Past Programs
2024.01.21 Sunday
Against the backdrop of the Anthropocene era, the last paddy on Earth collapses upon the sprawling ruin arching over the sea at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The Paddy in Paddyfilm unfolds in the residency project at the MadeIn Art Museum on Chongming Island, narrating a human-centric Anthropocene story with an accelerating plot.
2024.01.13 Saturday
In the book "What Painting Is?” James Elkins departs from the traditional approach in art history, which studies painting through form and meaning. His focus shifts to the microscopic material components and generative processes of painting, likening painting to the ancient and mysterious practice of alchemy. 
2023.12.28 Thursday
This talk will discuss video game interactivity and its politics from the perspective of the interface, analyzing why the interface is the key to the change from game to video game, and revealing how the interface both exposes the interactivity of the game as a heterochronic interaction between the game and the player in two worlds, and transforms the autotelic space of the game into the semi-autotelic space of the video game.
2023.12.16 Saturday
In a two-day food workshop co-presented by MACA and 1000小食, participants were invited to activate their unique elemental perceptions and "read" Elemental Constellations with detective-like curiosity. Guest Co-Planner: 1000小食 (Xiao Yang, Yan Mo)
2023.12.12 Tuesday
We feel deeply honored to have presented this all-encompassing party as the finale of the Shanghai art season, offering friends both within and outside the art industry a short yet refreshing break for their minds and bodies from their daily routines.
2023.11.28 Tuesday
Inspired by Primo Levi's novel, The Periodic Table, the exhibition explores natural elements, the very basic units of the world, as a “medium” which constantly shapes culture and technology.
2023.11.07 Tuesday
"I am a man: little do I  last and the night is enormous.  But I look up: the stars write. Unknowing I understand:  I too am written, and at this very moment  someone spells me out."
2023.10.01 Sunday
We have invited six performers, whose topics will encompass video game, field research, ruin exploration, family genealogy retrospection, fantasy and cultivation of immortality, UFO and science fiction, among others.
2023.09.24 Sunday
The game engine weaves together many fragments of the reality: life in an earthquake-resistant shelter after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, memories during the “qigong fever” social phenomenon, myths of earth arteries, stories and narratives of deities and monsters, nightmares plagued by physical pains and wounds, and the haunting of patriarchy within a 20th-century family.
2023.09.10 Sunday
Contemporary art (or, broadly speaking, including all the creative cultural industry) can be seen as a site for such experiments in weightlessness. Or rather, it is evolving into a semi-open platform to test the “anti-gravity engine” (that resists the gravitational pull of the society). To test if we can survive gravity is a task for every ordinary person whose life involves art, who is a receiver and transmitter of images.
2023.08.11 Friday
While immersing ourselves in it, we must maintain a clear mind and perceive the profound impact of new consumerism on our inner selves in the era of virtual reality, and that's what we'll really get out of this bazaar.
2023.05.21 Sunday
These fragments are in fact portraits of the group, as a tribute to those who are still alive and those who have passed away, and as a connection between memory and love in the post-epidemic era.
2023.04.01 Saturday
The term "semiconductor demon" , on the one hand, refers to the speed paradox of the chip technology is about to face, and on the other hand, reveals the "imperial monster" nature of the semiconductor industry itself, which has been deeply embedded in a high degree of alliance between capitalist conglomerates and state coordination from the beginning, and continues to be a "Cold War relic" in today's international politics scene.
2023.01.14 Saturday
In conjunction with the exhibition Multispecies Clouds at Mecalline Art Center, the special public program Meshwork is honored to invite Bo Yang, PhD candidate in anthropology from the Human Ecology Research Group at University College London, to present a theoretical discussion on ontology, multispecies ethnography and botanical study in anthropology in the context of his fieldwork on Cordyceps Sinensis in Kham area of Tibet.
2023.01.14 Saturday
Like a "species multiplier", "multispecies clouds" brew ambiguous borders within them, in which species mix, mutate and regenerate, and thus acquire the forms of their uncertain future.
2023.01.06 Friday
Now, we will return to this old parlor again for another late-winter evening gathering, diving into the passage of the medium from between light and shadow, pixels and words, revisiting 1930 almost a century ago, and the old dreams of this lady annihilated in the dust of time and drops by air.
2022.11.10 Thursday
The word "zang (脏)" in Mandarin means dirty, but its pronunciation is exactly the same as the word that means "true (真)" in Wenzhou dialect.
2022.11.05 Saturday
The garden is either a place of divine grace where angels descend, or a labyrinth of lust and pleasure where the mind is seduced, either an Epicurean school where virtue is cultivated, or a land of decadence depicted by Bosch. In medieval dream-poetry, the protagonist often falls into dreamland and wanders into otherworldly places in a hortus conclusus, and such enclosed gardens can be subsumed under a broader concept of landscape: the locus amoenus, pleasant place which appears frequently in the writings of classical authors such as Horace and Virgil.
