Photo credit Gofreey
Co-Lapses (2025 Beijing Iteration)
10th Beijing International Art Biennale
Beijing Exhibition Hall
Beijing, China
29 December 2025 - 28 February 2026
Australasian interdisciplinary artist Karma M. Barnes presents CO-Lapses (Beijing Iteration, 2025) at the 10th Beijing International Art Biennale, one of China’s most significant international contemporary art exhibitions, bringing together nearly 600 works from around 120 countries.
Barnes was invited to participate by Sir Huang Yi, Chief Curator of the Shanghai Huacul Contemporary Art Museum, and is the only artist representing Aotearoa New Zealand, based in Australia, in this edition of the Biennale. Her installation occupies a prominent position at the main entrance of the Biennale’s central exhibition hall, situating the work at the threshold of the exhibition and foregrounding its durational presence within the Biennale’s theme of Coexistence.
Presented within an exhibition that foregrounds international dialogue on ecological civilisation, technological ethics, and shared futures, CO-Lapses positions Barnes’ practice within a global conversation on material interdependence and environmental change. This presentation marks a significant moment in Barnes’ international trajectory, following the project’s Grand Prix award at the Larnaca Biennale 2025 and its subsequent presentations through the Arte Laguna Prize in Shanghai and Venice.
Co-Lapses (2025 Beijing Iteration)
CO-Lapses is a large-scale, durational installation composed of suspended vessels that slowly release pigmented sands. Over time, these materials accumulate and erode, forming evolving landscapes shaped by gravity, chance, and material memory.
Drawing on biomimicry and ecological systems, the work reflects processes of collapse, adaptation, and regeneration. It situates lived experiences of floods, fires, and environmental instability within broader planetary and cosmological cycles, offering a meditation on interdependence, vulnerability, and care. Rather than presenting a fixed image, CO-Lapses operates as a living system - a slow unfolding that mirrors ecological time and the continual negotiation between loss and renewal.
Curatorial Context: Coexistence
The 10th Beijing International Art Biennale unfolds under the theme “Coexistence”, bringing together nearly 600 artworks from approximately 120 countries, spanning painting, sculpture, installation, digital media, and video.
The Biennale positions art as an active participant in global dialogue - addressing ecological civilisation, technological ethics, and peaceful development. Within this framework, CO-Lapses makes visible the material forces and relational systems that underpin coexistence, foregrounding how environments, bodies, and communities continuously shape one another.
International Trajectory
The Beijing presentation follows CO-Lapses’ Grand Prix award at the Larnaca Biennale 2025 (Cyprus), where the work was recognised for its “remarkable capacity to merge poetic sensitivity with conceptual and environmental depth.”
Subsequent iterations have been presented through the Arte Laguna Prize in Shanghai and Venice, reinforcing the project’s international resonance and its adaptability across diverse cultural and material contexts.
This project was made possible by the Australian Government's Arts Fund,
provided by Regional Arts Australia and Regional Arts NSW
Beijing News 29.12.25 https://item.btime.com/24vo2fjr9hgspk3f4hi1ha0a41k
“This installation evokes a surreal landscape: suspended ‘eyes’ hover above, gazing downward, while the sands and pigments below seem to dissolve, as though their bodies are in a state of continual transformation.
Through the interplay of light and shadow, the interior space becomes dreamlike - a threshold where reality and imagination converge.
Observation here is no longer a rational act of identification, but a mode of perception akin to entering a dream.”
- Sir Huang Yi
About the Curator: Sir Huang Yi
Sir Huang Yi is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese curatorial practice, navigating a fluid intersection between traditional art forms and emerging digital realities.
Educated at Shanghai Arts & Crafts College, Shanghai University, and France’s École d’Art et de Culture, Huang Yi’s academic and professional trajectory reflects a sustained engagement with evolving artistic paradigms. His multifaceted career spans design, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and curatorial leadership.
Huang Yi approaches art as a dynamic and shifting construct — continuously redefined through its relationship to technological, cultural, and perceptual change. Rather than treating technology as a tool, he frames it as an existential arena in which artistic cognition must be re-examined. His curatorial vision challenges artists to expand conceptual boundaries while remaining grounded in material and philosophical inquiry.
