The London-based nonprofit space Yan Du Project (YDP) has named Billy Tang as its founding artistic director, just ahead of the opening of its new home this October in a Grade I-listed townhouse on Bedford Square in London. Tang starts in his role this month.
YDP is the second nonprofit founded by ARTnews Top 200 Collector Yan Du, following the launch of Asymmetry Foundation in London in 2019. While Asymmetry has centered on nurturing curators and facilitating the understanding of Sinophone contemporary art, YDP aims to cast its net wider, focusing on Asian and Asian diaspora artists.
The appointment comes just three months Tang left Para Site, one of Hong Kong’s most closely watched art institution, at the end of his three-year contract as its executive director and curator. The move also represents a homecoming for Tang, who was born in London to parents who arrived to the UK as refugees following the Vietnam War in the early 1980s.
“Having worked across a spectrum of institutional structures worldwide,” Tang told ARTnews in an interview, “I am driven by the desire to come full circle, bringing my hard-won experience back to the city that has been a profound source of inspiration for me as both a curator and a Londoner.”
In 2013, drawn to China’s fast-growing art scene, Tang moved to Beijing to work as a curator at Magician Space. In 2018, he joined Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai as an assistant curator. Then in 2022, Tang took up the directorship at Para Site, just as Hong Kong lifted its prolonged Covid-19 travel ban.
“It was all about rebuilding momentum,” Tang recalled, noting that the program structure he developed collaboratively with his team made Para Site evolve from a grassroots space into a more formalized one—something he considers part of his legacy. “It’s not a young organization anymore. It’s normal for [an organization] to rethink how it wants to renew and what its priorities are.”
On Hong Kong itself, Tang was candid: “It’s still a center, with collective possibilities and a fantastic place to work. But it’s not an easy city. You can’t just go there and pretend everything is rosy,” he said, pointing to the political and economic challenges still shaping daily life.
What ultimately pulled him back to London, however, was not only the city’s formative role in his early career—where he first discovered nonprofits through jobs at places like Camden Arts Centre—but also YDP’s mission. For Tang, the project represents a chance to pursue a distinctive institutional model rooted in the UK while redefining global connections through the lens of Asia and its diasporas.
“It has the potential to be a platform where artists can experiment beyond a Western-centric framework,” Tang said, adding that he’s excited by the opportunity to build momentum at an organizational level, not just through individual exhibitions.
Unlike most spaces, YDP will have a flexible program structure. Rather than committing to a set number of exhibitions each year, Tang hopes the program can evolve, whether by shifting its thematic focus, extending previous lines of inquiry, or addressing overlooked blind spots from previous years.
“Emerging and experimental practices need time and freedom to grow on their own terms,” Tang said. “YDP can be the lab where that happens but also a platform to introduce international voices to the UK for the first time.” He pointed to pioneering figures like Filipino artist David Medalla, who was a key figure in advancing Asian visibility in a Western context and instrumental in shaping global discourse through the short-lived Signals Gallery, which he cofounded in 1964.
Though both Asymmetry and YDP are backed by the same founder, Tang stressed that they are separate entities. While Asymmetry focuses on curatorial practice, YDP is dedicated to supporting a wide spectrum of artistic practices. “It’s important, especially in these early years, for YDP to find its own voice,” he said, adding that the two organizations could eventually collaborate as part of a wider ecosystem.
YDP, with its focus on immigrant and diaspora communities, is launching at a time when the UK has just witnessed more than 110,000 people take part in a far-right street protest in the heart of its capital, the largest nationalist rally in decades. As the child of refugees, Tang says he knows diaspora narratives are anything but homogeneous. “There are always contradictions in histories and in the idea of identity,” he said.
For Tang, contemporary art is a way to surface those complexities, to give voice to stories that haven’t yet been told. “In an increasingly polarized world, you have to actively build bridges so cultures can speak to one another with nuance and mutual understanding,” he said.
