*****SPECIAL ***** re:thread Discussion

Wu Mali will be in the UK for the opening of her new installation at BBC Radio Lancashire in Blackburn which is the culmination of a summer residency exploring ex-textile workers from migrant communities from 5 September – 1 October 2006.

During this project Mali would like to invite migrant workers of the textile industry and their families to share their stories. They are invited to discussions and to bring images or objects which are meaningful to them or remind of their experiences. With contributions from the community Mali hopes to build an archive documenting this hidden history.

This project will culminate in an exhibition in the Open Space Centre at BBC Radio Lancashire (September 4 – October 1, 2006), which will include an artist talk at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester (September 5, 2006) and private view at the BBC (September 7 2006).

BBC Radio Lancashire, 26 Darwen Street, Blackburn, BB2 2EA

MORE ON WU MALI:
Wu Mali was born in Taipei in 1957 where she graduated in 1979 from Tamkang University. With a degree in German art and culture, she studied art in Dusseldorf, Germany from 1982-1986. As a conceptual artist, Wu Mali, creates both videos and installations in response to the outside world. Always thought-provoking, her work is diverse in both subject matter and in medium.

MORE ON ELSA CHEN:
Elsa Chen is Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has earned her Ph.D. degree from the School of Fine Art, Histories of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. She is an independent curator, art historian and art critic from Taiwan. She co-founded Taiwan Women Artists’ Association and initiated the first International Women’s Art Festival. Her exhibition project ‘City of Swallows’ was recently awarded the highest curator’s prize by the National Culture and Arts Foundation in Taiwan. Her recent publications include The Margins of Becoming: Identity and Culture in Taiwan, Mark Harrison and Carsten Storm (eds.), (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2006); Faces of Memory: the Issue of Self in Art (Taipei: Sanmin, 2005); and Translating Dialogue: Journeys between Art and Social Contexts (Taipei: ArtCo, 2004). Her Chinese and English essays have been published extensively in Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Canada, UK and Europe. Her published Chinese translations of British and American art historical classics include The Tradition of the New (1997), The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (1998), and Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (2000).

MORE ON GRISELDA POLLOCK:
Griselda Pollock is Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art and the Director of Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History at the University of Leeds. Her main research interests are in the issues of gender, race and class in the formations of modernism in late nineteenth century Europe and America; the history of women in the visual arts with a current project focusing on femininity, representation and modernity 1928-1968; the work of Vincent van Gogh; women’s cinema 1940-9; the legend of Tarzan: myths of empire, identity and place, contemporary visual arts by women. Her new research areas include issues of trauma, history and memory after the Holocaust and Jewish Art and Modernity. She has published extensively on feminist interventions into arts’ histories. Her publications include: Old Mistresses (1981), Framing Feminism (1987), Vision and Difference (1988; 2003), Generations and Geographies (1996), Differencing the Cannon (1999), Looking Back to the Future (2000), Encountering Eva Hesse (2006), Psychoanalysis and the Image (2006).

This project is supported by The Cultural Division, Taipei Representative Office in the UK.