Photographic memories

Updated: 2015-09-30 08:11

By Lin Qi(China Daily USA)

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Canadian and South African artists look to the past for Beijing show, Lin Qi reports.

The ongoing sixth Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Art Museum of China focuses on the latest developments in the worlds of painting and sculpture, but it also includes other artistic forms, such as photography and video, to enhance the theme of "memory and dream".

The Canadian exhibition, one of the six special country shows at BIAB, offers the audience a glimpse into the country's contemporary art landscape with a display of oil paintings, installation, videos and mixed-media pieces.

Photographic memories

The variety of artworks celebrate 45 years of Sino-Canadian diplomatic relations as well as the Cultural Exchange Year between the two countries.

Co-curators Matthew Brower, director of museum studies at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, and his former Chinese student and art curator Yan Zhou, have brought together 10 Canadian artists whose works are themed on "mediated memories".

"We want to show the way in which memory is embedded in cultural forms, and how artists invest in family memories to make a connection with remembrance and (a sense of) loss," Brower tells China Daily.

The Canadian exhibition has several photos and other works done using a photography technique, and Brower says it is not only because he is interested in photography. He says that a lot of the most significant artworks that have been done around the motif of "memory" in Canada today are happening in film, video and photography. Hence they better help Chinese viewers to understand the context of the Canadian art scene.

Two works by Toronto-based Sara Angelucci show how artists use images to express the loss of knowledge and environment. She created the photographic installation Aviary Series and the video The Anonymous Chorus in 2013, both using old photos purchased online.

The Aviary Series is a set of four portrait photos in which Angelucci seeks to relate the disappearance of a family connection to the extinction of birds in North America.

She enlarged four carte-de-visite photos of the 19th century - a kind of palm-sized portrait that first became popular in France and then spread around the world.

"Because of the low cost of taking these small photos, people would make many copies. They traded them with families and friends to finally assemble an album of such portraits. It was like Facebook accounts back then," Angelucci says.

She says the pictures in the Aviary Series were all abandoned and the subjects are unknown to the world today, and hence the family memories held by these people no longer exist. It reminds her of an ancient philosophical theory that compared recollecting a memory to chasing a bird. "You try to capture it, but it flies away."

She thus transformed the figures' faces into the heads of four birds that are either endangered or already extinct. By creating these hybrid human-bird creatures, she advocates that humans should have empathy for nature and live with it in harmony, instead of trying to control or damage it.

Angelucci expresses the same feeling of loss in The Anonymous Chorus. She animated parts of an old picture of an American family to make it come alive to viewers. A projector casts light on each of the dozen family members and visitors can hear synchronized singing connecting them with the time and space when the photo was taken.

A view of Rainbow Nation

The South African exhibition displays a diversity in artistic approach when it comes to viewing the "Rainbow Nation" in the post-apartheid era.

Works of established artists such as William Kentridge and a younger generation narrate different personal experiences of democracy formed over the past two decades.

Karen von Veh, associate professor of visual art with the University of Johannesburg who co-curates the exhibition, asks people to pay special attention to the creativity and depth of the young artists.

"There are so many different cultures and languages - we have 11 official languages in South Africa. Everyone is figuring out how they work with the new (social) system after the end of apartheid.

"The works of young people explore the issues around identity: Who they are and how they can fit into society," she says.

In Jaco van Schalkwyk's canvas Prayer Around the Bones, the Dutch descendant, 34, documents the daily scene of a closed religious community where he grew up and which is not familiar to many South Africans. Jamy van Zyl uses a pen and a marker to create his illustration called Hana on a piece of traditional Japanese paper called washi. Hana is based on a Japanese girl whom he knew online. His work looks at the positive side of cyber connectivity, which binds people together despite cultural differences.

"Every artist captures a snapshot of life. Some critique social malpractices and others show the good side. In general people will get a sense of where South Africa comes from," says Gordon Froud, a senior lecturer of visual art at the University of Johannesburg and a co-curator.

The exhibition runs through Oct 15.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

 Photographic memories

This year's Beijing International Art Biennale shows how Chinese and foreign artists elaborate on motifs of memories and dreams. Photos by Jiang Dong / China Daily

(China Daily USA 09/30/2015 page8)

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