Cao Minghao (b. 1982, China) and Chen Jianjun (b. 1981, China) are artists and transdisciplinary researchers based in Chengdu. Their practice is research-driven and process-oriented, emphasising reciprocal collaboration between the artists and their partners.

Their projects have been featured in exhibitions and screenings across Asia and Europe, including Green Snake: Women-centred Ecologies at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong (2023–2024), documenta fifteen in Kassel (2022), Rethinking Nature at Madre Museum (2021–2022), the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020–2021), COSMOPOLIS #2.0: Repenser l’Humain at Centre Pompidou in Paris (2019), and COSMOPOLIS #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence in Chengdu (2018).

They have received various awards including Food Action Awards 2024 (Honourable Mention), Jonathan KS Choi Foundation Contemporary Art Award 2022, and undertaken a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2020. In 2023, they were invited as UBC Distinguished Visual Artists in Residence. Their works are also part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai.

Their film and video works have been screened at institutions such as La Casa Encendida, CA2M Museum, Hanart TZ Gallery, West Bund Museum, Centre Pompidou, CC Strombeek, Ateneo Art Gallery at Ateneo de Manila University, Lumbung Film at Gloria-Kino, OCAT Institute, and the Taipei Biennale Film Screening Section, among others.

Cooking Sections investigates the systems that shape the world through food, tracing the spatial, ecological, and political legacies of extractivism. Using site-responsive installations, performances, and video, their practice confronts the overlapping boundaries of art, architecture, ecology, and geopolitics. Founded in London in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, Cooking Sections uses food as both a lens and a tool to trace the metabolic relations behind industrilised food systems. Since 2015, they run CLIMAVORE, a long-term, site-responsive project, exploring how to eat as humans change climates and how to metabolise climate breakdown.

Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate Britain, Serpentine Galleries, SALT, Bonniers Konsthall, Carnegie Museum of Art, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Storefront for Art and Architecture, among others. They have created site-specific performances and installations for the Taipei Biennial, 58th Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Performa17, Manifesta12, Los Angeles Public Art Triennial, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and New Orleans Triennial among others. Residencies include the Headlands Center for the Arts, Fogo Island Arts and Delfina Foundation.

Cooking Sections was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2021, received the Special Prize at the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize and were nominated for the Visible Award for socially-engaged practices. Daniel was awarded the 2020 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize for Being Shellfish.

They have authored three books: The Empire Remains Shop (2018), Salmon: A Red Herring (2020), and Offsetted (2022).

Studio team: Rosa Whiteley, Max Cooper-Clark

Kathryn Weir is a curator, writer and art historian based in Paris. Weir was co-artistic director of the Lagos Biennial (2021-2024), director of the MADRE museum in Naples (2020-23) and before that director of multidisciplinary programs at the Centre Pompidou (2014-20). Her curatorial and writing practice engages with critical thinking on technology, class, race, gender and political ecology, focussing on intersections between theory, activism and artistic experimentation in the framework of contemporary art’s expanded geographies and histories. In 2015 she created Cosmopolis, a platform for research-based, socially engaged and collaborative practices, and in 2017 the festival MOVE: performance, dance, moving image. From 2006-14, as head of international art and cinema at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, she was also a co-curator of the 5th, 6th and 7th editions of the Asia Pacific Triennial.

Publications include Jimmie Durham : humanity is not a completed project (forthcoming, Skira, 2026), Beauty and Terror : sites of colonialism and fascism (artem, 2024), Rethinking Nature (artem, 2024), Utopia Dystopia : the myth of progress seen from the south (artem, 2024), Claire Tabouret: I am spacious, singing flesh (Mousse, 2022), Cosmopolis #1.5: enlarged intelligence (Centre Pompidou/ Mao Jihong Arts Fondation, 2018), Gorilla (Reaktion Books, 2013), Sculpture is Everything (QAGOMA, 2012), The view from elsewhere (Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, 2009) and Modern Ruin (QAGOMA, 2008).

Other current and recent projects include Clément Cogitore: Ferdinandea, the ephemeral island (Mucem, Marseille, 2025-2026), And what if Carthage …? Nidhal Chamekh (Tunis, 2024), Green Snake: women-centred ecologies (Hong Kong, 2023-2024), Temitayo Ogunbiyi: you will play in the everyday, running (Naples, 2020-2021), Collective Body (Dhaka Art Summit, 2020), Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human (Paris, 2019) and Cosmopolis #1: collective intelligence (Paris, 2017).

Saba Khan’s interdisciplinary work stretches over the fields of art, ecology, performance, colonial histories which come together through expeditions, research and fieldwork. The work explores the history and politics of water bodies, flow, fluidity - bodies blocking water and bodies moving along water. Saba's multimedia works traffic in the language of memorial, monument and public projects. From miniature dioramas of a bureaucrat's boring office, flashing LED of retro sci-fi machines seen at power stations to indigo textile banners honouring peasant revolts; she balances grandeur, artifice and satire in order to explore the cracks in the structures. She has taught at the National College of Arts, Lahore for 13 years and now teaches at the Chelsea College of Arts as an Associate Lecturer. In 2014 founded Murree Museum Artist Residency that continued as a satirical collective ‘Pak Khawateen Painting Club’ in 2019. Saba currently lives and works in between London/Lahore.

She recently exhibited at Elevation 1049 (2025), Swiss Institute, USA (2024), National Museums of Qatar, Doha (2024), Gangwon Triennial (2024), Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2022), Jameel Art Centre (2022), Paul Mellon Centre (2021), Lahore Biennial 02, Pakistan (2020), COMO Lahore (2019) and Karachi Biennial (2017). She attended residencies at Casa Wabi (2025), Art Explora (2025), Unidee (2024), Delfina Foundation (2023), Onassis AiR (2022), Para Site Hong Kong (2018), Gwangju Biennial (2016), Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). She has previously received grants from 421 (2022), Foundation for the Arts Initiative (2018), Sharjah Art Foundation (2020), Graham Foundation (2020), British Council (2020, 2021, 2022).

Her work is in the collections of Ford Foundation, Jameel Art Centre, Sharjah Art Foundation, South Asia Art Institute, Servais Collection and Taimur Hassan Collection has been published in the New York Times, Stir World and Asia Art Pacific.

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Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun, Grass Sand and Global Environmental Apparatuses, 2022. Film stills. Courtesy of the artists.