From Ideas to Experiment: Art and the Question of Reality
- Date: September 11, 2026
- Location: Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, E-1, 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang
- Language: English
Register here (event is free but registration is required)
Livestream available here or on the Berggruen Institute’s WeChat Channels.
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Contemporary art and culture have always evolved in relation to the ideas and knowledge of their time. Today, scientific practice is part of this landscape: as a body of knowledge and source of technologies, but also as a way of questioning the world and proposing new ways of understanding what is real.
In recent decades, we have often described this relationship through the idea of creative practitioners entering the places where scientific knowledge is produced, experiencing knowledge while it is still in the making and engaging with questions for which there are not yet clear answers. But this model can still suggest that science owns the territory of knowledge production and that artists are invited into it.
In this talk, I will attempt to describe this relationship differently: considering how different practices might be working through the same unsettled questions, through complementary modes: conceptual, speculative, poetic, material or experimental.
Art-making, in this sense, can be understood as part of a much broader field of inquiry: a creative engagement with ideas and questions capable of altering how we perceive life and reality, wherever and through whatever means that inquiry takes place.
This perspective can also offer science a different way of looking at itself, and a space to consider the meaning and impact of the knowledge it produces. What is at stake, then, is not simply the relationship between art and science, but how ideas form, how they evolve and shift, and ultimately how they influence, and continually redefine the way we understand the world.
About the Speaker
Mónica Bello
Art Historian, Curator
Mónica Bello is the Director of Platform Dalí, a new programme by Fundación Gala-Salvador Dalí created to foster dialogue between art and science. Formerly, she was Head and Curator of Arts at CERN at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, leading and supervising the laboratory’s art strategy. Bello oversaw the curation of Exploring the Unknown, the opening art exhibition for the CERN Science Gateway- the visitor centre of the Laboratory designed by Renzo Piano which opened in October 2023. She curated the Icelandic Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale with the artist Sigurður Guðjónsson in 2022. Bello participates in selection committees, advisory boards, and mentorship programs internationally. She is a regular speaker at conferences and active in several programmes in Europe and globally where art and cultural innovation are the focus.
About the Moderator
LAI Lili
Anthropologist, 2023 - 2024 Berggruen Institute China Center Fellow
Lili Lai is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the School of Health Humanities at Peking University. Lai’s research interests include the body, everyday life, and medical practices. She has done extensive ethnographic and interdisciplinary research on health-related issues in rural and urban communities of Northern and Southwestern China. Dr. Lai’s monographs include Hygiene, Sociality and Culture in Contemporary Rural China: The Uncanny New Village (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), and Gathering Medicines: Nation and Knowledge in China's Mountain South, co-authored with Judith Farquhar (The University of Chicago Press, 2021). She received her MA and PhD in Anthropology from UNC-Chapel Hill.
About the Berggruen Institute China Art and Culture Program
The Berggruen Institute China’s Art and Culture Program is dedicated to fostering dialogue and co-creation between intellectual research and artistic practice. It encourages inquiry driven by artistic perspectives, as well as artistic actions and works that generate new ideas and understandings.
The program builds platforms for intellectual exchange, invites artists to participate in research initiatives, and organizes small-scale, research-oriented exhibitions and discussions to promote in-depth, cross-disciplinary dialogue.
About the Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing is a brand space for arts and culture in the 798 Art District, one of China’s most renowned creative districts. Inspired by the concept of “Creative Energy,” the space strives to enrich people’s lives and support the local cultural landscape by sparking artistic inspiration. Through immersive exhibitions and creative programs, including art and mobility contents, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing presents fresh perspectives and engaging experiences.
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing is currently presenting Prayers to Fornax: Science, Technology, and Spirituality, the first awarded exhibition of Hyundai Blue Prize+ 2025. Curated by Yifeng Wei and Penny Dan Xu, the exhibition brings together works by eight groups of artists across three interconnected chapters—“Measuring the Intangible,” “Other Knowledges,” and “Seeking Oracles.” Through diverse artistic practices, the exhibition explores intersections between scientific inquiry, spiritual traditions, Indigenous cosmologies, folklore, and mysticism, inviting audiences to reconsider how we understand technology, the world around us, and the unknown.
Duration: July 18–December 13, 2026
Curators: Yifeng Wei & Penny Dan Xu
Artists: June Balthazard & Pierre Pauze, Zach Blas, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Haroon Mirza, Riar Rizaldi, Natasha Tontey, Suzanne Treister, Chen Zhe
