A curatorial media platform born in Chengdu, China. Documenting artists in their own words, tracing how a creative life unfolds across decades.
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Tan Xiaozheng
谭 小 正 · Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Read the person — not just the work.
Tan Xiaozheng (b. 1983, Chengdu) is a curator, designer, and the founder of DONGKOH, the leading independent media brand in China’s anime industry. He graduated in 2004 from the inaugural Animation class at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing — a cohort that helped define Chinese animation education for the next generation.
Over 22 years, Tan has built a parallel practice across three fields: as a curator of contemporary Chinese artists (Mickey, Atupei, Yamei, Zhao San Mu Si, and others); as a brand strategist for cultural and creative IP; and as the creator of PINK & BLACK, a 247-episode graphic novel drawn from two decades of his own life.
He launched Backwall in 2005 as a student forum at CAFA. After a brief run, a failed digital magazine in 2008, and twenty years of quiet cultivation through DONGKOH, Backwall returned in 2023 on Xiaohongshu and WeChat Channels. This website is its third chapter: a slow, English-language archive of the artists, ideas, and unfinished lives that shape Tan’s view of contemporary Chinese art.
Mission
Backwall first opened its doors as a student forum at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. It ran for about two years, then closed. A 2008 attempt at a digital magazine never took off. Twenty years later, the same mission — to connect artists, designers, and the strange in-between people — returned, this time with more patience, more pages, and a wider lens.
Today Backwall is both a publication and a small curatorial studio based in Chengdu. It operates alongside DONGKOH Media, which for two decades has covered the Chinese animation, illustration, and indie-creator industries. The two share a roof, an archive, and a stubborn belief that artists deserve to be read in full sentences, not headlines.
Ongoing Series
- Zhao San Mu Si · 招三幕四 — A long-form interview program with artists whose work resists easy summary.
- Studio Visits — Slow afternoons in working studios, recorded on foot and in fragments.
- Curators in Conversation — Pairings between Tan and the curators he works alongside.
📍 Chengdu · China
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