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December 8, 2016

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Family memories become public art

A solo exhibition by sculptor Chen Yanyin is on display at the China Art Museum through January 8. Born in 1958 in Shanghai, Chen graduated from the sculpture department at China Art Academy in Hangzhou in 1988. Now she is an artist at Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute.

For this exhibition, Chen used family photos as inspirations for sculptures, canvas works and installations. Chen’s pieces reflect the real condition of her family members at the moment the photos were taken, while also stamping them with historical significance.

Motherhood is an important subject in her renderings. Unlike her other works, those that relate to her mother all use a realistic style. The installation works are made of 2,000 pictures of her mother, expressing the spiritual condition of an ordinary person from the 1940s to 1990s in Shanghai.

These artworks not only reflect her loving memory toward her mother, but reveal her respect for many other mothers of that particular period as well.

“I believe that every family has their personal albums with countless pictures. Family stories vary which can only be circulated among family members,” Chen said. “But through this exhibition, these personal items enter into a public space where they can possibly be communicated with more viewers. A person’s own history unwittingly becomes public memory. These old pictures could be part of an art piece, that’s what has interested me to do these works in the past decade.”

Xiao Gu, the director at Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, comments, “Through this exhibition, what we see is Chen’s ideas and efforts to dig deeper into the core of what sculptures are and can be.”

 

Date: Through January 8,

9am-4pm

Venue: China Art Museum

Address: 205 Shangnan Rd




 

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