Developed during their four-month residency at V.O Curations, Chris Zhongtian Yuan’s first solo show in the UK will feature a new film, drawing, and a series of ceramic works. Through sung words, foregrounded ghosts, softness as empowerment, and imagined dialogues as corporeal connections, Yuan explores the tenderness and cruelty of migration, drawing from one’s relations to others, to faraway places, to past and future.
The film features footage shot on 16mm film camera, animation and archival materials. Structured as an intimate conversation between two individuals, it is divided into five chapters: Mother; A Love Story; The Tower; Unknown Land; Haunted Island. The dialogue between the two characters appears only on screen, as the film is led by a sonic narrative – a score composed for the work by British trumpeter Kevin G. Davy. The artist extends the visual language used in the film through ceramic sculptures and large-scale drawing that are composed of the film’s script and elements of animation. All the works explore the correlation of identity and sound in the history of migrations, from both personal and historical perspectives.
All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss is co-commissioned by FLAMIN and V.O Curations; supported through FLAMIN Fellowship 2021-22 and V.O Curations Autumn 2021 Residency; additional production support from not/nowhere; supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Chris Zhongtian Yuan (b.1988, Wuhan) works with video, sound, poetry and performance to re-imagine our relationships to land, body and language across time and space. Through affective and investigative ways of finding and making, their work builds worlds for new relations between individual and collective, self and the other, near and far, to emerge.
Recent solo exhibitions, screenings and performances include: Wuhan Punk: Chris Zhongtian Yuan, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2021); Art Lovers Movie Club: Wuhan Punk, ArtReview (2021); 1815, K11, Wuhan (2020). Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include: Follow the Feeling, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou (2022); Play and Loop IV, Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2022); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2022); Videoex, Zurich (2021); The Dwelling Place of the Other in Me, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2021); Spring Time, Palm Trees, Antenna Space, Shanghai (2021); Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy, Somerset House, London (2021); The 5th Documentary Exhibition of Fine Art Triennial, Hubei Museum of Art, Wuhan (2020); School of Athens, Venice Architecture Biennale Greek Pavilion, Venice (2018) among others. Chris is a recipient of the 2021-22 FLAMIN Fellowship, K11 Art 11 Prize, 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize and OCAT Institute Research-based Curatorial Project (co-curator).
