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CHEN QIULIN’S ‘EMPTY CITY’ EXPLORES GHOSTS CREATED BY THE THREE GORGES DAM

Artist returns to her submerged hometown in seven-screen video installation

WHAT: Chen Qiulin: The Empty City WHEN: March 27-June 15, 2014 WHERE: Museum of Art, 900 Beretania St., Honolulu INFO: 532-8700, www.honolulumuseum.org (publishable) High-res images available on request.

HONOLULU, HAWAI‘I (Feb. 6, 2014)—One of the leading figures in China’s younger generation of artists working in new media, Chen Qiulin explores the social impact of China’s rapid urban development through video installations. Like many artists of her generation, Chen Qiulin has created art in response to the Three Gorges Dam project, which displaced more than one million people and submerged more than 1,000 towns and villages, including most of Chen’s hometown of Wanzhou.

In her most recent video series, The Empty City, Chen returns to the remnants of Wanzhou, which have been absorbed into the Municipality of Chongqing—China’s largest city. The Empty City is at once intensely personal and socially relevant, highlighting the impact of modernization and internationalization on individual and collective identity. The issues at its core speak directly to the fundamental struggle of China (and its people) to reinvent itself in response to a rapidly changing world, but also to the larger cross-cultural struggle of the individual to preserve and continue to find relevance in memories of a lost past in the face of technological and social progress.

Illustrating the strange intersection of traditional and contemporary Chinese life, Chen juxtaposes incongruous scenes such as her wandering a gray-hued Wanzhou in an officer’s coat and herbal masque (and toting festive helium-filled balloons) with women washing clothes at reservoir’s edge the old-fashioned way—by beating them with a stick.

The videos articulate the tensions between the individual and society, inherent and constructed identity, and past and present—that have resulted from the unprecedented emergence of China as an international superpower in the last four decades.

Chen Qiulin: The Empty City marks the start of the making contemporary Asian art a regular part of its exhibition programming, reflecting its Pacific location between East and West.

About the Honolulu Museum of Art One of the world’s premier art museums, the Honolulu Museum of Art presents international caliber special exhibitions and features a collection that includes , van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso and Warhol, as well as traditional Asian and . Located in two of Honolulu’s most beautiful buildings, visitors enjoy two cafés, gardens, and films and concerts at the theater. In 2011, The Contemporary Museum gifted its assets and collection to the Honolulu Academy of Arts and in 2012, the combined museum changed its name to the Honolulu Museum of Art.

Locations: Honolulu Museum of Art: 900 S. Beretania Street Honolulu Museum of Art : 2411 Heights Drive Honolulu Museum of Art School: 1111 Victoria Street Honolulu Museum of Art at : 999 Bishop Street Honolulu Museum of Art Theatre: 901 Kinau Street (at rear of museum)

Website: www.honolulumuseum.org Phone: 808-532-8700

Hours: Honolulu Museum of Art: Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Sun. 1-5 p.m.; closed Monday. The Honolulu Museum of Art Café: lunch only, Tues.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House: Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sun. noon-4 p.m. Spalding House Café: lunch only, Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

Admission (permits entry to both museums on the same day): $10 general admission; children 17 and under are free.

Admission is free to: shop, cafés, Robert Allerton Art Library, and the art school

Free days: First Wednesday of every month

Bank of Family Sunday: The museum is free to the public on the third Sunday of the month, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., courtesy Bank of Hawaii.