The London-based nonprofit house Yan Du Venture (YDP) has named Billy Tang as its creative director, simply forward of the opening of its new residence this October in a Grade I-listed townhouse on Bedford Sq. in London. Tang begins in his position this month.
YDP is the second nonprofit based by ARTnews Prime 200 Collector Yan Du, following the launch of Asymmetry Basis in London in 2019. Whereas Asymmetry has centered on nurturing curators and facilitating the understanding of Sinophone up to date artwork, YDP goals to solid its web wider, specializing in Asian and Asian diaspora artists.
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The appointment comes simply three months Tang left Para Website, one in every of Hong Kong’s most carefully watched artwork establishment, on the finish of his three-year contract as its govt director and curator. The transfer additionally represents a homecoming for Tang, who was born in London to oldsters who arrived to the UK as refugees following the Vietnam Conflict within the early Nineteen Eighties.
“Having labored throughout a spectrum of institutional constructions worldwide,” Tang advised ARTnews in an interview, “I’m pushed by the will to come back full circle, bringing my hard-won expertise again to town that has been a profound supply of inspiration for me as each a curator and a Londoner.”
In 2013, drawn to China’s fast-growing artwork scene, Tang moved to Beijing to work as a curator at Magician House. In 2018, he joined Rockbund Artwork Museum in Shanghai as senior curator. Then in 2022, Tang took up the directorship at Para Website, simply as Hong Kong lifted its extended Covid-19 journey ban.
“It was all about rebuilding momentum,” Tang recalled, noting that this system construction he developed collaboratively along with his workforce made Para Website evolve from a grassroots house right into a extra formalized one—one thing he considers a part of his legacy. “It’s not a younger group anymore. It’s regular for [an organization] to rethink the way it desires to resume and what its priorities are.”
On Hong Kong itself, Tang was candid: “It’s nonetheless a middle, with collective potentialities and a unbelievable place to work. Nonetheless it’s not a simple metropolis to navigate so it’s essential to acknowledge its challenges relatively than underestimating its complexities,” he mentioned, pointing to the political and financial challenges nonetheless shaping each day life.
YDP’s house on Bedford Sq., 2025.
Photograph Jooney Woodward/Courtesy YDP
What finally pulled him again to London, nonetheless, was not solely town’s formative position in his early profession—the place he first found nonprofits by jobs at locations like Camden Arts Centre—but additionally YDP’s mission. For Tang, the challenge represents an opportunity to pursue a particular institutional mannequin rooted within the UK whereas redefining international connections by the lens of Asia and its diasporas.
“It has the potential to be a platform the place artists can experiment past a Western-centric framework,” Tang mentioned, including that he’s excited by the chance to construct momentum at an organizational stage, not simply by particular person exhibitions.
Not like most areas, YDP may have a versatile program construction. Fairly than committing to a set variety of exhibitions every year, Tang hopes this system can evolve, whether or not by shifting its thematic focus, extending earlier strains of inquiry, or addressing ignored blind spots from earlier years.
“Rising and experimental practices want time and freedom to develop on their very own phrases,” Tang mentioned. “YDP might be the lab the place that occurs but additionally a platform to introduce worldwide voices to the UK for the primary time.” He pointed to pioneering figures like Filipino artist David Medalla, who was a key determine in advancing Asian visibility in a Western context and instrumental in shaping international discourse by the short-lived Indicators Gallery, which he cofounded in 1964.
Although each Asymmetry and YDP are backed by the identical founder, Tang harassed that they’re separate entities. Whereas Asymmetry focuses on curatorial observe, YDP is devoted to supporting a large spectrum of creative practices. “It’s essential, particularly in these early years, for YDP to seek out its personal voice,” he mentioned, including that the 2 organizations may ultimately collaborate as a part of a wider ecosystem.
YDP, with its concentrate on immigrant and diaspora communities, is launching at a time when the UK has simply witnessed greater than 110,000 folks participate in a far-right avenue protest within the coronary heart of its capital, the biggest nationalist rally in many years. Because the youngster of refugees, Tang says he is aware of diaspora narratives are something however homogeneous. “There are all the time contradictions in histories and within the thought of identification,” he mentioned.
For Tang, up to date artwork is a method to floor these complexities, to offer voice to tales that haven’t but been advised. “In an more and more polarized world, you need to actively construct bridges so cultures can converse to 1 one other with nuance and mutual understanding,” he mentioned.
