Hao Jingban creates layered video narratives that weave together archival research, field studies, interviews, oral accounts, and fictional footages. By merging observational documentary with experimental film, she explores the distance between the present and past, between micro and macro narratives, probing the stories hidden within convoluted histories. Her works seek to visualize the intangible—memories and feelings obscured in a society driven by modernization and development. From Beijing’s ballrooms that bore witness to transformations through and beyond the Cultural Revolution, to films produced in Northeastern China during the 1930s-40s, and more recently to the global pandemic and the ineffability of mourning, Hao engages with historical junctures through an inquisitive lens, navigating ambivalence, fissures and temporal dislocations.
Hao is the winner of the Han Nefkens Foundation, Mori Art Museum, M+ Hong Kong and Singapore Art Museum – Moving Image Commission 2023. Her commissioned film I Witness (2025) is touring at Mori Art Museum (2025), Singapore Art Museum (2026), and M+. The film will also be featured in her solo exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center (2026), marking her first solo presentation in the US. She was previously recipient of the SeMA-HANA Media Art Award (2021) and the Han Nefkens Foundation – ArcoMadrid Video Art Award (2019).
Hao’s solo exhibitions took place at Mori Art Museum (2025), Matadero Madrid (2020), OCAT Xi’an (2019), Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong, 2018), UCCA (Beijing, 2016), and Taikang Space (Beijing, 2016). Her works have been exhibited in institutions and biennales, including Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2025 & 2019), 36th Bienal de São Paulo (2025), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) (Berlin, 2025), Frac Bretagne (Rennes, 2025), TANK (Shanghai, 2024), West Bund Museum (Shanghai, 2023), 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 2021), 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021), Times Art Center Berlin (2020), Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2019), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2019 & 2018), Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017 & 2019), and Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 2018).
Hao currently lives and works between Yunnan Province, China, and Berlin, Germany.
