Xu Tan received his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1989; in 1993, he joined the Guangzhou-based artist collection “Big Tail Elephant Group”. With an oeuvre spanning text, image, video, performance and installation, he critically examines social transformation and existing cultural structures. Xu emphasizes the inseparability of socially-engaged knowledge production, aesthetic consciousness, and rational cognition—this thinking forms the core conceit of his practice, which negotiates artistic expression, research, and perceptual experience.
Since 2005, Xu has carried out the long-term research project Keywords. Comprising audiovisual interviews, fieldwork, and data collection amongst different groups in various regions of China, the project studies connections between individuals and language by compiling “keywords” and placing them into new contexts. In 2008, the project evolved into “Keywords School”, expanding linguistic practice into public spheres through collective discourse.
Since 2012, Xu has co-directed the “HB Station”, an interdisciplinary creative platform rooted in social practice. In the same year, he launched the Social Botany project;extending the framework of the Keywords projects into the relationship between humans and the botanical world. In 2020, he initiated Shundeology (studies of Shunde), where he interviewed people with depressive symptoms. In parallel, he began the project Egrets, Please Stay, Let’s Have a Heart-to-Heart Talk in 2021, in an effort to raise awareness and support for those suffering from depression. Since 2024, the project has travelled to Guangzhou, Beijing, San Francisco, New York, amongst other cities.
Xu is the recipient of the 2002 Asia Culture Council (Rockefeller Foundation) Fellowship, New York, USA; he was awarded the Fellowship of DAAD in Berlin, Germany, in 2004. He has participated in the Taipei Biennial (1998), the Gwangju Biennale (2002), and the Venice Biennale (2003, 2009). Xu Tan’s significant solo exhibitions include: Possible Vocabulary Games: Xu Tan Language Studio (OCT- Contemporary Art Center, Shenzhen, China, 2011); Questions, Soil and ‘Socio-Botanic’ (Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China, 2013), and Keywords School (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and 41 Ross Alley, San Francisco, USA, 2014). Notable recent international presentations include: How to talk with birds, trees, fish, shells, snakes, bulls and lions (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, 2018) and The Island of the Colorblind (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, South Korea, 2019), amongst others.