2on Conference October 30 2025
2on Conference Chinacult.es. Artistic Production between China and Spain: A Conversation with Paloma Chen and Minke Wang
In this second session, we will be joined by visual artists Lucía Sun and Shishi Zhu. Both develop their artistic practice within the Spanish context, while maintaining a strong connection to their Chinese origins.
Lucía Sun alternates her work as a fashion photographer with deeply personal projects, through which she develops a unique perspective on the identity of people of Chinese descent living in Spain.
Shishi Zhu, on the other hand, is a member of the artistic collective Cangrejo Pro, formed by young Chinese women artists. At the same time, she has developed her own work by exploring issues of identity from the perspective of Chinese migration.
The conversation will be moderated by Irene Masdeu Torruella and Roberto Figliulo.
The Conferences ChinaCult.es: Artistic Production Between China and Spain are based on the digital database ChinaCult.es (UAB) and aim to create an open space for dialogue and exchange among artists, creators, cultural managers, the general public, students, and scholars interested in the synergies, mobilities, and cultural exchanges between China and Spain.
Event Details
Thursday, October 30, 2025 – 11:00 a.m.
Room 004, Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Co-organised by:
InterAsia Research Group (UAB); Barcelona Confucius Institute Foundation;
Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies (UAB); Fundación Instituto Confucio de Barcelona.
Coordination:
Irene Masdeu and Roberto Figliulo, InterAsia Research Group, UAB
About the Speakers
Lucía Sun is a photographer specializing in fashion and narrative projects. Of Chinese descent and raised in Galicia, her work focuses on storytelling through images, exploring identity and cultural belonging. She has collaborated with brands such as Springfield, Showroomprivé, and Tiwi, and her work has been featured in magazines including Marie Claire, Icon El País, Metal Magazine, and Tapas Magazine. Her personal projects address racial and cultural themes, as in I’m Not a Virus and Techo de Bambú, exhibited in venues such as Sala Arte Joven, Matadero Madrid, and the National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid. With over a decade of experience, her work combines art direction, careful composition, and narrative sensitivity.
Shishi Zhu (Wenzhou, 1995) is a multidisciplinary artist who merges and explores Eastern and Western cultural and artistic languages. She is also a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), where her research focuses on dialogical and performative creation, both collective and individual.
As a cultural mediator, she has collaborated on various community projects aimed at fostering the integration of the Chinese community in Spain.
She is a member of the collective Cangrejo Pro, where she uses performance to explore shared identity and collective experience. In her individual work, experience, memory, and storytelling are central elements that enrich her artistic practice, creating a bridge between visual creation and the accompanying creative writing.
Irene Masdeu Torruella is a lecturer in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She is an anthropologist and holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies, with a dissertation on mobility, return, and transnational ties in the context of Chinese migration. She has participated in numerous research projects on Chinese migration, including ethnographic fieldwork in both China and Spain. Her current research focuses on artistic and cultural production in the context of Chinese migration, and she coordinates the digital archive ChinaCult.es (UAB).
Her recent publications include a co-authored chapter with Wang Simeng (2024): “Entrepreneurial and Transnational Socialisation among Descendants of Chinese Migrants: A Cross-country Study on New Transnational Mobilities Between Europe and China,” in M. Thunø, S. Wang, E. Tran Sautede, & Y. Tseng (Eds.), Handbook on Chinese Migration to Europe (Vol. 1, pp. 526–552), Brill Handbooks of Chinese Overseas.
Roberto Figliulo is a lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he teaches courses on art and visual culture in the Bachelor’s Degree in East Asian Studies and the Master’s Degree in Global East Asian Studies.
He was previously an associate professor at Pompeu Fabra University, where he obtained his PhD with a dissertation on contemporary photography in China. His research focuses on photographic and artistic production in the Sinophone world. He has published his work in prestigious international journals such as Yishu – Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and Estudios de Asia y África. He is currently a member of the InterAsia Research Group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
1st Conference October 8 2025
1st Conference Chinacult.es. Artistic Production between China and Spain: A Conversation with Paloma Chen and Minke Wang
This activity aims to inaugurate the “Chinacult.es Conference Series: Artistic Production between China and Spain”, which are conceived as an open space for dialogue and exchange among artists, creators, cultural managers, the general public, students, and academics interested in the synergies, mobilities, and cultural exchanges between China and Spain. The conference series is centered around the digital database Chinacult.es (Interasia Research Group, UAB).
