Feng Boyi

Feng Boyi (fl. c. 2000; Chinese name 馮博一) is an eminent independent art curator and critic in China. He is normally in charge of museums or art collections for primarily contemporary Chinese art. He has worked several times with artist Ai Weiwei with publishing his journals illegally or working with him in exhibitions and has organized many controversial art exhibitions in China. He has been assistant editor of the China Artists' Association newsletter Artist's Communication since 1988. He has also edited and published numerous catalogues and papers on art and established the Artists' Alliance, a major online forum for contemporary art in China. Feng Boyi has been known to be an instigator to the up-and-coming contemporary art movement in Beijing, starting with publishing articles and journals from artists Ai Weiwei and Xu Bing.

He was born in 1960 in Beijing, China, where he is still living today. During 1980 to 1984, he attended and graduated from Capital Normal University Department of History in Beijing. He took an interest in art and learning at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Department in Art History in 1991. "Since the 1990's, Chinese contemporary art started to review, editing work and plans."

After his graduation in 1984, he was assigned to work as an editor of The Artists' Bulletin, which was part of the Chinese Artists' Association. He also began working with Ai Weiwei and chose to be the editor of The Black Book (1994) and The White Book (1995), published by Ai Weiwei about contemporary art in China, and this publication was not only private, but illegal. It was kept secretive because it had Ai Weiwei's ideas and opinions about the government, which is why it was difficult to publish. These novels not only dealt with the topic of modern, contemporary art but also reflected the political ideas of Ai Weiwei.

Feng Boyi worked in Japan, where he played a large role in a couple exhibitions organized by the Fukuoka Art Museum, one of the exhibitions being the 4th Asian Art Show. Feng Boyi was also part of a contemporary art exhibition in the Saitama Modern Art Museum.

Feng Boyi joined art visionaries in the early 1990s in Beijing as an independent art curator. This was also around the time he was learning at the Central Academy for Fine Arts. Even though he is a curator, he admits the difficulty of his job : "'Nobody wants to curate shows, it's grueling work,' he mumbles, tossing his ever-ringing cell phone from hand to hand." However he still enjoys finding new art that challenges the mind and often the government and the society.

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