About

Mai Coloma is an independent curator and researcher specialised in contemporary ink and Asian art on paper, based in Madrid.

Trained at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London (MA in East Asian Art), she devoted her thesis to Liu Guosong (Liu Kuo-sung), a founding figure of modern ink painting, under the supervision of Dr Anne Farrer (British Museum). Between 2006 and 2008 she directed the Yan Club Arts Center, one of the first galleries in Beijing's historic 798 district, where she worked directly with the artists she had studied and advised international collectors. Back in Spain, she founded Poligono Gallery (2009–2014), a pioneer in presenting contemporary Chinese ink to Spanish audiences. In 2019 she completed a residential postgraduate programme in Buddhist literature and Pali at the University of Mumbai, expanding her research to South Asian art on paper. She currently advises private and institutional collectors on the secondary market and develops curatorial and research projects that present contemporary ink as an alternative genealogy of modernity. She works in five languages, including Mandarin Chinese.

The journey

London trained me as a researcher: I studied classical Chinese landscape painting and the principles of abstraction in Chinese art, and devoted my thesis to Liu Kuo-sung — the bridge between tradition and modernity — years before the market consecrated contemporary ink. Beijing gave me the field: I directed one of the first galleries of the 798 district and came to know personally the artists I had studied, living their ecosystem from within. Spain gave me the market: with Poligono Gallery I introduced contemporary Chinese ink to Spanish audiences, worked with collectors and learned to read the market through practice. I then explored art's new languages — curating Spain's first augmented-reality art exhibition, selected by ARCO 2018 — and in 2019 I returned to the source: a year in India studying Buddhist literature and Pali at the University of Mumbai, the turn that widened my field from China to the entire continent of paper. Today those twenty years converge: I research, curate and advise on the art I know first-hand.