zhaoyuefan (Düsseldorf, Germany): Asian Snack Bar

  • 8 Apr 2023 1 pm UTC
  • dur 20 min

In the 20 min performance, the artist will sit at her kitchen table and introduce several snacks and drinks she bought at the local Asian supermarket, sharing anecdotes, pop culture, art and history, as well as her personal stories related to the products with the audience.

zhaoyuefan was born in Wuhan, China and grew up in Beijing, China. She has been working and living in Germany and Switzerland since 2016. zhaoyuefan\’s artistic practice revolves around her experience of living as a legal alien in European countries (\”why am I here\”). Through video/sound installation, performance, writing, and prints/publishing, she interferes with daily life situations, de-/reconstructs existing objects and found images, digging into their contexts, uses lightness to touch on the visible and invisible boundaries shaped by language, culture, identities and collective memories: her works are a series of translations, transformations and transpositions based on the transcultural context. There are two main focuses that zhaoyuefan continues to pursue: one is the Chinese diaspora especially first-generation Chinese migration in Europe, the other is the pervasive influence of Western culture (with modernism at its core) in China’s modern history and society today – the two topics reinforce each other. This makes her work a reflection on the western cultural hegemony and on China as a hegemony at the same, and offers an alternative perspective for reading the complexity of current Chinese society. ARTIST’S WEBSITE