The Condition of Being Near is a group-exhibition project developed by curators Zairong Xiang (Duke Kunshan University, Shanghai) and Denise Ryner (ICA University of Pennsylvania) to focus on historical and social circumstances of solidarity as a process through artistic investigations of primarily Black, African and Chinese diasporic and economic networks.

Video projections, installations, prints and archival reproductions by nine artists are organized around a curatorial framework of three overlapping ‘acupuncture points’: Proximity in the Margins Shanzhai/The Stand In, Survival Economies & Pragmatic Globalisms. Each of these themes follows throughlines from 20th century global south coalitions to contemporary economic and cultural networks connecting the artists’ narratives and regions that include the Caribbean, South Pacific, West Africa, Taiwan, China and the US.