政府新闻
艺术家Houshiary探索中国博物馆的起源和生活 2023-03-06
Iranian-British artist Shirazeh Houshiary interacts with the audience during the opening ceremony of her first major exhibition in China at Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai on Saturday.
Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai is hosting Shirazeh Houshiary's first major exhibition in China, set to run through May 7.
The exhibition, titled Rhizome, features the Iranian-Bristish artist's new large-scale paintings, composite sculptures and an immersive sound and film installation, a reflection of the artists' exploration of philosophy, cosmology, geography, physics and faith.
Rhizome signifies an expanding, never-ending network of roots and possible paths, Houshiary said during a media briefing at the museum on Saturday.
"The rhizome is a map. It's a map of life. This mapping is actually what nature does in following various paths and evaluating their potential. So if you can reveal this process of networking and re-evaluation at the center of one's own psychology, then you can begin to unveil your own thoughts and all its folds."
As life starts with a breath, the exhibition starts with sound and film installation called Breath. It features a four-channel video depicting hand-drawn animations that represent the inhalations and exhalations of vocalists chanting multi-denominational prayers. First shown in this configuration during the 2013 Venice Biennale, Breath is within a black box draped in felt, its walls representing the four points of the compass and the meeting point of world cultures.
A visitor stops at a painting by Shirazeh Houshiary.
"My work has been a combination of many years of thinking and experimentation, where 'breath' has been the central theme," Houshiary said. "When you're oppressed, you can't breathe, so breath is very powerful. We all need to breathe. That is life."
Houshiary's other works in the exhibition all date back to the last three years and include ambitious new organic and architectonic sculptures in glass and aluminum, such as the nine-part Maelstrom (2022) that depicts the growth of life at a cellular level, as well as the spiraling, crystalline tower of Pneuma (2022). Recent paintings include the deep red interior worlds of Zygote (2022) with cosmic compositions in green and blue, where Houshiary's palette mimics nature's elemental force of growth – from algae and blood to air and water.
Houshiary's process, developed over the artist's 44-year career, begins by pouring pigment across canvases before adding layers of inscriptions on top of the sediments and shapes formed therein.
Houshiary, born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1955 before moving to London in 1974, rose to prominence as a sculptor in the 1980s and has since swelled to encompass painting, installation, architectural projects and film.
She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and became a Royal Academician in 2022.
If you go:
Hours: 10 am to 5:30 pm, through May 7
Address: Gallery 2, Long Museum (West Bund), 3398 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui district, Shanghai
The exhibtion includes paintings, sculptures and installations.
An art installation by Shirazeh Houshiary at Long Museum West Bank, Shanghai.
Source: China Daily
