Exhibition · Rome, Silk Road and contemporary Chinese art
Xi Niu in Rome: seven routes through contemporary Chinese art at Rhinoceros
Curated by Claire Shiying Li, the exhibition brings together seven artistic practices and reads the Silk Road as a living space of exchange, identity and change.
Xi Niu in Rome: essential information
Xi Niu: In Search of New Routes runs from 11 September 2026 to 6 January 2027 at Rhinoceros, Fondazione Alda Fendi – Esperimenti, Via del Velabro 9A, Rome. Admission is free; check opening times on the official site before visiting.
Curator Claire Shiying Li brings together seven practices: Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun, Hao Liang, Han Mengyun, Xie Fan, Xie Nanxing, Zhao Gang and Zhou Yilun. Painting, installation, film and material research create a plural view of contemporary Chinese art.
Why Xi Niu: rhinoceros and new routes
Xīniú, 犀牛, means rhinoceros in Mandarin and echoes the Roman venue’s name. It offers a useful editorial key: a massive animal becomes a figure of movement, passage and orientation.
The presentation text describes the Silk Road as “a space in continuous transformation, crossed by exchanges, relationships and processes of identity construction.” It is a present-day network rather than a fixed historical route.
Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun: ecology as collaboration
Based in Chengdu, the duo develops slow, collective projects rooted in place. Their Water System Project, begun in Sichuan in 2015, connects rivers, communities, environmental memory and care.
Their appearances at documenta fifteen and Madre clarify a method in which the artwork is a shared learning process.
Hao Liang and Han Mengyun: rewriting tradition and memory
Hao Liang works primarily with ink on silk, bringing Chinese image histories into contact with cinema, literature and cultural memory.
Han Mengyun moves between painting, installation, text and research. Her work on Eurasian entanglements, Indian aesthetics, female voice and care complicates any simple East–West division.
Xie Fan and Xie Nanxing: what painting can still do
Xie Fan paints on silk and translucent supports, making light, stretcher and pigment part of an image that changes with the viewer.
Xie Nanxing investigates the gap between source and painting. Blur, memory and photographic mediation unsettle what appears familiar.
Zhao Gang and Zhou Yilun: history, diaspora and global culture
Zhao Gang, a very young participant in the Stars Group, has lived between China and the United States. His deliberately uneven painting crosses political history, identity and self-portraiture.
Zhou Yilun combines painting, sculpture, collage and found objects, distorting art-historical techniques to examine their circulation in the global present.
Claire Shiying Li and Rhinoceros’s new programme
London-based curator and consultant Claire Shiying Li creates a meeting point between generations and languages without reducing Chinese art to one national style.
Founded by Alda Fendi in 2018, Rhinoceros occupies a building redesigned by Jean Nouvel. Xi Niu is presented as its first internally conceived and produced exhibition.
How to visit and read the exhibition
The address is Via del Velabro 9A, Rome. Across six vertical floors, follow recurring materials, images and histories rather than looking for one story of China.
No public artwork prices were found. For availability, editions, certificates or representation, contact the venue and the artists’ official galleries listed in the sources.
Sources and further reading
Sources allow readers to verify and explore. Official artist links are part of the feature, not an appendix.
- Rhinoceros · sito ufficiale ↗
- Rhinoceros · la galleria ↗
- Artribune · Xi Niu: In Search of New Routes ↗
- Zero · Xi Niu a Roma ↗
- Turismo Roma · Xi Niu ↗
- documenta fifteen · Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun ↗
- Gladstone Gallery · Hao Liang ↗
- Han Mengyun · biografia ↗
- White Space · Xie Fan ↗
- Petzel · Xie Nanxing ↗
- Lisson Gallery · Zhao Gang ↗
- Nicodim · Zhou Yilun ↗
- Frieze · Claire Shiying Li ↗
ADVAcquistare Arte recommends: Resin-sealed books, words and layered images turn melancholy into a material narrative.
Painting · memory · collage
Open profile ↗