2022.10.23 Sunday
The highly controversial Documenta 15 has come to its closure, however, the debate around it is still very much heated. We have seen severe disagreement and imbalance at this specific site that represents the global contemporary art scene. How are they relevant to us? We could still ask, how are we (artists, institutions, curators, collectors…) related to the discourses around “locality”, “global south”, “context”, and “Lumbung” – the concept proposed by Ruangrupa in Documenta 15. How do we comprehend these disputes and arguments? How do we rethink of “locality”? In this seminar, we would like to reflect on these questions as well as to solidify our positions.
2022.10.15 Saturday
There are many similarities between the thinker Giorgio Agamben and the media theorist Vilém Flusser. Not only do they both critically reflect on the problem of evil in the present age, but they also respond to it with the highly revealing concepts of anarchē and groundlessness, respectively. But this further reveals the fundamental differences between the two.
2022.10.07 Friday
The field of contemporary art has been flooded with terminology related to "locality," around which emerged numerous exhibitions and discussion. People are even under the illusion that by tilting artistic direction towards local contexts, it is possible to break free from homogeneity and develop different approaches, explore new contexts, and change trends… This is, of course, an illusion. In my limited personal experience, I have found that professionals in the field of contemporary art are probably the least "patient" group of people. No matter how complex the context is, you’d better explain yourself in two minutes. The more "professional" people are, the less time they have for others, and they would jump to conclusions within a few sentences. It's not a matter of individual differences, it's a common denominator. I want to discuss issues related to the topic of "locality" in a divergent way by sharing these three stories, which are not strictly interconnected. For instance, can we extract a new way of perceiving time and space from "locality"? Can "locality" only be included as a specificity in a more general context? …
2022.09.25 Sunday
Eastern European art is one of the sources of inspiration for the artworks by Avita Guo and Zhangbolong Liu. By exploring their past memories and internet research of these sites, rich in historical vicissitudes, we will embark on a reverie-filled journey in this conversation on the opening day.
2022.09.24 Saturday
In the final session of "Subjective Narratology", Li Binyuan will recollect the legacy of his work and talk about the scars left on himself during his creation, and draw a picture of Xiaoxiang that is constantly polished, chiseled and reshaped by the artist's body - without geographical displacement and alienation, this hidden personal landscape is deeply connected to the land and the life it provides.
2022.09.11 Sunday
In the third issue of the series “Subjective Narratology“, Xing Danwen will use her personal understanding of ”pain“ as a creative clue to explore the periodicity of ”pain“ – it is perpetuated in the life course of an individual, as well as in social changes. Through the growth and artistic exploration of this female artist and a generation, we will meet bizarre living forms that live in a broken scene caused by overexploitation, and your pain is mine too.
2022.08.21 Sunday
As the second event of the series “Subjective Narratology", artist He An will review his travels to Shanxi, Italy and other places in the past fifteen years, and examine the formation of the places’ unconscious, and reflect on the loss of genius loci.
2022.08.21 Sunday
Vortex is a long-term project. We will update the content of performance lectures by artists and talks by experts both on- and offline. Following the fundamental approach of connecting local practice, theories, and context, we hope that this nonstandard art venue will become a place of torrents, flux, and confluence.
2022.08.07 Sunday
“Journey to the Organs” is a guided meditation series that opens up our consciousness to the internal organs. Based on the body, we will think about the relationship between human beings and reality, nature, and the universe. In this meditation, Fang Lu and the audience will enter the location of the soul (Po Hu) - the lungs.
2022.05.21 Saturday
In the upcoming 40-minutes performative lecture "Weaving the Possible of Impossible: Visual Riddles and Emotional Ruins" on May 21, Shao Chun will integrate photo collages as well as texts to reconstruct an online virtual space of Macalline Art Center’s Cloisters Apartment.
2022.04.10 Sunday
Shen Xin’s new text “1, 2, 3, 4” further explores the relationship between language and text, simultaneously describing faults in geographic structures and individual histories.Based on Shen Xin’s text, Macalline Art Center will host a performance reading.
2022.03.26 Saturday
For countries outside of Europe and North America, is the idea of environmental protection imported or does it have indigenous origins? Two views have emerged among historians.
2022.02.19 Saturday
At 2 p.m. on February 19, the Cloister Project will host the public event “Sprouting” at the Cloisters Apartments. As an extension of Liao Fei’s solo show “Depiction,” this event will bring in a number of students aged six to ten from different Shanghai schools. Guided by program curator Duan Kexin, the children’s interactions with the works will be transformed into a game that investigates the intersections of body and object, text and image.
