Contact
Email: xueyan.chen@uzh.ch
Main Research Interests
histories of cartography; counter-cartographic art; cross-cultural epistemic transfer; visual culture and socially engaged art; East and Southeast Asia; archipelagic humanities; curatorial studies; diasporic mapping.
Current Research
Doctoral Project
Worlding the Archipelago, Stitching the Land: Counter-Cartographic Art and the Afterlives of Early Modern Mapping in Japan and the Philippines
Academic Background
PhD Candidate, East Asian Art History, University of Zurich (current)
M.A Art History in Global Context, University of Zurich, 2025
M.A Visual Culture and Curatorial Studies, Beijing Film Academy, 2022
B.A Film and Television Studies, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2018
Publications
(peer-reviewed, forthcoming) Chen, Xueyan. “What Does a Map Want from Soil? Land as Relation in Cian Dayrit’s Counter-Mapping.” kritische berichte 2026, no. 4.
Chen, Xueyan, and Bin Zhao. “Interview with Sawah Director Adolf El Assal: A Disc Jockey’s Dream and Sorrow.” Journal of Beijing Film Academy, June 2019, 88–92.
Presentations
10/2026
“Loading Out Information on a Map: Where Criticism Stands between the Master’s Tool and the Colonizer’s House in Cian Dayrit’s Counter-Cartography Tapestries.” Symposium “Art Criticism and Eco-Socially Engaged Practices: New Writing, New Challenges?”, 58th AICA International Congress, Rennes.
09/2026
“When the Archive Changes Hands: Danh Vo’s 2.2.1861 and the Afterlife of Colonial Documents.” Panel “Art, Memory, and the Archive in Southeast Asia: Vietnam and Its Neighbours through Contemporary Art,” European Association for Southeast Asian Studies Conference, Madrid.
07/2026
“B/Ordering Feminism in Periodicals: ‘Printable’ Women’s Politics in Korean and Swiss Magazines, c. 1930–1934.” Panel “Ambivalent (In)visibility: The Politics of Visibility and the Production of Female Subjectivity in East Asian Transmedia Contexts,” B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia, Asian Center for Women’s Studies, Ewha Womans University, Seoul.
06/2026
“Worlding the Archipelago: Contemporary (Counter-)Cartographic Art and the Afterlives of Early Modern Mapping in Japan and the Philippines.” 14th Forum for East Asian Art History in German-Speaking Countries, University of Zurich.
Memberships
VKKS