Virtual Voices | Approaching Social Media and Art in China

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-06-05 15:56
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - 7:00pm - Sunday, July 8, 2012 - 5:00pm

The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present Virtual Voices, an exhibition of Chinese artists who utilize social media as a platform for their art practices. The internet has become the people’s cyber discipline committee in China because it encourages members of socially excluded communities to use their virtual voices. Dissidence and public critique has become more covert pushing citizens to become “netizens” expressing their opinions via the internet.

Social media such as Weibo, Facebook and personal blogs have given a new voice to the contemporary art scene in China. Virtual Voices presents works by Lu Yang, Zhang Lehua, Ge Fei and Lin Zhen, Forget Art, and Remon Wang. The exhibition explores how meaning is communicated through social media today from different perspectives and approaches. Lu Yang examines communication technology and the growth of artificial intelligence. Zhang Lehua’s Facebook is a video narrated by an animated portal of Friedrich Engels instructing students on how to create a flipbook of faces with their classmates. The end result is a government approved and endorsed “Facebook”. Ge Fei and Lin Zhen commissioned two Beijing bands to compose music which they make available to visitors via an online music sharing application. The collective Forget Art established a series of programs to challenge both social and spatial constructions in China including their Youth Apartment Exchange Program (YAEP), which encourages the temporary swapping of residences. Remon Wang has 100,000 followers on his Weibo account where he posts comic illustrations commenting on national and local politics. Regulators have closed his Weibo account more than one hundred times, but have not stopped him from re-inventing new ways to get his message across.

The exhibition is curated by Zheng Shengtian and Diana Freundl.

Virtual Voices is part of Yellow Signal: New Media in China a series of exhibitions coordinated by Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

For more information please contact the gallery at 604 844 3809. