of knowledge that are in the field of Visual Cultures, where the object of study can be evacuated from disciplines and forms of knowledge territorialisation. She is the director of CHERUBY (cheruby.com), which operates at the intersection of art and fashion through residency, exhibitions, and public programming. She is the Arts Editor at Large for Dazed China. Until 2025, she was the Head of Programme, Research and Initiatives at Rockbund Art Museum. bjonizhu@gmail.com

09.2025 Shanghai Picnic: an architectural festival 08.2025 Alternative pedagogy: Late Summer School 07.2025 Launched a residency programme with Slavs and Tatars, the De Ying Foundation and the Goethe-Institut 06.2025 Curatorial Practices in Asia: A Retreat for the Retreated in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut 11.2024 Wan Hai Hotel: Pacific Studies 10.2024 Becoming Rehearsal: a process-driven performative exchange and workshops. 07.2024 A party, where you have to earn your entrance for a night of performances and artistic exchanges. 07.2024 Commissioned three audiovisual performances with Eastern Margins. 03.2024 AUUUUDITORIUM reclaimed the Rockbund Art Museum's historical auditorium with a scenography by Ming Wong. 03.2023 Chated with Xin Liu about her work and intimacy at the Courtauld. 02.2023 Artforum/Bassam Al-Sabah: The seduction of CGI and the limits of the self 06.2022 Silk, Wars, Asias in Viscose Journal. 06.2022 Chaired the conference panel Life after the ruins: Precarity, labour, work infrastructures at UCL. 06.2022 JSC Worldbuilding exhibition catalogue - Lawrence Lek, Nepenthe Zone 06.2022 In dialogue with Lawrence Lek about friendships and futures. 04.2022 I gave a talk on Bassam Al-Sabah's exhibition I AM ERROR at De La Warr Pavilion. 12.2021 A Text on skin-ego, simulation and regenerative futurism for Jinseung Jang's solo show Réalité Simulée at Onsu Gonggan, Seoul. 10.2021 CIRCA: Destination, Circulation, Where Are We Going? 09.2021 I talked about technological optimism in relation to the COVID-19 machine on the panel discussion of Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise at Chisenhale Gallery, London. 06.2021 Currently on Vdrome 05.2021 Plastic Love / 塑胶爱 02.2021 I talked about how Advanced Practices in the arts explore, invent and restage knowledge formats at Visual Cultures Public Lecture, Goldsmiths, University of London 04.2020 PhD thesis titled Cyber-Proletariat and the New Subaltern Space. 11.2019 I started a post-doc role, working on the AHRC funded project Bio-Exempt. 09.2019 I responded to Shanzhai Lyric’s "FREEDON (and on and on)" at the Women’s Art Library. 03.2019 I produced a CGI film. 06.2018 Latin America Subaltern Studies Group 10.2017 I organised (X) An Evening of Performances at DRAF. 06.2017 Visiting Professor at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. 03.2017 I organised and presented at the International Curatorial Workshop: Curating and Social Change. 09.2016 I contributed to An Anecdoted Archive of Exhibition Lives that was exhibited at Bergen Assembly, organised by freethought. 07.2015 Black Box Formula. 01.2015 Are we working too much? 10.2014 I talked to Valerie Steele about obsessions. 05.2014 Introspections is an artist moving image programme I curated in collaboration with LUX and BFI at London’s Picturehouse. 01.2014 13th Istanbul Biennial: Mom, Am I Barbarian? 05.2012 An exhibition investigating creative resistance was curated and exhibited at the Guardian. 03.2012 Circular Facts 03.2011 Took part in recovering and reactivating a pedagogic experiment: the ‘A’ Course with MayDay Rooms.

11.2024

In November 2024, Rockbund Art Museum launched Wan Hai Hotel, a commission programme lies the expansive vision of Tongan thinker Epeli Hauʻofa, who defies the reduction of the Pacific to “islands in a far sea.” His “sea of islands” manifests: a boundless expanse of continuity, crisscrossed lines, shared histories, and flowing networks rather than isolated territories. This programme is to connect Shanghai's relation with the Pacific by way of understanding that to exist as Shanghai (translates literally as "upper sea") is to be born of rivers and seas, to rise through the churning currents of trade and flux; and the Pacific, which cradles this place, is most often seen as a site of inexhaustible resources, an ocean-wide quarry for extraction, for territorialization. The projects that I commissioned and organised for this programme thus are concerned with colonial and touristic extraction, the movement of music and culture, ansestral memory and embodiment, indigeous wisdoms and resilience.
My research trip to Australia in 2024 was supported by Creative Australia.

Joshua Serafin, Relics: An Eyes Ones Blind, 2025 Performance.
In/Out Linhai, Palimsest of Night Navigation, 2025. Experimental theatre.
Bhenji Ra, Sissy in the RUINS, 2024. Ritual and performance.
Jin Yanan, XIA, Renn, River God: Shanghai Swollow, 2024. Experimental sound performance.
Arka Kinari, Artivism at Sea. Performance.
Aaron Choulai, Jazz Piano Performance.
Megan Cope, Keynote Presentation
Taloi Havini, Keynote Presentation
Sung Tieu, Keynote Presentation