花瓶|VASE

 

Introduction

 

We arrived in Xiaozhou village by chance in the summer of 2021 with a vague impression of the village and the city to which it belongs, Guangzhou. Under the pretext of an 'artist residency', we visited Xiaozhou, we talked, wandered, met new friends and left in a hurry. Our day-to-day life in Xiaozhou, with all of its new insights, continued to open up the strange light of our two outsiders. 

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In Xiaozhou and Guangzhou we came into contact with a diverse group of artists and art workers who had migrated from all over China, and learned about the flexible, self-organising units, rich and ambiguous networks of work and friendship that they had created. We marvelled at the way they used their own practices to question and blur definitions of art in an environment full of constraints.

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    As sudden intruders, the deepest impression we had of Xiaozhou was perhaps the disconnect/ break: the disconnect between the alien artist community and the local residents who keep their distance from each other as strangers; the disconnect between the boisterousness of the local males and the silence of the local females, and the break between the gender equality and feminism called for by the outsider artist community living here and the very traditional Chaoshan clan culture in which the locals live; and, even, the unspeakable fissures within the seemingly united, friendly and supportive artist community……

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   These works are based on our daily observations and experiences while living in Xiaozhou for a short time, exploring the unseen and unspeakable existence of women in this place, and the corresponding masculinity that is both specific and universal.

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    All the performers invited for the works on display are male, which stems in part from our strong impressions of local life - females are hidden in silence, or are seen as objects for entertainment and observation like a vase. We struggled to find and make a voice for women, but we couldn't even ‘see’ women in public spaces. In this context, we decided to disappear with the local women, inviting only men to step in, to take over the screen and to endorse us and other women.

 

– Hijack打劫