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

Vivian K. Sheng is an art historian working on contemporary transnational art and visual culture, with a specific focus on East Asian and Chinese art after 1980s. Her research investigates the intricate interrelations between women, domesticity and art practices closely tied to cross-border movement and relocation, which challenge any stable and absolute conception of identity, home and belonging. Relevant questions and concerns are explored in her forthcoming monograph book— Fantasies of Homemaking: Art, Migration and Transnational East Asia. Her writings have appeared in Art Journal, Third Text, Sculpture Journal, Yishu and INDEX JOURNAL.

Selected Publications

‘Shen Yuan: Angling for “Home” in Displacement’, PARSE, forthcoming in December 2024.

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

‘Yin Xiuzhen’s Portable Cities: “Homemaking” via Domestic Preservation’, Third Text, 173, volume 35, issue 6, 2021, pp. 733-750. 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.