Since it was opened to the public in 1997, the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou (Canton), China, has been promoting the research and presentation of Chinese art of modern and contemporary periods. Hence, it also initiated the Guangzhou Triennial, with its first edition in 2002.

The first Guangzhou Triennial was titled Reinterpretation: a Decade of Experimental Chinese Art, which aimed at a historic review and academic interpretation of the experimental Chinese art since the 1990’s.

The second session of the Guangzhou Triennial carried the theme ‘Beyond’: an extraordinary space of experimentation for modernization.
The curatorial team consisted of curators Hou Hanru, Hans Ulrich Obrist and the museum’s in-house curator Guo Xiaoyan. ‘Beyond’ referred to various forms of special cultural and artistic phenomena and methods developed under new social and economic circumstances that are unique, flourishing and full of vitality.

The third Triennial Farewell to Post-Colonialism (2008) was curated by Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, and Chang Tsong-zung. With research curators: Dorothee Albrecht, Sopawan Boonnimitra, Stina Edblom, Tamar Guimaraes, Guo Xiaoyan, Steve Lam, Khaled D. Ramadan. As a leading discourse for art curatorial practice and criticism, the research focused on ‘post-colonialism’, examining its limitations in being increasingly institutionalized as an ideological concept.

The Guangdong Museum of Art is a major cultural establishment in Guangzhou. Equipped with modern facilities, the Guangdong Museum of Art is a place where works of art are preserved, studied and displayed. The museum promotes education and cultural exchange. With a total area of twenty-thousand square meters and a display area of over eight-thousand square meters, the Guangdong Museum of Art consists of twelve exhibition halls, in which regularly exhibitions of both large- and small-scale work are shown.

Source: www.gztriennial.org