Ephemeral Architectures Exhibition: early time-based media from China
November 9, 2023–December 8, 2023
Ephemeral Architectures: Early Video and Performance Art from China is a pop-up exhibition featuring early video and time-based media art from China. Artists included in the exhibition employ video and sound as means to remember spaces, movements, and moments amidst a time of profound socio-economic transformation within China around the turn of the new millennium.
Staged across the University of Chicago campus, this exhibition interrogates intersections between early moving image art and the physical precarities of public spaces in which many of these works were made. While artists like Liang Yue explore issues of ephemerality within changing urban spaces of her native Shanghai, Kan Xuan, Zhu Jia, and Yang Zhenzhong’s works emphasize evanescence through various modes of repetition along with direct employment of the camera’s lens. Collectively, these artists all share an interest in creating work that contemplates our everyday relationships with time, space, and memory.
Works:
朱加 Zhu Jia, Forever, 1994
Installation Location: Ellis Parking Garage
梁玥 Liang Yue, Stop Dazing, 2004
Installation Location: Logan Center for the Arts (second floor alcove)
阚萱 Kan Xuan, Object, 2003
Installation Location: Logan Center for the Arts (basement)
杨振中 Yang Zhenzhong, 922 Rice Corns, 2000
Installation Location: Cochrane-Woods Art Center (second floor)
Ephemeral Architectures: Early Video and Performance Art from China is co-curated by Dr. Ellen Larson and her Fall 2023 Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art seminar. Student curators include:
Mayur Bajaj (Philosophy, Public Policy and Statistics)
Derek Chu (4th year, Economics, Philosophy)
Steven Jiao (MAPSS, Statistics)
Eva Jiao (Harris MAPP)
Olivia Lai (3rd year, Art History)
Emily Lin (4th year, Art History, Economics)
Peter Minkoff (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Economics)
Neil Sashti (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Biology [minor])
Feifei Wang (MFA, Visual Arts)
Jess Xiong (3rd year, Economics, Philosophy)
Miki Yang (3rd year, Art History, Economics)
Henie Zhang (3rd year, Art History, Creative Writing)
Chloe Zhong (4th year, Art History, Economics)