Qinhuangdao
China
As She Descends
Participating artists (*commissioned works): Nadiah Bamadhaj*, Michele Chu*, Duan Zhaonan*, Duan Zhengqu, Köken Ergun, Covey Gong*, Saodat Ismailova, Jane Jin Kaisen, Liang Jiezhen and Wan Qing, Cole Lu*, NAOMI*, Susan Philipsz, Sun Yitian*, Fuyuhiko Takata, Wen Hui, Xie Qun*, Yu Youhan, Zhang Wenzhi.
The legend of Lady Meng Jiang, a national-level intangible cultural heritage, has evolved and spread across China for nearly two thousand years, with particular resonance in Qinhuangdao. The story of Lady Meng Jiang, who embarked on a distant journey for love and brought down the Great Wall with her weeping—has spread far and wide in folk oral traditions, and has been constantly recounted in various forms of plays, folk songs, customs, and rituals. It reflects the emotions of the people in different times across different historical periods and has played a lasting role in shaping the imagination, order, and morality of society.
This exhibition invites artists from China and across Asia to respond to this legend, in an attempt to release Lady Meng Jiang from classicalist readings and engage more open-ended, diverse aspects of her figure. It asks: can grief be understood as a form of energy rather than a sign of weakness? Can love be seen as an act of agency rather than of submission?
Long rooted in folklore, the legend has also served as a marker for mass culture. The exhibition title itself is drawn from a classic pop song from the turn of the century. Modern and contemporary novelists such as Zhang Henshui and Su Tong have written versions of the legend, while Gu Jiegang’s research of Lady Meng Jiang pioneered the field of Chinese folklore studies. These creative and scholarly attempts demonstrate that re-storying is not to indulge nostalgia; but to reposition and renew. Taking “restorying” as its methodology, this exhibition invites viewers to consider how “She” might encounter the contemporary after descending from symbolism.
This exhibition is organized by guest curator Yuan Fuca and Damien Zhang, Director of the Aranya Art Center, together with Associate Curator Wu Yiyang and Curatorial Assistant Li Fangwen.
ikkibawiKrrr: Who Forgot the Village
Korean visual research band ikkibawiKrrr’s first China museum solo exhibition features the video work Who Forgot the Village, jointly commissioned by Aranya Art Center, the National Asian Culture Center (Gwangju) and M+ (Hong Kong), alongside a series of new paper and sculpture works.
For this project, ikkibawiKrrr traveled to villages on the outskirts of Seoul as well as Zainichi Korean villages in Kyoto, Japan, and ethnic Korean villages in Yanbian and Qinhuangdao in China, where they filmed and created artworks. As the artists visited these villages that speak the same language as them, the artists discovered these places are all in the process of disappearing, due to various factors from redevelopment plans to labor migration.
In the creative process, the artists set their sights on the “surfaces” of the villages: scenes, memorials, and traces of life, through which they draw attention to the “interior”—the lives, histories, and collective memories of the villagers. Video footage and rubbings are the methods they used for capturing the “surfaces.”
They are attempting to expand the concept of the village beyond its physical space, another layer around the boundaries, a place to recall emotions and memories, a locale shared by both the villagers who live there, and those who are far from home. The “skin” of the village remains, though it has declined, covered in dust and vegetation due to diminished human activity. Along with the emptying out of the village is the dissipation of the “interior.” In this way, the question raised by the exhibition title takes on multiple implications. It is not just about forgetting and loss, or about specific, physical villages; it is about how in the greater human predicament we can expand boundaries and dwell together in different times and spaces.
The exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, Director of the Aranya Art Center, and Assistant Curator Jiang Ruoyu. Co-commissioned in partnership with National Asian Culture Center (Gwangju) and M+ (Hong Kong).
