Home and Beyond

From November 25, 2025 to May 5, 2026, the Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai, presents Home and Beyond, the inaugural chapter of Hou Hanru’s long-term curatorial series Making Places – Hou Hanru’s Curatorial Journey, as an integral part of the opening of the Museum’s third-floor Espace Gabrielle Chanel. Taking the library space as both a site of contemplation and a laboratory, the exhibition initiates an extended research project on artistic creation, cultural circulation, and imagination of the globalised world.

Making Places revisits the fundamental question of what curating entails: curating is not only the fabrication of exhibitions, but, more importantly, the creation of conditions that allow art to emerge, provoking encounters and generating energies among art, society, and history. Throughout this process, the conception, production, and presentation of art become interwoven, forming an open and continuously unfolding structure—a sensitive space where the public may access the artist’s imagination and critique (le partage du sensible).

The task of curating, in this sense, is to allow suppressed desires and memories to re-enter and reshape the real. Home and Beyond builds on this perspective to examine the migrations, confrontations, and regenerations of contemporary art under globalization. For Hou Hanru, “home” is not merely a physical dwelling, but a provisional space in which art can fully unfold—a point of convergence between thought and creation.

By interpreting and reconfiguring curatorial practices, the exhibition explores how art may construct bridges across cultures, and how, through the spirit of “being at home everywhere,” it may locate possibilities of belonging and resistance within a world on the move. Taking this exhibition as a point of departure, the library will continue to present document-centered exhibitions and research programs that expand the horizons of public knowledge.

About the Curator

Hou Hanru is a prolific writer and curator. Based in Paris and Rome, he served as the Artistic Director of MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2013-2022). He has held advisory roles with institutions including the Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai, Times Museum, Guangzhou, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the West Bund Museum, Shanghai. He is a frequent contributor to leading contemporary art journals, serves on juries for major international awards, and lectures widely at universities and cultural institutions. He has taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, and the School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York. Over the past three decades, Hou has curated or co-curated nearly 150 exhibitions worldwide. Key projects include China/Avant-Garde (National Art Museum of China, 1989), Cities on the Move (1997–2000), the 3rd Shanghai Biennale (2000); the Gwangju Biennale (2002), the Venice Biennale (French Pavilion, 1999; Zone of Urgency, 2003; China Pavilion, 2007), the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005), the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), the 10th Lyon Biennale (2009), and the 5th Auckland Triennial (2013). His curatorial projects at the PSA include Huang Yong Ping’s Bâton Serpent III: Spur Track to the Left (2016), Chen Shaoxiong: Prepared (2016), Zhang Enli: A Room That Can Move (2020–2021), and Liang Shaoji: A Silky Entanglement (2021–2022).