Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum Celebrates ‘Threshold of Collapse’ With Three Exhibitions

Rockbund Art Museum, one of Shanghai’s most experimental art institutions, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year with a trio of exhibitions themed around “transnational solidarity” — a way of looking at art beyond the trappings of national identity.

More specifically, its spring and summer exhibition will focus on three artists who “work at the threshold of collapse, of economies, of cultural memory, of logistical systems,” says X Zhu-Nowell, Rockbund’s executive director and chief curator.

The three artists — Irena Haiduk, Cici Wu and Ash Moniz — occupy individual spaces within the six-story Art Deco building and transform the building with dynamic narratives that offer critical yet poetic views on the world.

New York-based Haiduk’s “Nula” imagines an alternative financial system within the museum. The project includes a feature film starring exhibition visitors, created in collaboration with acclaimed cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro, a longtime collaborator of Lars von Trier.

Hong Kong-based Cici Wu, known for her delicate paper lanterns, unearthed a buried chapter of the museum’s history — when the building held confiscated books during the Cultural Revolution.

Ash Moniz, who works in New York and Cairo, explored the violence embedded in supply-chain logistics and “the history of efficiency.”

The exhibitions will run until Sept. 28.

“They focus on what breaks, what leaks, what is withheld,” explains Zhu-Nowell. “Some structures die, others are unearthed. These projects ask: When the systems we inherit no longer hold, what becomes thinkable?

“I’m interested in collapse not as an ending, but as a space of potential,” the star curator adds.

The museum, now part of the broader David Chipperfield-designed Rockbund mixed-use development completed in 2023, began offering free admission in May — a rare gesture in Shanghai’s increasingly commercialized art scene.

To continue its celebration, this fall the museum will unveil a solo show of the American sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud — her first in Asia. The show will trace her artistic legacy and highlight her experience visiting Maoist China in the 1960s.

Rockbund Art Museum

20 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.