BA Hunan University; MA Loughborough University; MA, PhD University of York

Vivian K. Sheng is an art historian working on contemporary Chinese and East Asian art in transnational contexts. Her forthcoming book—Contemporary Art and Transnational East Asia: women, migration and homemaking (Manchester University Press, Rethinking Art’s Histories) provides insights into women’s engagements with both mundane domesticity and art practices in contexts of intensified cross-border movements and exchanges that unsettle the territorial fixity of nation-states. Her research resonates with the recent call to decolonise the Anglo-American dominated scholarships in art history, posing challenges to the persistent hegemony of the Global North in the production of knowledge and discourses about nation, gender, history and otherness.

Selected Publications

‘Shen Yuan: Angling for “Home” in Displacement’, PARSE Journal, Issue 20, Spring 2025 on ‘Feminist Art: Practices of Co-Existences’, https://doi.org/10.70733/wehmnbb4j5i3.

‘One Morning of the World: The Notion of Trans-Asia’, in Alpesh K. Patel and Jane Chin Davidson (eds.) ‘Conceptualizing TRANS-ASIA’, ASAP/Journal, Issue 9.3, 2024, pp. 427-431. https://doi.org/10.1353/asa.2024.a957246 .

‘DRC No. 12: A “Migratory” Site of Glocal Specificity’, Art Journal, 83:3, 2024, pp. 14-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2024.2403928.

‘Yin Xiuzhen’s Portable Cities: “Homemaking” via Domestic Preservation’, Third Text, 173, volume 35, issue 6, 2021, pp. 733-50.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.2017197 .

‘Multiple Selves: Nikki S. Lee’s Projects’, INDEX JOURNAL, Issue No. 1 Identity, 2020.http://dx.doi.org/10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.6.

‘Yin Xiuzhen’s Fluid Sites of Participation: A Communal Space of Communication and Antagonism’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 82, vol.16, no. 5, 2017, pp. 65-77. 

‘Yin Xiuzhen’s Fabric Cavities: Fabricating “Strange Encounters”’, Sculpture Journal, 2014, Issue 23.3, pp. 393-402. https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2015.10.

Exhibition Catalogue Essay

‘Kim Woo-Young’s Urban Odyssey: Inhabiting the Uninhabited City’, Urban Odyssey, 2019, Soluna Fine Art, Hong Kong. KWY-Urban-Odyssey-print-pdf_compressed.pdf (solunafineart.com).

Fellowships and Activities

2025: Panel Convenor: From Local to Global: Feminist Activism and Documentary Photography, Association for Art History Annual Conference, 9-11 April 2025. University of York, UK.

2024: Visiting Fellowship, Social Archive of Chinese Photography, China Academy of Art, PRC.

2022: University of St Andrews Global Fellowship, UK.

Selected Conference Papers

Angling for Habitats: Homemaking in Displacement, Understanding Displacement in Visual Art and Cultural History: 1945 to Now, University of Manchester, UK.

One Morning of the World: Transnational Dwelling via Conflictual Connections, Conceptualising Trans-Asia (Panel), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Annual Conference, Arts of Fugitivity, University of Washington, US.

Caring and Transnational Homemaking: Yin Xiuzhen’s Art of Domestic Preservation (invited), Cooking, Cleaning, Caring: Care Work as a Global Issue in Contemporary Art, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany.

Fiona Tan’s Provenance (2008): Inhabiting the World as a ‘Professional Foreigner’, Exiled and Female: Visualising Identity in the Work of Women Artists (Panel), Association for Art History (AAH) Annual Conference, Birmingham, UK.