Biography:

Fei Dawei (b. 1954, Shanghai) is an independent art critic and curator, currently based in Paris and Beijing.

During the Cultural Revolution, Fei worked at a jade factory in Shanghai. In 1981, he enrolled in the Art History Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. As a student, he extensively studied the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and after graduating in 1985, became an editor of the Academy’s journal Art Research. In October 1986, Fei participated in an eight-month exchange program in France organized by the French Ministry of Culture, at which time he visited art schools and museums and lectured on avant-garde art in China. The following year Fei returned to China and travelled with Jean-Hubert Martin, then-director of the Centre Pompidou, visiting artists in preparation for the exhibition ‘Magiciens de la Terre’.

In 1989, Fei helped to organize the ‘China/Avant-Garde Exhibition’ at the National Art Museum of China, before returning to France for an international forum held in connection with ‘Magiciens de la Terre’. In 1990, Fei curated ‘Chine Demain pour Hier’ in Pourrières, France, which presented the work of Huang Yongping, Gu Wenda, Yan Peiming, Chen Zhen, Yang Jiechang and Cai Guoqiang. In 1991, he curated ‘Exceptional Passage’, an exhibition held in Fukuoka, Japan.

In October 2002, Fei became the director of The Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation. Between 2007 and 2008, Fei Dawei served as the director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. He curated the Center’s first exhibition, ‘'85 New Wave’, a large-scale historical retrospective, and later presented ‘House of Oracles: A Huang Yongping Retrospective’, an exhibition originally shown at the Walker Art Center in Minnesota.