Everyday Miracles

　　The artists and their projects:

Shen Yuan, born in Fujian in 1959, was involved with the first period of China's avant-garde movement in the 1980s. Living in France today, she frequently travels between Europe and China to develop her work. This continuously migrating position, embodying the new identity of a "glocal" citizen, provides her with an incredibly open and singular vision that decisively influences her artistic creation. Her work, dealing with the destiny of non-Western immigrant in the time of globalisation from a female perspective, has enjoyed high appreciation in international art circles. She has shown in major institutions such as Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, INIVA, London and at events like Liverpool Biennial, and the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial.

For the Chinese Pavilion, Shen Yuan proposes to create a new installation in the Virgini Garden entitled "le Première Voyage." Consisting of enlarged milk bottles and nipples and a video showing documentaries of the first trips made by adopted children to the West, she explores an increasingly frequent phenomenon in the age of global communication and migration. The artist states: "As a woman and an immigrant artist, I feel this issue is closely related to my own life. I'm concerned with the future of these children. Although they may be able to grow up in a comfortable environment, they would still have to face the question of cultural and racial difference and the difficulty of losing their real parents in the future."

Yin Xiuzhen was born in 1963 in Beijing, beginning her contemporary art career in the early 1990s. She engages with the mutation of Chinese society through her indefatigable negotiation between testifying explosive urbanisation and conservation of intimate memory, between experiences of cultural change in the time of global travel, and determined search for consistent identity, she has developed an impressive body of installation work both in China and outside. She has participated in important events like Asia Pacific Triennial, 1999, the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale, 2004, Sydney Biennial, 2004, and numerous international museum exhibitions.

Having conceived her project for the Chinese Pavilion in a site-specific manner, she named her work "Arsenale" after the site. She intervened in the petrol warehouse (Cisterne Building) with more than 100 pieces of "Weapon of TV Tower" to create a real "Armoury." Entirely made of everyday objects like clothes, textile, plates and knives, these "weapons" are hung like a mass of missiles above the overwhelming petrol containers which are covered with textiles printed with code bars and signs of danger. They form a threatening scenario evoking the current reality of excessive urbanisation, economic development and geopolitical conflict. The strong contrast between the feminine, sensitive, soft and poetic texture of the clothes and textile and the masculine, male-centric and sublime forms of the TV towers-turned-weapons creates a surprising and imposing drama, expressing a powerful but silent outcry against the prevailing violence that is menacing our world.

Kan Xuan, born in 1972 in Anhui, is an independent and unique personality in the Chinese art scene. Living and working today between Beijing and Amsterdam, she systematically utilises video as the main tool to express her personal and poetic fantasies and philosophical reflections on the relationship between life and the world. Her language always draws on brief, minimalist and ephemeral but highly spiritual gestures and images. Her transcendent attitude, inspired by Zen spirituality, has produced some of the most radical expressions of beauty. She has been exhibiting widely in both China and beyond, including the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2004-06, and the Havana Biennale 2006.