造乡 – 杨圆圆个展
时间：2022年11月25日 – 2023年1月3日
地点：集美阿尔勒发现奖
策展人：祝羽捷
一个人与生俱来的因素，如种族、国家、性别、信仰或身体，都在定义着其自身的身份，身份是我们感知和表达自己的方式。而身份随着迁徙的步伐、地域的改变、人生的经历也在不断发生改变，尤其对于移民来说，不同的地理和文化复杂交织滋生出的混合身份成为全球化进程中独特现象。艺术家杨圆圆擅长于影像、摄影、艺术家书与表演等多种媒介实现视觉叙事，当代艺术与社会学、历史、心理学交融在一起，她关注人口流动、移民、身份的消失与重建。她并不美化现实，既建立了同一家族、种族之间的内部叙事，也带着客观目光探讨了“他者”作为异质物与不同群体和不同文化之间的“接纳”和“尊重”。
从2018年开始，杨圆圆着手于唐人街相关的研究与创作。唐人街在美国现代化都市的存在犹如华人的古董，这里既是族裔聚居区、是华裔血缘的纽带，也是进入美国社会的跳板。围绕唐人街夜总会女性舞者的故事，杨圆圆创作了她的首部纪录电影长片《女人世界》（将于2023年发行）以及相关短片《相爱的柯比与史蒂芬》（2019）。然而，在美国、古巴、中国三地拍摄长片的旅途中，她积累了大量长片之外的丰富故事与素材，这些故事站在一个更长时间轴上，探讨了海外华人移民史中“何处为家”的相关话题。“我生本无乡，心安是归处”也是一个长久贯穿在杨圆圆多个项目中的恒久追问。本次展览以“造乡Make it home”为题目，集合了《美国亲戚》、《勿街粤曲》、《上海来的女士》、《中国城轶事》几部于2019-2022年创作的短片、以及一系列摄影作品和档案。观众进入展厅犹如进入交错的剧场，遇见一个又一个独立的连续时空片段；在犹如档案馆的摄影作品展厅中，观众仿佛面对着“记忆女神图集”，在这些带有纪实色彩的图片中觉察艺术家埋下含蓄意指——复杂身份下的文化秘密。
艺术还可以成为探索从一种文化转移到另一种文化时身份如何变化的有力工具。杨圆圆在探索和质疑有关身份的同时，表达出对移民文化断裂和乡愁的深思与新的阐释，非虚构与虚构故事线中，艺术家杨圆圆完成了“造乡”修辞。( 文/祝羽捷)
Make it Home (Solo Exhibition)
Dates: November 25, 2022 to January 3, 2023
Venue: Jimei X Arles Discovery Award
Curator: Tutu Zhu
Factors such as race, nationality, gender, religion or body, all define the identity of a person. As the fundamental way we perceive and express ourselves, identity is constantly changing with migration, residency changes, and growing life experiences. Especially for immigrants, mixed identities resulting from different cultures have become a unique phenomenon in the process of globalization. Artist Luka Yuanyuan Yang is good at realizing visual narrative with various media such as video, photography, artist’s book and performance. Contemporary art is integrated with sociology, history, and psychology. She focuses on population mobility, immigration, and the disappearance and reconstruction of identity. Without beautifying the reality, she establishes the internal narrative inside the same family and race and objectively explores the “acceptance” and “respect” between “the outsider” as a heterogeneous substance and other groups and cultures.
Since 2018, Yang has been engaged in research and creation related to Chinatown. The existence of Chinatown in modern American cities is like a Chinese antique. It is not only an ethnic settlement, a blood bond, but also a springboard for the Chinese into American society. Based on the stories of female dancers in Chinatown nightclubs, Yang created her first documentary feature Women’s World (to be released in 2023) and the related short film Coby & Stephen Are in Love (2019). However, during her trip to shoot the documentary feature in the United States, Cuba and China, she accumulated a lot of other stories and materials. These stories discuss the question “Where is home?” and related topics in the history of Chinese immigration over a longer time span. “I was born without a home. My home is where my heart is.” It is a constant theme that runs through Yang’s many projects for a long time. Titled Make It Home, this exhibition brings together several works from 2019 to 2022, including short films American Relatives, Cantonese Tunes on Mott Street, The Lady from Shanghai and Tales of Chinatown, as well as a series of photographs and archives. When the audience enters the exhibition hall, it is like entering a splendid theatre where independent segments of time and space are being played one after another; in the archive-like exhibition hall, the audience seems to be facing the Mnemosyne Atlas and will discover the implicit clues buried by the artist—cultural secrets under complex identities.
Art can also be a powerful tool for exploring how identities change when moving from one culture to another. While probing the issues about identity, Yang expresses her deliberate thoughts and new interpretations of the cultural rupture and nostalgia of immigrants. In the semi-fictional storyline, Yang portrays the endeavours to Make It Home. (text by Tutu Zhu)
