Chronologies gathers moving image works by Singapore-based artist and writer Ho Rui An and premieres his new film, The World of Lines, in an exhibition through which factory workers, filmmakers, students, and ghosts emerge as agents of history and of historiography. While their narratives map onto the long 20th century in China and East and Southeast Asia, atemporal scenes of anti/crisis across continents loom nearby, prompting us to ask—and to feel the stakes of—the question: who has the means and power to write history?
Commissioned by the ICA at NYU Shanghai, The World of Lines (2025) navigates more than a century of the textile industry’s rise and postindustrial transition between the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas, following the movements of labor, technology, and capital, while marking the emergence, displacement, and return of industrial capitalism in China. Situating former factory workers in conversation with places of both personal and social significance, their stories puncture the “arc of history” as microhistories, which are often obscured by grand spatial metaphors. Layered within these conversations are personal archival photos and excerpts from historical films, inset as a “picture-within-a-picture” to call our attention to the multiple frames and scales of history that coexist in any given scene. This reflexive aesthetic device, rooted in a history of realist filmmaking, also recurs in Ho’s other works.
24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China (2023) offers an analysis that spans more than a century of Western and Chinese film histories, focusing on depictions of workers inside and outside of the factory. As these histories track alongside the development of Western industrial capitalism, Soviet and Chinese socialism, and China’s socialist market economy, excerpts from contemporaneous films appear again as pictures-within-a-picture embedded within a grid of moving images. Layered beneath the aesthetic density beginning to accrue image by image, the aurality of Student Bodies (2019) thickens and permeates the temporal density of the Chronologies. Searching the entangled histories of capitalist modernity and radical culture in East and Southeast Asia, this “horror film” traces the shifting figure of the student body as both collective and individual, metaphor and flesh—a stand-in for the region’s body politic through cycles of growth, crisis, and recovery.
Chronologies “ends” back at the “beginning” with a timeline that accompanies The World of Lines film, charting symbolic rivers that weave together micro- and macro-histories of individuals, industries, regions, nations, and political economies. While traversing these overlapping chronologies, twin totems of late capitalism hover on an endless loop above. On one level, scenes of apocalyptic chaos stutter across six screens in 2027 (2021), and on another, in ULTIMATE COIN TEST CHINA HIGH-SPEED RAIL (2018), an image of stability balances on the edge; time is perpetually stretched and suspended in an encounter with past and future crises simultaneously.
In Chronologies, Ho deploys reflexive techniques from cinema to render visible and audible the minor agents of history. Revoicing these temporal movements and spaces suggests that History is always mediated by narrative expression—through aesthetic, cinematic, sonic, and performative modes. By limning multiple chronologies, Ho performs the constructed, mediated nature of historical knowledge: historiography itself, not just history, has agents.
Daily screenings of The World of Lines (2025, 100’) begin at 11:00, 12:45, 14:30, and 16:15.
Chronologies is accompanied by related events, including:
OPENING RECEPTION
- Thursday, 18 September, 16:30–19:00
A public reception with the artist and co-curator to celebrate the exhibition’s opening with food and drinks.
CONVERSATIONS
Chronologies & Scenographies: Artist and Curators in Conversation
- Saturday, 20 September, 16:30–18:30
- In Chinese
- Events Space
- No registration required
Artist Ho Rui An, curator Zian Chen, and curator Joni Zhu will discuss the ideas that emerged during their collaboration, reflect on the historical threads within the works, and explore how these concurrent dual exhibitions respond to shifts in regional economic and social structures. This event is co-organized in conjunction with Ho Rui An’s exhibition Scenographies at Vanguard Gallery.
