Despite being the first-known Chinese art student to study painting in India in the twentieth century, Chang Xiufeng (1915-2010) remains largely unknown in standard accounts of modern Chinese art history. Nevertheless, his experiences in India and the diverse roles he played there speak to a vivid and intricate narrative of Sino-Indian cultural and artistic exchange during the twentieth century, a time that was fraught with political tension, yet rich in artistic inspiration. Chang Xiufeng’s social network in India contained some of the most pivotal figures in the Sino-Indian relations of the day, such as Tagore, Xu Beihong, Chang Renxia, Zhang Daqian, Nandalal Bose, and even Zhou Enlai and Nehru. Chang’s time in India, which spanned from the 1940s to the 1960s, coincided with a tumultuous moment in the Sino-Indian political dynamic, and his life trajectory changed dramatically as a result of the ebb and flow of modern Sino-Indian relations. While enriching our understanding of twentieth-century Sino-Indian artistic dialogue, Chang Xiufeng’s artistic oeuvre during his sixteen years in India also showcases a fusion of Indian and Chinese art that goes beyond the well-studied Buddhist art that was dominant in the first millennium. Simultaneously, his art serves to dismantle and reshape fixed concepts of ‘China’ and ‘India’, either as political entities or ancient civilisations, highlighting the unique agency of art in understanding the history of bilateral relations and cultural exchange.

YAN Yu is an Associate Professor of Art History and Curation at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She received her PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her BA from Peking University. Prior to joining SJTU, she held postdoctoral positions at the Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai, and the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Science. Her research focuses on modern Chinese art reform and inter-Asian artistic interactions in the twentieth century. Currently, she is working on her monograph on twentieth-century China-India artistic exchange. Driven by academic curiosity, she has explored diverse subjects, including calligraphy, woodcut painting, and dance. She is also the curator of the VR exhibition ‘Flowers on One Stalk: China-India Artistic Interactions in the Twentieth Century’ at NYU Shanghai in 2023. Beyond her academic research, she enjoys the peaceful pursuits of practising calligraphy and playing the guqin.