John Daly-Peoples
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Sat 2 May–Sun 23 Aug 2026
John Daly-Peoples
Next month the Auckland Art Gallery will be opening a major survey of Chinese contemporary art.
“Forever Tomorrow” showcases how Chinese artists have grappled with China’s transformation since the late 1970’s, producing work that remains visionary and influential today. The exhibition features 67 works by 42 artists and spans performance, photography, sculpture, installation, moving image and new media.
Two years ago the gallery featured a stunning collection of garments by Guo Pei which included a gown that Rihanna made famous. The dozens of designs by the Chinese couturier highlighted Guo’s prolific work, with its references to fashion of the past and the present. The exhibition showed how Chinese designers had explored new aesthetic ideas.
“Forever Tomorrow” will demonstrate how Chinese artists have explored, reimagines and reworked art practices, making commentary about important ideas – political, social and artistic.
Dr Zara Stanhope, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery, says, “Forever Tomorrow” brings to Tāmaki Makaurau a wide range of works that reveal how Chinese artists reflected the seismic shifts that have recently taken place in China and in its relationships with the world. This exhibition resonates in Aotearoa and in Tāmaki Makaurau as we grow in cultural diversity and understanding, and in the dynamic cultural experiences it offers that touch us all.”
The exhibition has been curated by Hutch Wilco of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, with support from Feng Boyi. Feng is a prominent curator and critic who previously served as director of the He Xiangning Art Museum and Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Art Sociology at the Sichuan Fine Arts institute based in China.
Hutch Wilco says: “Forever Tomorrow” brings together powerful works that register lived experience — labour, migration, family, intimacy, and technology. Spanning generations, the exhibition reveals how artists have given form to the emotional and psychological dimensions of everyday life. Together, these works offer a compelling portrait of contemporary experience, inviting audiences to reflect on how these changes continue to shape individual lives and shared futures.”
“Forever Tomorrow” features work by Ai Weiwei, Xu Zhen, Xiao Lu and Cao Fei, alongside artists exhibiting in Aotearoa New Zealand for the first time including Lu Pingyuan, Pu Yingwei, Xiyadie, Lu Yang and 2023 Sigg Prize winner Wang Tuo. The exhibition draws extensively on the White Rabbit Collection from Sydney and the M+ Sigg Collection in Hong Kong, with other works coming directly from artists and their representative galleries. Key works include Xiao Lu’s Dialogue, 1989, first presented at Beijing’s landmark China/Avant-Garde exhibition, made infamous when she fired two shots into her installation — a gesture entwining the personal with the politics of the time; Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995, a photographic series documenting deliberate destruction that questions history and cultural memory; and Zhang Huan’s To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond: Beijing, China 1997, a defining performance binding personal memory with collective spirit through an impossible task.
Highlights include XU ZHEN®’s “Hello”, 2018–19, a robotic Corinthian column that turns a symbol of Western civilisation into an unsettling presence; Cao Fei’s RMB City: A Second Life Urban Planning, 2007, envisions a virtual metropolis in Second Life, while Lu Pingyuan’s Semi-Auto Wandering Gods series, 2024–ongoing, imagines new folk rituals in collaboration with artificial intelligence. XU ZHEN®’s “Hello”, 2018–19 revisits the legacy of the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition, examining the enduring logic of censorship and self[1]criticism in the cultural sphere.
From Thursday 2 April, a major sculptural work by XU ZHEN® will be on display: Eternity–Tianlongshan Grottoes Bodhisattva, Winged Victory of Samothrace, 2014. The large-scale sculpture combines a Buddhist figure representative of China’s Tianlongshan grottoes with the form of the Greek sculpture Winged Victory of Samothrace, and will be freely accessible to view ahead of the full exhibition’s opening.
“Forever Tomorrow” will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring essays and artist profiles, available exclusively from the Gallery’s Shop.
The exhibition is proudly supported by the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation and the New Zealand Government’s Events Boost Fund.
New Zealand Arts Review 