SCREENING
Performing Gender on the Factory Floor: Screening of Huang Baomei (1958) and Conversation
- Wednesday, October 15, 19:00– 21:00
- Screening in Chinese with English and Chinese subtitles; post-screening conversation in English
- Events Space
- Open to NYU Shanghai Community only; registration required
Produced during a formative period in socialist China's industrial development, the film Huang Baomei (1958) offers insight into how labor, gender, and ideology were represented on screen at the time. Media theorist CHEN Junnan will lead a discussion on the performance and representation of gender in worker films, portrayals of workers’ public and private lives, and the evolving figure of the “model worker” in socialist cinema.
PERFORMANCE
Figures of History and the Grounds of Intelligence
- Saturday, 8 November, 14:00–16:30
- Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Multimedia Room, 5th Floor, 48 Weihai Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai
- English with Chinese subtitles
- Registration required
Inspired by an encounter the artist had in 2016 at the Google Cultural Institute with an image from the National Gallery Singapore, Ho Rui An traces histories of state planning, global networks, and cybernetics from the Cold War to the ongoing boom in generative AI. His performance-lecture asks what it means for text-to-image models to “learn” from history without understanding it—and what this means for the future of representation. The performance will be followed by a conversation with ICA director/curator Michelle Yeonho Hyun.
This performance is part of the Minsheng WE Theater series at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum. For details, please refer to the Minsheng Art Museum official WeChat account.
WORKSHOP
Autonomous Archiving: How to Tell Stories Otherwise
- Saturday, 15 November, 14:30–16:30
- In Chinese
- Reading Room
- Registration required
Archives are not only a way to preserve history, but also a way to tell stories. Curator XUE Bin and archivist HUANG Weiren will share their archival practices and discuss the possibilities of personal and community-based archiving. Together, we’ll consider how autonomous archival practices take shape and allow for the emergence of counterhegemonic memory. Participants may bring an object they wish to archive, but aren’t quite sure how.
WORKSHOP
The Textless Herstory of Textiles: Stories and Labor Woven in Cloth
- Saturday, 13 December, 14:30–16:30
- In Chinese
- Reading Room
- Registration required
Led by independent creator ZHU Lina, this workshop delves into how textiles serve as unwritten histories of women’s experiences, connecting body, labor, and memory. Through storytelling inspired by fabrics, interactive discussion, and a simple weaving activity, participants are invited to explore the rich lives and histories embedded in cloth.
Events are FREE and OPEN to the public. Select activities are limited to the NYU Shanghai community.
For further details and to register for events, please visit the event pages under “RELATED” section below.
The exhibition Chronologies and related events are presented as the third season of the ICA's artistic research program Lightless Fires (2024–26), exploring fermentation as a figure and technique of collective memory, autonomous archiving, and writing history.
Chronologies, an exhibition by Ho Rui An, is organized by Zian Chen and Michelle Yeonho Hyun, with BAO Yang and CHEN Baichao; with additional support by ZHANG Yiying, PENG Linru, SHEN Xinran, TAN Yun, YU Jiayi, and SHA Yulai. Design by LIU Anqi.
Ho Rui An, The World of Lines (2025) is a new commission by the ICA at NYU Shanghai and was supported by Design Trust, Hong Kong and National Arts Council, Singapore. Research and development for The World of Lines was also supported by CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), Hong Kong; dKunst Art on Campus at Duke Kunshan University; Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou; Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Shanghai Textile Museum; and Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage & Art, Hong Kong.
We are indebted to our partners and peers for their generous support of this exhibition and the commission: Design Trust, Hong Kong; Shanghai Textile Museum; and Vanguard Gallery.
Special thanks to Bruce Li, CHAN Kung King Albert, CHEN Yun, Elizabeth Perry, GU Qin, HUANG Weiren, JIA Yiliang, Lise Li, Mizuki Takahashi, QIAN Chunhao, SONG Qinfang, WANG Weiwei, WUN Pan Hing, XIANG Zairong, XUE Bin, and YIM Yuen Yi.
Our deepest gratitude belongs to the artist for sharing their knowledge, work, and time with us, expanding our curiosity and creating more questions.
