Yu JI

Yu Ji’s practice is primarily composed Living Content Let me start by asking of sculpture, installation, video, and you a bit about your background: where did performance, and it focuses specifically on you grow up and how did you end up pursuing the intrinsic quality of the materials that she art as a career? is using. She is often inspired by inexpensive and easy to find materials that she then Yu Ji I was born in and I grew mixes in the exhibition space to create “sites up in Shanghai. Shanghai is my hometown. of labors”. Yu Ji discussed with Living Content I started to paint when I was in junior high about living in Shanghai as an artist, and school, and continued with painting in college about the challenges of running the only for my Fine Arts degree. Compared to other non-profit art space in the city. She also talks students from my generation, I was not an about her fascination with atavistic memory early bird but my father was a painter, and he and how she looks to apply that in her was part of the first group of Chinese Contem- practice. Yu Ji was born in 1985 in Shanghai porary artists of the 80’s, which served as a and currently lives and works there. huge inspiration for me since I was little. My

Living Content 14 1 first understanding and interaction with art community I have a more complex position was through him. As a child, I was always because I am not only an artist, I am also one surrounded by a group of young artists with of the founders of Am Art Space, which I’ve big glasses and long hair, going to parties been running with my partner since 2008. and to openings… That was my first under- standing of what an artist was… LC How do you see your space AM Art Space contributing to this community? LC Can you tell me a bit about Shanghai? What do you think makes the Shanghai YJ Am Art Space is the only artist-run art scene different? How is the artistic not-for-profit art space in Shanghai right community there? . now. We organize exhibitions, workshops, performance, talks, we give the space to YJ Shanghai is such a big city and it is artists, and let them share their practice and constantly changing. We like to call it Magic communicate with each other. All projects City (Mo Du ). Shanghai is where my are focusing on the reflection and rethinking love lies, but also where my nightmares linger. of our history, our present situation, and also If you look back, Shanghai has always been a on what we can do for the future. But, as I unique city in . We proudly call it Haipai mentioned, AM Art Space is a not-for-profit, culture (Shanghai culture). With the history which has been very difficult to sustain in of colonization and the foreign settlements, a country with lack of support and funding starting from the 19th century, Shanghai for art. Now, since 2016, I moved my studio has opened to modern urban facilities, in the same building as the space, so my art technology, and foreign culture. This city practice and my work for the space are in has always been fast at absorbing western unison. cultures and synthesizing them within its own style. Through this combination and conflict LC Your practice is very processed-based of traditional and Western and it seems located somewhere between culture, Shanghai built its own Haipai culture. fragility and monumentality. Can you tell me Nowadays, we have a new word to describe about the materials that you are using? it: “international”, but Shanghai always kept its own personality. In terms of collective YJ Now I’m more focused on organic influence, the most influential movements materials and construction materials, or in politics, art, and culture, never actually to put it differently: natural materials and sprouted here, but rather in northern China. man-made materials. I have been making In my view, Shanghai is a commercial, sculpture both throughout my undergrad- realistic, and hedonistic city. Because of uate and my graduate degrees, so I learned that, the artistic community here is in fast a lot about the intrinsic characteristics of waves: it goes back and forth. And within this different materials. This has been my way of

