Curated by Xin Wang, Thucydides Fever Dream traces the hallucinatory cadence of history as manifest in multiple facets of contemporary Chinese life, culture, and geopolitical relations, be it to the West (ancient and modern), the former Eastern bloc, Central Asia, or Africa. Just like this year’s improbable social media trend of Chinamaxxing, China’s recent fascination with Greco-Roman classics as both statecraft (Xi’s evocation of “Thucydides’s Trap” during Trump’s 2026 visit to Beijing) and vernacular metaphor (young people referring to adulting struggles as their “Odyssey era”) illustrates a perpetual dynamic, where any self-fashioning–and indeed self-knowledge–is forged through other(s), in porous and often adversarial relationships. Drawing from the Hill Art Foundation’s own collection that already constellates art-historical connections across space and time, the exhibition brings together loans as well as fresh debuts to invite collective speculations—not only on the trajectory of China, but also on what is shared, what is selectively remembered, and what resurfaces and haunts—ghosts and algorithms alike.
Hill Art Foundation