Artist
Chinese (Anhui), 1993
Dachen Bao is a visual artist, filmmaker, and researcher born in Wuhu, Anhui, China, and currently based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Chongqing, China. He holds a master’s degree (Summa Cum Laude) in Lens-Based Media from Piet Zwart Institute and an MFA in Print from Sichuan Fine Art Institute.
Through films, installations, and performances, Bao’s practice combines historical investigation, ethnography, and speculative fiction in examining the ever-shifting structural relationships between geopolitics and ecology, self and other. His recent research attempts to re-touch histories and memories of the hinterlands in Southwest China through materiality, embodiment, and perception, exploring indigeneity, the entanglement of temporalities, and its potential for alternative narratives outside of nation-state and imperial frameworks. Bao also integrates organizational work for collectives into his practice, as he is a co-founder of Chongqing Work Institute (CWI), a self-organized, research-based collective operating since 2018.
