Zhang Peili
Widely considered the first Chinese video artist, Zhang Peili’s practice has never been confined to a single medium.
About
Zhang Peili (born in Hangzhou, China in 1957). He earned his BA in 1984 from the Oil Painting Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou). He lives and works in Hangzhou, China.
Primary media
Video, installation
Widely considered the first Chinese video artist, Zhang Peili’s practice has never been confined to a single medium. Over the decades, his work has evolved from painting to video, sculpture and installation. In the 1980s, he co-founded Pond Society, an artist collective that organized public happenings and interventions in Hangzhou in critical response to the romantic tendencies of the contemporary art scene at the time.
Zhang Peili shaped contemporary discourse through numerous exhibitions. His work was included in two of China's landmark exhibitions ’85 New Space in Hangzhou, and the 1989 China/Avant-garde Exhibition in Beijing. He has also participated in the Venice Biennale, the 1st Fukuoka Art Triennial (1999), and the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial (1999). More recent presentations include Art and China After 1989 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017), and major solo exhibitions at Ren Space, Shanghai (2019), and Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2024).
In 2003, after several years of teaching, he founded the earliest new media art education program in China, now known as the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Art. From 2012 to 2022, he served as Executive Director of OCAT Shanghai. He now lives and works in Hangzhou.
His influence as an educator has been profound, with many of his former students joining a new wave of experimental artists, establishing video and emerging technologies as central to contemporary Chinese art.
