Exhibition Dates: 2018.11.08 – 11

Exhibition Venue: Shanghai Exhibition Center, ART021

As the winner of the first Porsche “Young Chinese Artist of the Year”, Yao Qingmei presents her new work The Tetrachromatic Dream of the Dichromats (2018) at ART021, from November 8th to 11th, 2018.

Yao Qingmei’s work frequently features performed action as the foundation of the work with video installation used as the final form. Political and social issues find their expression throughout her work, here Yao’s interest lays not in a singular narration of reality and nei-ther can they be described as merely an individualized articulation of a political inclination. Rather, she deliberately distances these themes critically. Humor is the signature of her art practice: beneath the surface of her poetic jests is an underlying sense of absurd melancholy. An inquiry into the definition and assignment of signs runs throughout Yao’s works. Yao Qingmei uses an interventionist approach to re-imagine and perturb the mundane parameters of reality to yield new possibilities. Layering absurdist gesture with poetic action, a particular emphasis is placed on how symbolic gestures gain or lose traction and power through subtle displacement and appropriation. Her theatrical performances and interventions find form in video and text installations that overlap burlesque techniques of parody, which combine with framing devices influenced by theatre sets and costume, pedagogical lectures, political satire and dance choreography.

Image: Yao Qingmei, exhibition view at ART021

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