Guest Room aims to spark collaboration. Holly Roussell, has decided to collaborate with a UCCA colleague at Edge in Shanghai, Ara Qiu.

Holly Roussell and Ara Qiu welcome submissions from image-based artists exploring the theme, "The content is disturbed by its shadow”.

The theme is inspired by the 2011 installation by Geng Jianyi (1962-2017). Roussell and Qiu look forward to discovering works employing the photographic medium and/or processes to explore distortion, circulation, interpretation, reconstruction, or refraction within the construction of global histories or the contemplation of present realities.

Why submit to Guest Room?

• Be discovered by two experts in contemporary art and photography
• Get published in an online showcase on Der Greif alongside emerging artists from all over the world
• Submit for free or pay a voluntary donation of 5€

Holly Roussell is a curator, museologist, and art historian specialising in photography and contemporary art from East Asia based between Switzerland and China.  Roussell is graduate of Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland, with a MA in Museology. She also holds a BA in Art History. She currently is a curator with the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.

Since 2013, Roussell has worked as an independent curator organizing more than 20 group and solo exhibitions for festivals, biennale, and museums around the world such as: Folkwang Museum, DE; MUCEM, Marseille, FR; Les Rencontres d’Arles, FR;  Somerset House, London, UK; NGV Melbourne, AUS; Lianzhou Photography Festival, CN; Shanghai Centre of Photography, CN; Auckland Art Gallery, NZ; Fotografiska, USA/SE; MMCA: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, SK and other venues. In 2022, Roussell will join the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea as International Curatorial Researcher in residence.

About Ara Qiu

Ara Qiu is deputy director and curator at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Shanghai. Since joining UCCA in 2019, Qiu has curated exhibitions across the museum’s three locations, including “Resistance of the Sleepers” (2020) at UCCA Dune, “Immaterial / Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art” (2020) at UCCA Beijing, and “Urban Theater: A Comedy in Four Acts” (2021) at UCCA Edge. She was also instrumentally involved in the preparation and opening of UCCA Edge. Before joining UCCA, Qiu was curator at Long Museum and Qiao Space in Shanghai. While at Long Museum, she served as project manager for “James Turrell: Immersive Light” (2017). Qiu held internships at the Museum of Modern Art and Asia Society in New York. In 2018, she was a curatorial resident at Residency Unlimited. During the residency, she co-curated Li Shuang’s first solo exhibition “If Only the Cloud Knows” at SLEEPCENTER (New York).

Qiu graduated from Communication University of China, School of Television and Journalism in 2012, and received a masters in Arts Politics from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. Her writing has been featured in publications including The Art Newspaper (Chinese edition), Art World, and Numéro Art China, among others.

About Der Greif Guest Room

Guest Room is a monthly online exhibition with open submissions curated in real-time by personalities from the international photography scene. Der Greif is an award-winning organization for contemporary photography. It is print-publication, online-publication, curatorial team and joint project all at once. Der Greif connects the digital and the analogue, exploring and expanding the borders and limits of image-distribution and -reception in the digital era.

Voluntary donation

After over a decade of serving the international photography community Der Greif is now finally a registered non-profit. We believe this organizational structure best reflects our artistic and cultural mission. As always, your artistic contribution makes our work on Der Greif possible.

Since starting Guest Room in January 2015, we’ve been working hard to invite a broad range of practitioners, from gallerists to editors and curators. We are convinced that this format is an interesting and low-barrier approach to help artists get their work in front of people who might be interested in working with them. For this reason, we are asking you to consider making a financial contribution as well. That’s why we’re suggesting a voluntary donation of 5 € as a submission fee. 100% of the funds we collect from your donations will go towards helping us continue providing interesting opportunities for the photography community through Guest Room, and thus expand Der Greif.

We believe in inclusivity. We don’t want this suggested donation to stand in the way of your submission. If you are unable to contribute financially, please send an email to voucher@dergreif.org to receive a voucher code which will allow you to enter for free.