Breakdown Playlist brings together works by sixteen artists from China and Switzerland. The exhibition is part of the 2025 cultural exchange projects commemorating the 75^th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries and grew out of the Embassy of Switzerland in China’s CH><CN Studios program. Beginning in August 2025, nine Swiss artists undertook residencies at six Chinese art institutions, namely in Beijing, Chongqing, Dehua, Yantai, Hangzhou, and Chengdu, creating new works based on local observations. Under the guidance of Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, The exhibition was co-curated by young Swiss curator Clara Chavan and Inside-Out assistant curator Na Rongkun. Building on the selection of Swiss artists, they invited seven Chinese artists to participate, fostering a dialogue between emerging contemporary artists from both countries.

The title Breakdown Playlist reflects their perception of our current reality: system time, personal time, and multiple identities increasingly intertwine, converging in subtle awkwardness. A “playlist” is a person’s habits and private tastes: fragments of our identities to share with, understand, and get closer to the other. It encompasses the habitual resumes, portfolios and social personas, while “breakdown” references Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 eponymous novel: “It is no longer God, nor justice, nor fate as in the Fifth Symphony that threatens us, but rather traffic accidents, dike breaches caused by faulty construction, the explosion of a nuclear plant triggered by a distracted laboratory worker, or incubators wrongly adjusted. It is into this world of breakdowns that our path leads.” In a world that strives for smooth operation, failure persists.