In our event calendar you will find current cultural events related to Chinese culture in Switzerland. We are thankful for your tips regarding interesting events.
Please send your information to info@sinokultur.ch.
Cultural Events ⟩ Agenda
In our event calendar you will find current cultural events related to Chinese culture in Switzerland. We are thankful for your tips regarding interesting events.
Please send your information to info@sinokultur.ch.
sinokultur would like to invite you to a tour with artist Nina Chen through her exhibition Over Mountains, Across Seas at Kunstraum Aarau on Saturday, September 19th at 2pm.
In her artistic practice, Nina Chen combines photography, installation and video. Through a precise observation of her surroundings, she explores the conditions of the present and reveals the tensions between individual experience and social transformation.
Over Mountains, Across Seas brings together works by Nina Chen that engage with migration, landscape and perception. Between documentary precision and poetic openness, her works create visual spaces where personal experiences intersect with questions of ecological and social change.
Nina Chen (*1980, Hubei, China) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Hubei Normal University. She lived and worked in Shanghai until 2017 and is now based in Aargau, Switzerland.
The exhibition is curated by Roger Wirz (*1970), an artist, curator and co-director of Kunstraum Aarau, where he has been co-running the institution’s independent exhibition programme for contemporary art since 2015.
This project is part of sinokultur's cultural promotion program 2026.
The tour is held in English and German.
sinokultur tour w/artist: Sept 19 from 2 -4 pm, tickets click here
Venue: Kunstraum Aarau, Ochsengässli 7, 5000 Aarau, Switzerland
This year’s Locarno Film Festival lineup brings together bold voices from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, with films that move between mythology, animation, poetry and experimental cinema. Here are our top Chinese-language and China-related festival picks:
The House on the Moon《明月共此时》 — Nelson Yeo (99 min): International Competition, competing for the Golden Leopard
A dazzling blend of wuxia, science fiction and Chinese mythology inspired by the legend of Chang’e and Hou Yi. Co-produced by Singapore, Taiwan, Germany and Indonesia, it is also notable as Singapore’s first virtual-production feature film. Starring arthouse icon Lee Kang-sheng 李康生, alongside Akira Huang and Harry Chang.
Magic Atlas《魔法星图》 — Sun Xun (@sun__xun) 孙逊 (85 min): The acclaimed Chinese artist and animator transforms his surreal visual universe into cinema, following a magician whose arrival in the isolated coal empire of Luosha sparks fear, myth and rebellion. Developed over more than a decade, the film extends Sun’s signature woodcut-animation style and East Asian allegorical imagery.
The Wind, One Brilliant Day《风，在明媚的一天》 — Ben Rivers (7 min): A poetic miniature featuring Tang Wei 汤唯, whose luminous screen presence makes this one of the standout China-related events of Locarno 2026.
Already Happened《事后》— Hao Zhou (@_haozhou_) 周豪 (18 min): A US–China co-production that moves between Chinese and English while exploring identity and memory through a sharply observed short-film form.
As a Cure《砂之歌》 — Dorothea Sing Zhang (@dorotheasingzhang) 张馨文 (22 min): A China–UK co-production introducing an exciting new voice in contemporary Chinese-language cinema and international collaboration.
The Human Surge 3 — Eduardo Williams (121 min): An adventurous international experiment involving collaborators from Taiwan and Hong Kong, expanding the festival’s conversation around contemporary Sinophone and transnational cinema.
From ancient myth and woodcut animation to poetic shorts and radical experimentation, this selection offers a vivid snapshot of today’s Chinese-language cinema: restless, imaginative and impossible to confine to a single category.
Locarno Film Festival, 5–15 August 2026
Wir von sinokultur würden euch sehr gerne zu unserem Salon On the Road mit chinesischer Literatur: Alice Grünfelder im Gespräch mit Übersetzerin Karin Betz am Dienstag, 29. September um 18.30 Uhr einladen.
Literatur aus der VR China, Taiwan und Hongkong ist vielfältig wie nie. Karin Betz hat in den vergangenen Jahren eine grosse Bandbreite von Autoren und Genres übersetzt und sich dabei literarisch an die geographischen und historischen Ränder der sinophonen Kultur begeben: mit Chi Zijians Roman Das letzte Viertel des Mondes zum Nomadenvolk der Ewenken, mit Wang Xiaobo in Das goldene Zeitalter ins Zwangsexil nach Süd-Yunnan, mit Sanmao in Geschichten aus der Sahara in die Westsahara von 1973 und mit Yang Shuang-zis Reise durch Taiwan im Jahr 1938 nach Taiwan in der japanischen Kolonialzeit. Im Gespräch mit Alice Grünfelder berichtet sie über ihre Entdeckungen durch chinesische Literatur im geopolitischen Spannungsfeld.
