Sylvia/Xinran Tan,
curatorial, snapshots














that I curated...



Ghost Dance, Jimei Art Centre, Xiaman, 2024-2025

Unanswered Call, CHOWspace, Shanghai, 2024

Ripples, Hypha Gallery 2 Sugar House Island, London, 2024


The Place of Indivisible Existence, CHOWspace, Shanghai, 2024
Belong and Belongings, Eaton HK, Hong Kong, 2023




that I assisted...



Silo Dreams, Keyi Gallery, Hefei, 2024

Modern Time: Masterpieces from the Collection of Museum Berggruen / Nationalgalerie Berlin, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA Edge), Shanghai, 2023

Liquid Ground, Para Site, Hong Kong, 2021

Curtain, Para Site, Hong Kong, 2021

M/Made in Shanghai, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2020

PSA Collection Series: Shanghai Waves: Historical Archives and Works of Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2020

Workshop: Wu Tuo Bang—Construct a Utopia World with Your Imagination, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2020



The Enigma of Arrival


Studio Building, RCA Battersea, London, 2024
06/19/2024 – 06/23/2024

"Diasporas are always categorised by various forms of absence.” - John Akomfrah

The Enigma of Arrival is a curatorial project consisting of three artist commissions and a workshop. Borrowing its title from V.S. Naipaul’s novel, it delves into the intersections of time, identity, and diaspora, reflecting the enigmatic nature of settling into a new time or place. Challenging linear time, this project explores the fragmented nature of diasporic experience, where memory, nostalgia, and rebirth intertwine in a haze of past and present.

Featuring commissioned works by Joshua Woolford, Rieko Whitfield, and Duong Thuy Nguyen, a synergistic blend of audio-visual, sculptural, and collaborative media is presented. Woolford’s peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must narrates a personal perspective within an unfamiliar landscape. Questions of the untold are manifested through a communication between Woolford’s dual-screen display and Whitfield’s Diasporing Terrains – an audio-visual installation resulting from an intimate workshop, redefining the concept of diaspora. Meditating on ideas of memory, belonging, and adaptation, this is framed by Nguyen’s We, Now, Here, There, Together, a sculptural display exploring diasporic communities and their ancestral ties.

We invite visitors to engage with the dynamic and multifaceted nature of diasporic existence.

Mark your arrival, feel the absence.


Artists: Duong Thuy Nguyen, Joshua Woolford, Rieko Whitfield
Curators: Ahwa Habeeb, Clara Lai, David Tomlinson, Hannah Dowling, Qinle Jin, Sylvia Tan, Yu Ying Chan
Photographer & Videographer: Wenxuan Wang
MA Curating Contemporary Art, School of Arts and Humanities, Royal College of Art

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Photo and video: Wenxuan Wang