Zhou Tao: The Worldly Cave

Chinese artist Zhou Tao joins us to present the UK premiere of this arresting new film.

The Worldly Cave [Fán Dòng] offers a series of eye-catching shots of diasporic Hakka communities positioned within vast natural and industrial landscapes around the globe.

The work was first presented as an installation at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 to great acclaim. Recorded at sites including the South Korean port of Incheon, the Spanish island of Menorca and the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States, the film explores the threshold between natural and artificial environments. As with his previous works, Zhou stages plot-less scenes in each location, turning his focus to colour and the figure-ground proportions that lend the film its surreal quality.

Zhou Tao, The Worldly Cave [Fán Dòng], China 2017, digital, colour, sound, 48 min

The screening is followed by a discussion with Zhou Tao, Clara Kim (Senior Curator, International Art, Tate Modern) and Yung Ma (Curator in the Contemporary and Prospective Creation Department, Centre Pompidou) as well as an audience Q&A.​

Zhou Tao (b.1976, China) is a Guangzhou-based artist trained in oil painting and mixed media. Since 2003, Zhou has primarily worked in video, drawing and photography. The visual narratives in his works often combine different spatial constructs such as industrial landscapes, urban centres, constructions sites, parks, public squares and wastelands. Zhou’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; and Museu d’art contemporani, Barcelona, among others. His 2017 work The Worldly Cave [Fán Dòng] was presented at the 57th Venice Biennale.

This premiere screening of Zhou Tao: The Worldly Cave is organised in partnership with Centre Pompidou.