Phil Zheng Cai


Contact


Systemetic Critique - Open Kitchen


Open Kitchen 003 - Other Tongue
Open Kitchen 002 - Fusion
Open Kitchen 001 - Assembly


  • Other Curatorial Projects


I Want to Know, I Need to Know
Christ, Buddha, and the Jigsaw
Internet Archaeology
Split Level
The Duet’s Carnival
Tone Check: The Skins of Korean Contemporary Painting
At-Will Adaptation: The Exhibition, A Residency-then-Exhibition
At-Will Adaptation: The Residency, A Residency-then-Exhibition
(In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography
Alienation ?
TRACES


  • Writings


Stephanie Creaghan: The Crumbs of Our Time
Bui Thanh Tam: Outside In
Jenny Jisun Kim: Verses on Oxherding
A New Topology in Chinese and Vietnamese Contemporary Photography
Hot Coffee conversation, Anh Nguyen, Felisa Nguyen, and Huyen Tran
A Mirrored Interview
The Estate of Joshua Caleb Weibley at CHART Gallery asks if we still want to play
Hyeejin Bae: Eye Candy
Nomad Photography
queerness, chinese, contemporary, photography, (in)directions
Cynthia Gutiérrez at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Wu Chi-Tsung solo exhibition at Katina Museum of Art
Xiong Wei: Becoming the Masses Amongst Elites
What has to be NFT’d?
Jean-Luc Moulène Solo Exhibition at Miguel Aubrey Gallery
Yoan Capote Solo Exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery
Take a Step: Phil Zheng Cai on the Opening of M+ Museum









Phil Zheng Cai (American, b. Shanghai) is a curator and writer based in New York. He holds a BA in Social Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has held positions at Mary Boone Gallery and Phillips Auctioneers, and is currently a partner at Eli Klein Gallery.

Cai has curated exhibitions in the United States and internationally. Most recently, he developed and curated Residency Unlimited’s 2026 New York artist residency and exhibition, Working Conditions, which examines how artists’ labor, precarity, and day-job economies shape contemporary art production in New York. His exhibitions have received critical attention in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Artnet News, WhiteHot Magazine, Musée Magazine, Cultbytes, Art Asia Pacific, Tatler, and Impulse Magazine, among others. The catalog for his exhibition (In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography is held by institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ICP, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Leslie-Lohman Museum Library, and over thirty university libraries worldwide. He has participated in panels and lectures at the Asia Society Museum, SCAD Museum of Art, Columbia University, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and has served as a visiting critic at NARS, Residency Unlimited, Parsons, SVA, UNC Chapel Hill, and EFA Studio Program.

His writing includes catalog essays such as “Nomad Photography” (Parsons MFA Photography Thesis Catalog, 2024), as well as exhibition reviews and critical essays published in IMPULSE Magazine, T Magazine China, WhiteHot Magazine, and Widewalls, among others. He translated The Story of Philosophy by James Garvey (Shanghai Yuandong Press, 2020).

Cai’s curatorial initiative Open Kitchen focuses on systematic critique, providing recontextualized commentaries within the traditions of institutional critique, highlighting the non-severability of framework and context. Its interview series “Open Kitchen Negatives” examines the concepts, origins, and ramifications of “missing parallels.” 

Phil Zheng Cai currently works and lives in New York.