Living Content 14 2 working, and, in a way, a methodology that I site-specificity to it (I’m thinking here about cultivated. In my work, I’m not just trying to your participation in the Shanghai Biennale control the medium, but I’m rather trying to –where you took over a parking garage). Can learn from it: how to relate and communicate you tell me about your process when creating with it and also how to allow it communicate an exhibition? What is your starting point? with its surroundings. YJ I am more likely to make work that LC I would love to find out more about comes out of experimentation with materials your project “Flesh in Stone”: how did this and specific spaces. I have to see and feel project begin? How did you arrive to this the space before thinking of a show. For me, abstraction of human representation? it’s not the idea that is the most important, but I am more fascinating with making a YJ The human body has always been connection with a space: to touch it, to an important yet obscure part of my work. communicate with it, and to befriend it–and During this working process I deliberately this means to really understand it so I can downplayed the physical characteristics or find a commonality. After this, an idea will features of the body. I chose not to obsess come up naturally. over details, and I removed any dramatic elements or gestures from my work. I was LC I saw a lot of your previous interests curious to see if flesh itself carries any synthesized in the Hugo Boss Asia Art emotions, if it moves people even if it does presentation–including the abstracted repre- not represent any one person, showcase any sentation of bodies that we were talking physical details, or any anatomical accuracy. about earlier. Can you tell me a little bit about The bodies displayed are unlike the realistic how this show? representations of the what I worked on previously. And displayed along with the YJ From the very beginning the bodies, were also installations and sculptures organizers emphasized that the artists produced from wax (four to five pieces). should show works that are representing The materials they were made of included their practice best. Of course, I presented my paraffin wax, ozokerite, and beeswax. Wax is cement figures, but I also felt that I should a gentle and self-indulgent material, which is do something different, something new. So oil- based soluble but also resilient. This is a I made a group of broken, distorted, body special material, as it is the closest to human parts–which was a new take on my previous skin. Wax covers up the familiar yet abstract work “Flesh is Stone”, and I also built a stage form of the body, creating a stark contrast in the space. In a more explicit way, my works against parts of the body. were playing a role and were in dialog with one another, but also with the the archi- LC Your work seems to have a strong tecture of the room: with the natural light,

Living Content 14 3 with the columns, and even with the ceiling Yi”, again, you can just watch it year after in the room. So everything worked together year, it’s part of everyone’s history, current like a spaceship. Within that set-up, there reality and future. As for books: I would say were both personal and collective memories Josef Conrad’s Heart of Darkness - one of floating around. For example, I used several my favorite fiction books. And Ernest Miller black and white images printed on thin Hemingway! I love Hemingway’s writing on film: one was from Athens, the column in nature and adventure, especially “A moveable Acropolis, where I spent a whole month Feast”. Highly recommend it! last year, another one was of the famous sculpture The Kiss by August Rodin, which I took at the Rodin Museum in Paris, where I was in a six months residency at Palais de Tokyo. Walter Benjamin wrote an autobiog- raphy based on the activation of atavistic memory called ‘Berlin Childhood Around 1900”. The novel is based on both Benjamin’s involuntary memory and his conscious memory, that operate simultaneously to place events and objects in a wider context of time and space. It is not created as a return to the past, but more as a desire to understand and map the past. I wanted to adopt this literary approach to create my own world, by spot- lighting events and objects, and simultane- ously to compress the past into a vacuum, in the hope that it might provide a structure that could be read in the future.

LC Can you recommend a something that you have an affinity for–maybe that infleunced your work?

YJ I love films! There are too many great films that influenced my work, but just to give one or two examples… Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot Le Fou”, which I just watched again last month. This movie always makes me feel better. Another one is Edward Yang’s “Yi

Living Content 14 4 Living Content 14 5 Living Content 14 6 Living Content 14 7 Living Content 14 8 Living Content 14 9 Living Content 14 10 Living Content 14 11 Living Content 14 12 Living Content 14 13 Living Content 14 14 Living Content 14 15 Image Sources and Bibliography Page 13, 14 _Yu Ji Page 5, 6 Deep in Cloud, 2013 _Yu Ji Installation, performance Public Space No.7 Dimensions variable Installation view, 11th Shanghai Biennale, Courtesy of the artist 2016 Courtesy of the artist and Beijing Commune Page 15 _Yu Ji Page 7 Never Left Behind, 2014 _Yu Ji Installation view C-Space, 2014 Flesh in Stone #2, 2015 Courtesy of the artist 100 x 30 x 45 cm (39.37 x 11.81 x 17.71 in) Courtesy of artist and Beijing Commune

Page 8 _Yu Ji Flesh in Stone #5, 2014 100 x 30 x 45 cm (7.71 x 11.81 x 17.71 in) Courtesy of artist and Beijing Commune

Page 9, 10 _Yu Ji Prec(ar)ious Collectives, 2017 Installation view, Athens (by Art Foundation and Palais de Tokyo), 2017 Courtesy of the artist

Page 11, 12 _Yu Ji Black Mountain, 2016 Installation view, Beijing Commune, Beijing, 2016 Courtesy of the artist and Beijing Commune

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