‘Angling’ – art drama
Angling is a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Shen Yuan in Beijing.
The exhibition displays six art installations created by Shen, five of which were created from 2019 to 2022. Showing scenes of mundane life, the works appear soft and shapeless – a deliberate artistic choice by Shen to communicate with visitors her memories and her experience as a woman artist inspired by both Eastern and Western culture. These works attempt to get audiences thinking about topics such as identity, separation and immigration against the backdrop of today’s increasingly fluid global culture.
The highlight of the Beijing exhibition is called Pêcher l’air de Paris 2020.
The work was inspired by Dadaism pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s tricks of visual-linguistic puns and word-games, notably in his well-known works Air de Paris (1919) and Fresh Widow (1920).
Shen’s work is a message to her lifelong partner Huang Yongping, quoting his work The Saint Learns from a Spider to Weave a Cobweb, created in 1994.
Mattéo et moi 2019-2021 is another of Shen’s works, an art expression showing how she reacted to losing Huang in 2019. She collaborated with differently abled teenage artist Mattéo in this work to look into the happiness and pains that life brought her through Mattéo’s unique artistic expressions.
Where: Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing
When: Until February 26, 2023
Price: 120 yuan ($16.60)