Biography

Born in 1972, Xuancheng, China, Kan Xuan obtained a BFA from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (1997), before moving to Amsterdam in 2002 for a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. Ranging from performance to photography and video, her early works focus on the everyday by recording, magnifying, and valorizing trivial details of quotidian life and regularly feature the artist herself. In the video Kanxuan! Ai! (1999), Kan runs through a pedestrian underpass in Beijing’s Fuxingmen subway station, repeatedly shouting and responding to her name as if searching for the lost self. Against a surging crowd, Kan’s anxious calls to the self amplify a common tension between one’s subjective experience and mainstream values or social norms. Millet Mounds (2012) marked a turning point in Kan’s practice, in which she transitioned from investigating insignificant moments, mundane objects, and daily gestures toward her interest in China’s imperial mausoleums. Her formats shifted from fragmented visuals to narrative storytelling, from short videos to large moving-image installations. For this work, the artist embarked with a few friends on a cross-country research trip of over 17,000 miles, during which she visited 171 imperial tombs over several months. Using her cell phone camera, a popular, economical approach to documentation deliberately at odds with the solemnity of imperial history and grand narratives, she captured four to five hundred still images at each site and later edited them into a series of stop-motion videos. The videos, which were included in the Venice Biennale (2013), are presented in an installation structurally similar to the mausoleums that can evolve depending on the exhibition space. Kan’s Kū Lüè Er (2016), commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum, continues this research into ancient city sites. Kan’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, China (2002); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2012); and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, U.K. (2016). Her work has been included in such group exhibitions as I Still Believe in Miracles, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2005); Prix de Rome, De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2005); Everyday Miracles (Extended), San Francisco Art Institute and REDCAT, Los Angeles (2009–10); and M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, ArtisTree, Hong Kong (2016). At the Guggenheim, Kan participated in the second exhibition of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative, Tales of Our Time (2016–17), and Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (2017–18, which traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao [2018] and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [2018–19]). She has also participated in the Guangzhou Triennial (2005–06 and 2012); Havana Biennial (2006); Venice Biennale (2007 and 2013); Istanbul Biennial (2007); Moscow Biennial (2009); and Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2010). She has received many awards and grants, including the Best Artist Award at the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (2014). Kan lives and works in Amsterdam and Beijing.