The Other Side of Wings: Time, Butterflies, and Medog
- Date: November 12, 2026
- Location: Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai
The Larva of Time extends the eponymous art and science project’s exploration of time, life and metamorphosis. Initiated in summer 2022 within the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University’s ‘Creative Futures’ programme, the project brought two artists and two scientists together through nearly two years of correspondence, visits, conversations and fieldwork, culminating in an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai in 2024.
From microbial traces and evolutionary branching to geological and ecological change, the project considers how different times coexist, intertwine and become perceptible. Carrying this enquiry onto the page, the publication asks what forms of perception and understanding might emerge when art and science venture together into knowledge still taking shape.
The publication offers a close view of how interdisciplinary collaboration unfolds, tracing the exchanges, experiments and shifts in thinking behind the works and research. A wealth of rare handwritten notes, drafts and research materials brings readers into the project’s formative stages, revealing how a question travels between disciplines, how a conversation redirects a work, and how an unfinished thought becomes the starting point for a shared enquiry.
Two copies of The Larva of Time will be gifted to the audience at the event.
About the Panelists
Guo Cheng
Artist
Working primarily through installation, Guo integrates custom software and hardware, mixed media, and spatial interventions to consider technology as a condition that organizes modes of perception and relations between humans and the things and systems around them. His practice moves across infrastructures, technological systems, and environmental processes, examining how they intervene in everyday life across different spatial and temporal scales.
Over the two-year project Larva of Time, Guo worked closely with the Peking University team on fieldwork in Medog and other locations, jointly creating works for the 2024 exhibition of the same name.
Michelle Yeonho Hyun
Director/Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, New York University Shanghai
Michelle Yeonho Hyun makes exhibitions and events with artists and others. She sometimes writes and talks about art, among other things. She is the founding director and curator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at NYU Shanghai since 2018. She worked previously as a curator for Shanghai Project (2016), Gwangju Biennale (2014), and the University of California San Diego (2012-14). She has also organized projects for the New Museum (New York, 2012), Creative Time (New York, 2011), and What, How & for Whom (WHW) (Zagreb, 2010).
Hu Ruiqi
Undergraduate, School of Life Sciences, Peking University
Currently, Hu’s research combines fieldwork with laboratory studies, using butterflies to explore microscopic mechanisms and broader patterns in living systems. Through butterflies, he hopes to forge a meaningful connection between us and our ever-changing world.
With the project Larva of Time, Hu worked closely with the artists at the lab on campus as well as at the field trips. He also hosted the talk “Learning about Mountains from Molehills” for the exhibition in 2024.
About the Moderator and Commentator
Iris Long
Exhibitions & Research Lead at JD Museum 2022-2023 Berggruen Fellow
Long’s research focuses on China’s technological infrastructure and the psychogeography of technology. She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions exploring the intersections of art, science and technology, including Lying Sophia and Mocking Alexa (Hyundai Blue Prize, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing); Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse (Grand Prize, Emerging Curators Project, Power Station of Art, Shanghai); Space: Internal Illuminations at Fotografiska Shanghai; and Cosmos Archaeology, presented at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum and the National Museum of China, among others.
Her research has been published or presented at institutions including the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge; the Warburg Institute; the Institute of Advanced Studies and the Centre for Outer Space Studies, University College London; ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and so on.
Iris initiated and led Larva of Time as her fellowship project at the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University.
Mónica Bello
Art Historian, Curator
Bello is the Founding 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 is currently at the Curator’s China Residency with the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University and the Art Research Center at Fudan University.
About the Berggruen Institute China Art & Culture Program
The 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 Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai
The Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai is a non-profit kunsthalle and research center committed to the development, presentation, and exchange of diverse ideas through contemporary arts.
Our commitment aligns with the mission of NYU Shanghai, dedicated to education, research, and public service, and is based on a core belief that engagement with art engenders critical thought, creativity, and openness to complexity, across disciplines and society and in everyday life.
Every two years, together with artists and our surrounding communities, the ICA at NYU Shanghai pursues thematic inquiries through public exhibitions, events, and publications that experiment with ways of knowing, being, and relating to ourselves and the world.
