Quivering Bloom
The evening Quivering Bloom presents two works created by three artists. Both pieces draw from Chinese poetics, mixed media and various references in order to assemble intimate explorations of diasporic subjectivity.
The first work, Hairpin Beneath, emerges from Zishi Han and Wei Yang’s ongoing collaborative research project into historical Chinese homoerotic literature. It is an evolving performance that moves between live reading and video projection, that intertwines multiple narratives to explore queer existences in and from China. The point of their departure is a Ming dynasty anthology of homoerotic stories, ‘弁而釵’ (‘Biàn ér chāi’). The title of the book implies the scene of a man taking off his ceremonial headgear and putting on a woman’s hairpin. Structured around a set of excerpts from the book, they loosely interpret its storylines and draw on a variety of Chinese historical and contemporary cultural practices, such as poetry, Chinese Opera, literati landscape painting, Danmei literature, pop music and reality TV shows.
The presentation of this work will be followed by a screening and activation of the film who says idle feelings have been cast away for long, by Kaixin Chen. The artist explores daily life in (an) Amsterdam home through a relationship between objects, gestures and emotions. Across the film she captures day to day moments whose subtlety renders them almost invisible. These moments revolve around habitual life activities and small interaction with objects that stir the heart without eliciting strong and consensually explicit emotions like joy, anger, sorrow or happiness. Instead, they delve into the opaque complexity of idleness. By collecting, framing, sowing, and composing these moments together, a narrative emerges that evokes and intensifies an emotional landscape made of fragments too small to name.
Zishi Han (b. Beijing, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) probes masochistic attachment to power structures through installation, sculpture, video and drawing. Drawn to forms that hold and let through, he constructs possessed and perverted apparatuses to dismantle previous relations and incubate unexplored desires.
Wei Yang (b. Liuzhou, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) explores human beings as a geographic subject in diasporic spaces. He layers collective memories to create hybrid images through myths, history and personal landscapes, which serve as sites of resistance against grand narratives and archival neglect.
Their project Hairpin Beneath has been exhibited at Tropez, Berlin (2024); Memphis, Linz (2024); Pols, Valencia (2024); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2024); West Den Haag, The Hague (2024); Delfina Foundation, London (2023); and Pickle Bar, Berlin (2023). They have upcoming duo exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York; Politikens Forhal, Copenhagen in 2025.
Kaixin Chen (b. Yangjiang, lives and works in Amsterdam) revolves around capturing the indescribable emotions arising in everyday situations.Using video and interaction, she explores how objects and actions convey ineffable emotional experiences, evoking reflections on implied meaning in silent moments. Her projects have taken place in various art institutions, including Lab111, W139, ISO, Omstand Arnhem, E.SCAPE Art Space Shanghai, the New York Art Book Fair, and more.
In collaboration with Culture moves Europe.