In this first session, we will be joined by poet, writer, and journalist Paloma Chen, and by playwright, poet, and fiction author Minke Wang. Both are descendants of Chinese migrants with different life paths that reflect the historical and generational changes of the Chinese diaspora in Spain. Taking their works as a starting point and reference, we will discuss how both artists have claimed their voices, the challenges they have faced, questions of identity, friction, representation, positionality, and power relations within the context of the cultural industries.
The conversation will be moderated by Irene Masdeu Torruella and Laia Manonelles.
Wednesday, October 8, 2025, at 6:30 p.m.
Biblioteca Fort Pienc – Ana María Moix
Activity organized by Irene Masdeu Torruella and Roberto Figliulo from the Interasia Research Group at UAB.
In collaboration with: Fundación Instituto Confucio de Barcelona, Biblioteca Biblioteca Fort Pienc – Ana María Moix i Departament de Traducció i Interpretació i Estudis de l’Àsia Oriental (UAB).
About the speakers:
Minke Wang (Wenzhou, China, 1978) is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer, as well as a translator from Chinese. Having arrived in Spain at the age of ten, his career includes the poetry book mòh (2015); the premiere of Un idioma propio (2018) at the Teatro María Guerrero; and the publication of Opéra du trois têtes dans la pavillon du silence, a French translation of the graphic score Tres figuras al pie ¿de? He has been awarded writing fellowships by the Centro Dramático Nacional, Théâtre de la Ville–Paris, Fundación SGAE, ETC–La Cuarta Pared, the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport, and the BBVA Foundation. In 2025, he was awarded the V Premio de No Ficción Libros del Asteroide.
Paloma Chen is a poet, writer, journalist, and cultural manager. She contributes to media outlets such as El Salto and Pikara Magazine. She is the author of the documentary report Crecer en ‘un chino’ (2019), the printed poetry collection Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Letraversal, 2022, finalist for the Mandarache Prize), and the poetry app Shanshui Pixel Scenes (2023). She won the Premio Nacional de Poesía Viva ‘L de Lírica’ in 2020. Her poems have been included in anthologies such as Matria poética: una antología de poetas migrantes (La Imprenta, 2023) and Última poesía crítica. Jóvenes poetas en tiempos de colapso (Lastura, 2023).
Irene Masdeu Torruella is an anthropologist and professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She has carried out numerous research projects on Chinese migration, return, and transnational ties, including ethnographic fieldwork in both China (Qingtian and Shanghai) and Spain. She is currently researching artistic production in the context of the Chinese diaspora and coordinates the digital archive Chinacult.es (UAB). digital archive Chinacult.es (UAB). Among her recent publications is a chapter co-authored with Wang Simeng (2024), titled “Entrepreneurial and Transnational Socialisation among Descendants of Chinese Migrants: A Cross-country Study on New Transnational Mobilities Between Europe and China” (Brill Handbooks of Chinese Overseas, Vol. 1).
Laia Manonelles Moner, art historian. Professor at the Art History Department of the Universidad de Barcelona. Her research focuses on migratory aesthetics, experimental art in China, and its reception in the Euro-American context. She curated the exhibition Construyendo la China: visiones de una transformación (2010) at the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs in Lleida, and co-curated the exhibition Politizaciones del malestar (2017) at the Santa Mònica Art Center in Barcelona. She has conducted a series of interviews —documented on video— with Chinese artists whose work has been exhibited at the Artium Museum in Vitoria and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. She is the author of the books Arte experimental en China, conversaciones con artistas (Edicions Bellaterra, 2011) and La construcción de la(s) historia(s) del arte contemporáneo en China (Edicions Bellaterra, 2017). She co-edited, together with Joaquín Beltrán, the book Xina en l’art i la producció cultural contemporània global (Edicions Bellaterra, 2024).