2022.01.22 Saturday
At 6:00 p.m. on January 22, the Cloister Project will present “Polyphonic”, a public event with performance, at the Cloisters Apartments. Shown as part of Liao Fei’s solo show “Depiction,” Polyphonic will be led by artist Xu Lishuang, who will explore the multiple relationships between a person and a table through the act of climbing.
2022.01.15 Saturday
During the exhibition opening on January 15, Macalline Art Center is delighted to host a discussion with novelist Lu Nei, moderated by Yuan Fuca, curator of “The Elephant Escaped.”
2021.12.03 Friday
The Cloister Project is Macalline Art Center’s special project space in Shanghai. Located on the second floor of the Cloister Apartments at No. 62 Fuxing West Road, Shanghai, the Cloister Project is a non-profit space for exhibitions, public education, and cultural exchange.
2021.09.19 Sunday
When film and urban history are woven together, the cityscape can be conceptualized as a screenscape. In this in-person public event for Macalline Art Center’s “Bare Screen” commissions, we have invited artists, architects, and curators to explore Beijing’s urban spaces and architectural landscapes with you.
2021.07.22 Thursday
Zhang Wenxin’s video project Two Passages into the Caves contains two works, HOGEN and illusion, which are both comprised of text and video. Both pieces will be presented in an offline screening and discussion at fRUITYSPACE (No. 13 Meishuguan Dongjie, Dongcheng District, Beijing) at 9:30 p.m., on Thursday, July 22.
2021.05.18 Tuesday
Inspired by Books of Mountains and Seas, the ancient Taoist classic of mythical geography, cosmology and ecology, Scripture is a book of speculative fiction that unfolds in two directions: Qinyuan, a diminutive bee-bird, who sexes and assassinates its way out of the mythological landscape. The son of a master potter from Jingdezhen wanders in New York and Antwerp as SHE, With insoluble mud on her hands.
2021.05.18 Tuesday
The stories, creatures, and environments in “Shanhaijing” (Book of Mountains and Seas) gesture toward a cosmology that is correlational. Cross-pollinated species, transmutable beings, androgynous beasts and humans thrive in the infinite space between heaven and earth, where matter and phenomena are in a constant flow of exchange. This kind of imaginative correlation dilutes the contemporary desire for categorization, destabilizes hierarchical orderings. With roots in Taoist philosophy, Shanhaijing centers the body as an expression of the shape and logic of the cosmos, a way of living and knowing through embodiment. This radical epistemology enables us to think on a terrestrial scale, to form a deep and intimate solidarity with ourselves and our surroundings.
2021.04.23 Friday
As part of a special public program supported by Macalline Art Center and Gallery Weekend Beijing, we have invited Rania Ho to build a place where sundowners can stop, chat, and enjoy a snack as the suns sets. Amongst these spring hills, enjoy videos commissioned by the Center’s "Bare Screen" committee on an outdoor screen.
2021.04.20 Tuesday
We invite you to participate in a meditative process, moving from obscurity, confusion, and dissociation to integrity, transcending the boundaries between creatures. When meditating, things in the universe gradually expand and develop in the body, making us one with all things in the universe.
2021.03.26 Friday
On March 26, 2021, Macalline Art Center’s “Bare Screen” program will bring its first in-person public event to the Zhao Dai Club in Beijing. Together with Asian Dope Boys, Tianzhuo Chen will premiere his three-channel video The Dust in the club space, creating a truly immersive experience.
2021.03.16 Tuesday
We have invited artist Liu Qinmin, curator and art historian Wang Xin, and musician Siyu to an online public event for “Bare Screen,” Macalline Art Center’s digital video commissions program, where they will discuss how the music video, a global visual phenomenon, promoted and contributed to the visualization of a collective soul, a sense of identity and belonging, and the charms of social media.
2020.12.17 Thursday
17 December 2020, Beijing – Macalline Art Center, Beijing’s newest non-profit art institution, digitally launches today with a series of digital initiatives, including “Bare Screen“, a program of newly-commissioned digital artworks.

The Macalline Center of Art (MACA) is a non-profit art institution located in the 798 Art District of Beijing and officially inaugurated its space on January 15, 2022. Occupying a two-story building with a total area of 900 square meters, MACA unites artists, curators, and other art and cultural practitioners from around the world. Through its diverse, ongoing, and collaborative approaches, the Center establishes a new site on the contemporary art scene. Guided by the “work of artists” and backed by interdisciplinary research, the Center aims to bring together a community passionate about art and devoted to the “contemporary” moment so as to respond proactively to our rapidly evolving times.