Karin Betz übersetzt chinesische und englische Literatur, ist Kulturvermittlerin, Dozentin, Moderatorin und DJ. Übersetzt hat sie u.a. Mo Yan, Liao Yiwu, Cixin Liu, Xi Xi, Jin Yong, Can Xue, Wang Xiaobo und Zhang Yueran. Für ihre Arbeit wurde sie mehrfach ausgezeichnet, u.a. mit der August-von-Schlegel Gastprofessur für die Poetik der Übersetzung an der FU Berlin 2020/21, dem Special Book Award of China und dem Helmut-M.-Braem-Übersetzerpreis 2024. 2025 war sie Writer in Residence an der Taiwan Literature Base Taipei.
Alice Grünfelder, Buchhändlerlehre und Studium der Sinologie und Germanistik in Berlin und China (Chengdu), bis 2010 Lektorin beim Unionsverlag in Zürich, Herausgeberin etlicher Asien-Anthologien. Mehrere Veröffentlichungen, u.a. die Road-Novel Wüstengängerin (2018) über Xinjiang, Wolken über Taiwan (Rotpunktverlag) stand auf der Hotlist der Unabhängigen Verlag. 2024 erschienen u.a. bei Hochroth Leipzig Übersetzungen von Lyrik aus Taiwan.
Der Salon findet auf Deutsch statt.
Datum: Dienstag, 29. September 2026 von 18.30 bis 21 Uhr, Türöffnung um 18.15 Uhr
Ort: sinokultur, Klosbachstrasse 109, 8032 Zürich
Gallery Urs Meile Galerie at Rämistrasse in Zurich is happy to invite you to the exhibition Summer by Chinese artist Ju Ting.
At the center of the exhibition stands the artist’s recent series Deep Waters Run Quiet: new paintings in which Ju Ting builds up dense strata of acrylic paint only to cut, carve and lay them open – staging destruction not as refusal but as a condition for new form.
Ju Ting is part of a new generation of Chinese contemporary artists redefining abstraction through material, texture, and gesture. Her work challenges the conventions of abstract painting by fusing painterly and sculptural approaches. Her practice investigates the material and spatial possibilities of acrylic paint, dissolving the boundary between surface and object.
Ju Ting (b. 1983, Shandong, China) is a Beijing-based artist She graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, with a BA in 2007, and with a master in 2013.
Date: June 12th August 22nd
Location: Urs Meile Galerie, Rämistrasse 33, 8001 Zurich
The team of Galerie Urs Meile is happy to invite you to the exhibition 'Fugitive Figuration. Paintings 1994 – 2026' by Chinese artist Xie Nanxing on Friday, June 12th from 6-9pm at the Ankerstrasse gallery.
’Fugitive Figuration. Paintings 1994–2026’, is a survey exhibition of works by Xie Nanxing curated by Clémentine Deliss.
Tracing the artist’s practice from his iconic paintings of the 1990s to works completed in 2026, the exhibition offers both an introduction to and an appraisal of Xie Nanxing’s singular position within contemporary Chinese and international art.
For the first time, nine paintings from six different series are brought into dialogue, revealing the shifting forms and possibilities of figuration that have emerged throughout his practice over the last three decades.
Born in 1970 in Chongqing, a futuristic industrial city in Southern China, Xie studied printmaking, a technique mirrored in the different ways he manipulates pigment.
The artist will be present.
Date: June 12 to August 29, Vernissage June 12th 6-9pm
Location: Galerie Urs Meile, Ankerstrasse 3, 8004 Zurich
Image: Xie Nanxing, Untitled No. 8, 2025, oil on canvas, 210 x 195 cm
The Kunstmuseum Basel invites you to the exhibit by Chinese artist Cao Fei until October 11th 2026.
Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou, lives in Beijing) is one of the defining voices of her generation, working across video, digital media, photography, installation, and sculpture. The artist’s works capture the rapid changes that have shaped China, and the Pearl River Delta in particular, since the country’s 1978 policy of Reform and Opening up.
For Cao Fei. Testimonies to the Near Future, her first solo exhibition in Switzerland and largest survey exhibition in Europe to date, the artist transforms the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart into a total work of art that takes the form of a city blending immersive installations and video universes from her oeuvre of the past thirty years. Cao Fei’s achievement as a pioneering creator of digital worlds is uncontested. Her early works have influenced an entire generation of artists from Asia and beyond. For over two decades, she has made art—from video installations and digital simulations to virtual-reality settings—grappling with the impact on human life of wrenching societal and technological transformations, establishing her renown as a leading thinker about art, media, technology, and the future.
The exhibition, which extends across all four floors of the Gegenwart building, invites viewers to delve deep into Cao Fei’s extensive oeuvre and makes for a singular experience in three dimensions in which the video works are not just on display but become an immersive reality.
Location: Kunstmuseum Basel, St. Alban-Graben 8, Basel
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