A Fragile China
A Fragile China is a collective workpiece that in its complexity defines and draws the different aspects of being human, starting from the idea that the universality of human experience is expressed through the personality of how we act. The artists aim to explore themes common to the condition of being human from their own life experiences.
Like a porcelain object, human existence can be cast, both collectively - as culture and history - or individually, through experiences and feelings. At the same time, this object is as delicate and fragile as the balance that intervenes between the individual and their environment, whether that is intended as a temporary context, society or nature. Therefore; the object takes on the identity of a semiophore: something tangible that, wherever it goes, carries its meaning within itself, as well as its history up to that moment. However, unlike any object, the person – otherwise intended as the vessel of human existence - is alive and subject to motions. The movement of its healthy or ill body, the burning desire of the feelings and emotions that shake its core, as well as the natural decay of time.
Through the dichotomy of body and mind – and consequently in the duality of something physical and intangible – the exhibition unravels in the space and through its essence as two different and opposite poles that communicate and coexist. The intimacy of personal experiences pushes the viewer to pause and re-discover their own, not only in its individuality, but also with the one of its community, history and culture. Starting from their personal traumas, the artists reflect on the one of the masses, by recollecting this experience in a universal thought of experiential living. At the base of some of the works on show, there is the exploration of the idea of healing and the importance of individual care and tenderness towards others in turbulent social times. These aspects bring to the surface a series of boundaries and opposites to which, both the artists and the objects within the exhibition space, are subjugated to. The space is divided into areas that are defined by the artworks as moments of quietness and agitation, as in the opposition of dream and awake. Arguably the exhibition as life itself, is developing on conventional time but is also subjective to our own personal perception of it.
From the particular to the general, and from the personal to the public - the exhibition aims to give the visitor the tools to observe reality through a lens that enhances the multiple shades of existence, in an attempt to correct the binary vision with which we observe the world and ourselves.
The Art Academy – Newington, London
13th - 16th February 2020
Artists: Bingyang Li, Bowei Yang, Cai Caibei, Chao Zhang, Lidan Yang, Qinhua Li, Ruijing Ge, Su An
