Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė: Spit and Image
2
2025.10.12 Sunday 14:00
Location
MACA Art Center
Speaker: Xiang Zairong
On the afternoon of October 12, MACA invites scholar Xiang Zairong for the lecture "2." The number 2 is the sum of 1 plus 1, yet within 2 lies the potential to be divided into countless other numbers. Spit and Image explores the notion of duality—both as the process of 1 dividing into 2, and as the phenomenon of 2 merging into 1. At the core of the exhibition is the figure of the "Upir," a vampire from South Slavic folklore that wanders between life/death, human/non-human. The identity of the Upir is inherently fluid, shifting across different boundaries and resisting any simplistic binary categorization.
The lecture draws on Xiang's Queer Ancient Ways: A Decolonial Exploration (2018), which re-examines the creation myths of ancient Mexican Nahua/Aztec culture, focusing on mythological figures that were historically assigned a single gender and demonized in the reception history of colonial modernity. Combining this with the non-binary perspective of Chinese Yin–Yang philosophy, Xiang approaches the topic from a non-modern worldview, challenging modern gender binaries while opening new pathways for contemporary reflection. Could "2"—as a state of fluidity between the singular and the diverse—serve as a theoretical lens, inspiring richer intellectual discussion?
About the Speaker: Xiang Zairong
Zairong XIANG's research, teaching, and curatorial practices engage with cosmology and cosmopolitanism in their culturally diverse, historically specific, and conceptually promiscuous manifestations in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Nahuatl. He teaches literature and art at Duke Kunshan University, and was co-curator of the 2021 Guangzhou Image Triennial, Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), and the 14th Shanghai Biennial Cosmos Cinema (2023–2024). He has curated the minor cosmopolitan weekend (HKW Berlin, 2018) and the exhibition How to be Happy Together? at Para-Site Hong Kong (Dec. 2024). He is currently co-curating (with Denise Ryner) a research and exhibition project at ICA Philadelphia (2026). Author of Queer Ancient Way: A Decolonial Exploration (punctum books), he is the editor of exhibition catalogues, journal special issues, and a film archive. He is currently completing his second book on "transdualism." Through the concept of "shanzhai/counterfeit," he continues a multifaceted research into the artistic and intellectual exchanges in the Global South, especially between Latin America and China since the nineteenth century. Once a research fellow at the ICI-Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and a postdoctoral fellow of the DFG Research Training Group minor cosmopolitanisms at Potsdam University, he was twice the recipient of the EU Erasmus Mundus scholarship for his cotutelle PhD and MA. All his writings and previous lectures can be accessed here: www.xiangzairong.com
