Memory is one of the main themes that often reappears in art installations or photographic projects displaying some connections with fashion and reusing textiles and second-hand clothes.
Most of us maybe automatically think about Christian Boltanski’s installations with discarded clothes when we consider how such themes are tackled in contemporary arts. Yet there are other artists who are cleverly analysing the same topics in other formats, adding to their works an architectural edge and strong messages about the impacts that specific changes in politics or economy are having on contemporary society. One example is Yin Xiuzhen.
Born and working in Beijing in 1963, the artist will be celebrated in a new exhibition curated by Mark Wilson and Sue-an van der Zijpp opening this Saturday at the Groninger Museum.
One of the most active woman artists in today's China, Yin became famous for her installations in which second-hand clothes and textiles are used as metaphors.
This avant-garde installation artist first used clothing in her work entitled "Suitcase" (1995) in which she sealed with cement her own clothes from a period of over thirty years in an old suitcase made by her father.
The clothes represented her experiences, memories and marks of time and, from then on, Yin started pondering more along these lines, analysing themes such as memories, transience, departure and instability and also looking at the effects that major makeovers on cities such as Beijing and Shanghai had on their inhabitants.
Yin realised that, as cities rapidly change, memories get lost, vanishing forever from people’s minds.
The process of remembering and of storing memories became therefore vitally important for the artist who continued to symbolically employ clothing in her works.
"Clothes say a lot about a person", she states in a press release for her Groninger exhibition. "At a single glance they recount how big a person is, his or her age, style, gender and income. But they also narrate invisible information such as the memory of a certain period when the piece was worn, and the reason why it was kept."
When Beijing started changing, traditional quarters of the city - the ‘hutongs’ - were demolished to make way for high-rise blocks. As ruins were scattered everywhere in the city, Yin, travelling abroad for her exhibition, was fascinated by the luggage carried by travellers and started imagining that the suitcases represented their homes, containers of modern living, holders of landmark constructions.
Moving from this idea she created her "Portable Cities" (2002-2003) series, opened suitcases containing mini-textile models of Shanghai, New York, Berlin, Melbourne, Shenzhen, Tokyo and Amsterdam, made with used clothing collected in these cities.
The Groninger exhibition will feature a new architectural piece of luggage dedicated to the city of Groninger, more recent artworks and key pieces such as "Thought" (2009) and "Waves" (2009-2010).
Most works by Yin invite visitors to think about undifferentiated people and ineradicable differences and at how simple acts such as dressing, undressing, packing and unpacking, individually and socially change us, often in dramatic ways.
Among the other pieces, visitors will find particularly interesting her large-scale sculptures such as "Collective Subconscious" (2007), a bisected minivan connected by a long tube made with found garments. The public can enter inside its spaceship-like interior and find refuge, sit down on stools, listen to pop music and reinvent it as a place for conversation, discussion and discovery.
"Yin Xiuzhen" is at the Groninger Museum from 17th June to 18th September 2012
Images:
Yin Xiuzhen
Thought, 2009
clothes and steel
340 cm x 510 cm x 370 cm
Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, Beijing
Yin Xiuzhen
Portable City: Groningen
installation, suitcases, used clothes, light, map, sound
148 x 88 x 30 cm
2012 © Yin Xiuzhen
Yin Xiuzhen
Portable City: Tokyo, 2005
mixed media
82 x 144 x 30cm
Photo: Sakurai Tadahisa
Yin Xiuzhen
Unbearable Warmth, 2008
1000 scarves
365 cm x h. 25 cm
Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, Beijing
Yin Xiuzhen
Bookshelf No. 1, 2009
clothes, wood, bookshelf
226 cm x 126 cm x 43 cm
Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, Beijing
Yin Xiuzhen
Collective Subconscious, 2007 (last two images)
minibus, stainless steel, used clothes, stools, music
1,420 cm x 140 cm x 190 cm
Courtesy of Beijing Commune
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