Xijing Exhibition at Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice
Opening: June 1st, 2011, 6:30 pm
Location: St. Mark’s Square Gallery 71/c, Venice
To download the press release please click here.
The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation and Arthub Asia, are proud to present Xijing, the first institutional exhibition dedicated to the work of the Xijing Men collective, the unique collaborative team composed by artists Chen Shaoxiong (China), Tsuyoshi Ozawa (Japan) and Gim Hongsok (South Korea).
Hosted in the Foundation’s main site in Piazza San Marco, the show is a quixotic journey through the creative universe of Xijing–a life, a world of encounters, places and compounded narratives awakened by the thereof named collective since 2007.
Xijing–the capital of the West–exists upon a fictitious geopolitical axis created in correspondence to the real cities of Beijing (capital of the North), Nanjing (capital of the South) and Dongjing/Tokyo (capital of the East). Conceived since its inception as a progressive exploration in five open-ended chapters, the Xijing project departs from the literary exercises of fictional geography and imaginative mapping, to voyage instead through the ‘enactment’ of a symbolic territory where the connections between spatiality and identity are continuous with its collective production.
Developed over the course of the past five years in different geographical and institutional contexts (Asian, European, in museums, galleries, alternative art spaces, biennials, etc.) the eventuation of Xijing is informed by an artistic practice comprehensive of a variety of media and formats, conceived to make the process of ‘situating’ Xijing a participatory and productively unstable experience. All of the chapters so far created (Do you know Xijing?, Welcome to Xijing, This is Xijing and I Love Xijing) are constituted via performative interventions into the phenomenal world of politics and institutions of art, history and society. Flipping between dark humor and existential eccentricity, these abridged scripts are devised to render Xijing as the immanent other site/side of all things human, be it memory or mythology, literature or tradition, the foundation of urbanity, the conception of citizenship, or the formation of power and authority.
The exhibition Xijing features a new large-scale installation which, as a second iteration of the fourth chapter (I Love Xijing), constitutes a main sculptural landscape around which a selection of video-based works and a sound installation related to previous chapters are presented. This is done by way of creating a reeling archive of performances that are at the core of the artists’ collaborative practice and a visual synthesis of their unique research.
Commissioned by Arthub Asia and curated by Beijing-based Beatrice Leanza, this Venice project constitutes both a brand new chapter of the Xijing oeuvre and an encompassing story-telling, offering the unprecedented opportunity to experience the facets of Xijing’s ‘oblique phenomenology’ of contemporary life.
The show is accompanied by a comprehensive publication designed by Tokyo-based Hironori Oooka Office; functioning as a complementary tool to navigate the Venice chapter, it includes illustrations and descriptions of all the previous projects since 2007.
The work of the Xijing Men collective has been featured at the First Aichi Triennial (2010), the 10th Lyon Biennale (2010), the 4th Fukuoka Asian Triennial (2009), Tate Liverpool (2009), Art Sonje Center (2008) and Platform Seoul 2008.
The exhibition is linked to a new collaboration between Arthub Asia and Bevilacqua La Masa’s artist in residence program. It is also part of Arthub Asia’s “Here be Dragons” program across Venice, together with Bevilacqua La Masa and the Gervasuti Foundation (London/Venice), with the technical support of HDD_FUN Studio. Special thanks to Rossella Menegazzo (Asia and Mediterranean Africa Studies Department, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice) for her education programme.
About Bevilacqua La Masa
Since 1989 the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice) has been supporting and promoting the creativity of young artists in the field of contemporary arts. This objective is pursued through a range of initiatives: these include the ateliers that each year the Foundation makes available to talented young artists, the organization of exhibitions showing the works of internationally famous living artists and other activities such as seminars, workshops, conventions and meetings dedicated to the young artists and that can involve renowned artists, critics and theorists.
