This program features talks by and discussions with Dr. Jenny Lin (University of Southern California Professor and Director of Curatorial Practices), Dr. Francesca Tarocco (Ca’ Foscari University Professor and Director of the "NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities”), Dr. Sofia Bollo (University of Zurich), Dr. Giulia Pra Floriani (Ca’ Foscari University), Dr. Ornella De Nigris (University of Siena Professor), and Dr. Freda Fiala (University of Arts Linz). This group of distinguished scholars and curators will discuss Chinese-European art and cultural exchange in the context of Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe.
Program Schedule
16:30: Welcome and Exhibition Visit with Dr. Jenny Lin
Gathering 3
“Literary Minds, Remaining Tenderness”
Scholarly Talks and Conversation
July 23, 2026
16:30 – 18:00
Palazzo Soranzo van Axel
RSVP to contact@suxiaobai-foundation.org
17:00: Talk by Dr. Francesca Tarocco
“Sacred Matter: Buddhism, Daoism and Material Culture in China”
While popular philosophy often views Daoism through the lens of effortless inaction (wuwei) and fading into nature, historical Daoism was intensely anchored in material culture. For Daoists, the physical world was a dynamic web of cosmic energy (qi). To achieve longevity, ward off malevolent spirits, and harmonize with the universe, practitioners developed a highly specialized landscape of physical tools, wearable protective items, and alchemical apparatuses. Likewise, while Buddhism is often associated with detachment from the physical world, its historical impact on the material culture of China was immense. Lacquer sculptures, though rarer than those made of stone or wood, served as a crucial medium for Buddhist sculpture in China. This development closely paralleled the expanding interest in sacred relics—particularly those embodying the physical presence of learned masters—that characterizes East Asian Buddhist history. In this talk, Dr. Tarocco will explore these ideas and show how they resonate in the luminous, deeply tactile works of Su Xiaobai.
17:20: Panel with Dr. Giulia Pra Floriani, Dr. Ornella De Nigris, Dr. Freda Fiala and Dr. Sofia Bollo.
This panel offers illuminating insights into histories of and contemporary approaches to exhibiting Chinese art in Europe. Presenters offer a preview of their forthcoming panel (with Dr. Jenny Lin), “Exhibiting China in Europe: Encounters, Collections, and the Making of Display Narratives (19th century-present),” at the concurrent European Association for Chinese Studies Conference, organized in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The panel examines how Chinese art and culture have been represented and interpreted in European exhibitions and collections, from past to present, with a particular focus on narrative constructions. Presenters consider how historical knowledge, curatorial choices, and contemporary global discourses intersect to generate cross-cultural understandings of China and an expansive orbit of Chinese culture. Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe, showcasing paintings by an artist whose practice spans Germany and China, organized by Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and presented in Palazzo Soranzo van Axel as an official collateral event of the 2026 Venice Biennial, offers an ideal space for pondering the legacies, currents, and potential futures of displaying art across vibrant geographical imaginaries.
17:40: Conversation and Poetic Reflections
Biographies:
Francesca Tarocco
Francesca Tarocco is Professor of Buddhist Studies and Chinese religious history at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Founding Director of NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities. She is currently researching for two new books on Buddhist cosmotechnics and on different trajectories of human-environment relationships in Buddhist Asia. She is a regular contributor of contemporary art publications including Frieze and Art in America.
Giulia Pra Floriani
Giulia Pra Floriani is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and associate editor of the journal Archives of Asian Art. Her research focuses on photography and modern and contemporary art from China, with particular attention to sites of transcultural encounter between Asia and Europe. Her publications include Reframing Silk: Giacomo Caneva’s Photographs of the 1859 Expedition to China (2026) and Revolutionary Photojournalism: Framing a New China, 1905–1919 (forthcoming, 2027). She has received research support from DAAD, Bei Shan Tang Foundation, and the European Union. She holds two master’s degrees in Chinese literature and art history from Xi’an Jiaotong University and Peking University, and a PhD in East Asian Art History and Transcultural Studies from Heidelberg University.
Ornella De Nigris
Ornella De Nigris is an Assistant professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Siena (Italy) where she teaches Chinese Language and Translation. A specialist in modern and contemporary Chinese art, she holds a Ph.D. from Sapienza University of Rome, with a dissertation on Chinese museum strategies in promoting contemporary art. Her academic journey includes postdoctoral research at Sapienza, teaching Chinese Art History at the University of Urbino, and coordinating cultural programs at the Confucius Institute in Rome. She studied at Tsinghua University and co-curated exhibitions in Beijing’s Song Zhuang art district. She also attended the NMK Museum Network Fellowship in Seoul. Her research focuses on Chinese contemporary art museums, artistic lexicon, biennials, and global exhibition networks. Alongside her scholarly work, she has translated and edited books on Chinese art history and contemporary artists. She also co-founded the China Museum Studies Network and is part of the project Lessico dei Beni Culturali (Multilingual Cultural Heritage Lexis), from 2025.
Freda Fiala
Freda Fiala is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ERC Project „OLFAC“ at the University of Arts Linz in Austria. Her work explores museological infrastructures, the politics of display in transmodern and contemporary cultural exchanges, and how these relate to sensory knowledges. Trained in Theatre and Chinese Studies, she has studied in Vienna, Berlin, Hong Kong and Taipei, where her interests turned toward the politics of curatorial practice and cultural institutions. Her Ph.D., funded by a DOC fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, investigated Taiwan’s performing arts centres and their role in informal cultural diplomacy; the resulting monograph will be published with Brill in 2026. She has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Vienna and is a board member of the Austrian Association of Curators. In 2025 she received the Young Scholars Award of the European Association of Taiwan Studies and the Inaugural Doc School Award of the University of Vienna.
Sofia Bollo
Sofia Bollo’s interdisciplinary work centres on the roles of narratives in museum settings, particularly in relation to culturally sensitive data. In her PhD, she examined contemporary narratives about China’s past in public museums across China and investigated how permanent exhibitions of prehistoric collections serve as tools to shape current nationalistic notions of cultural identity in China. She has a strong interest in Chinese collections in Europe, not only in their material objects but also in their formation processes and historical paths, whose stories should be made public. She thus acts as coordinator of the Provenance Research Working Group of ICOM Italy. She is based at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, where she manages ethical compliance in the digitisation of collections. She also co-founded the China Museum Studies Network to promote exchanges among scholars working in Chinese museology worldwide.
RSVP to Contact@suxiaobai-foundation.org