In Conversation With…Yung Ma, Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery

Yung Ma was frequently on the move as a child, growing up between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the UK. As a result, he often found himself alone as a teenager, turning to the city’s cultural life for companionship: “When I was 15 and living in Taipei, I didn’t really know anyone, so I started going to museums and the cinema by myself. There was an important new wave of Taiwanese cinema happening at the time, and it was also where I saw my first biennial. That experience shifted how I saw the world—and how art communicates.”

Yung studied Fine Art and Japanese at the University of Reading: “I was always interested in Japanese culture, manga, animation, and food, but if I’m being honest, I chose Japanese because I wanted to go to Tokyo! I chose Reading for its proximity to London without being in the city itself, and for the opportunity to pursue a combined degree without completing a foundation year.” His experience studying Fine Art confirmed that he didn’t want to pursue life as an artist: “I realised that becoming an artist would have been isolating, I would just be in the studio by myself, and I found that very difficult.”

After completing his degree, and driven by his passion for film, Yung applied to the Beijing Film Academy: “I applied almost as an experiment and got in, but I left after a year. Although I admired greatly one the professors, Tian Zhuang Zhuang who is a towering figure from the fifth generation directors from Chinese cinema, and I had very engaging conversations with him, I realised the film industry was extremely commercial, and directing involved too many people.” Yung further notes: “That’s why curating is my happy medium: it gives me collaboration without the scale of a film set. It’s more intimate and you can choose the kind of team you build.” He later joined the Royal College of Art, completing a Master’s degree  in Curating Contemporary Art “it was a very interesting programme, focused more on practice than theory, with a global cohort and network, many of whom are now friends based all over the world.”

Upon completing his studies, Yung joined the M+ Museum in Hong Kong as Associate Curator of Moving Image. From 2016 to 2021, he worked at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and directed the Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2021. Later that year he joined the Hayward Gallery in London as Senior Curator: “What first attracted me was the building. Until then, I had worked mainly in collecting institutions, where exhibitions often take place every three or four years. The Hayward doesn’t have its own collection, so it is entirely programme-driven, and I’m now working on at least one main exhibition each year.”

Yung began developing two exhibitions conceived to be shown in dialogue with one another, Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life and Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. He acknowledges that some may find the pairing “surprising” but notes “While they are roughly ten years apart, I consider both artists belong to a similar generation as they emerged internationally around 2000,” he explains. “They work extensively with found objects, materials, and textiles to explore themes of memory and identity. They address overlapping concerns but approach them from very different directions.”

Chiharu Shiota is an established Japanese installation artist based in Berlin. Yung describes her installations as “organic matter travelling across space and time”: “Her installations are very personal, very intimate even though they have this spectacularity. We start the exhibition with one of her video performances rather than immediately confronting viewers with monumental site-specific thread installations.” The presentation will also include a collection of 460 postcard-sized drawings produced in collaboration with Japanese writer Yōko Tawada.

The second exhibition focuses on Yin Xiuzhen, a Chinese sculptor and installation artist based in Beijing. While best known for her textile works, Yin has also worked with materials such as cement, glass, and ceramics: “Yin Xiuzhen is concerned with collecting memories. I think of her as the ‘keeper of memories’, both of her own and those of the nation. Although she has presented major exhibitions, Heart to Heart will mark her first major institutional survey.”

Yung is aware of the role philanthropy plays in enabling exhibitions of this scale: “Across Europe most public institutions are facing funding cuts alongside inflation which has made navigating the cultural landscape difficult. Having private philanthropic support is very important for us to present programmes that are not just ambitious, but different. It would be safer for us to keep doing the same kind of programming but in order to bring in different perspectives and viewpoints, it’s important to encourage other kinds of voices.”

HFF is supporting Chiharu Shiota: The Threads of Life and Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart exhibitions with a grant of £100,000.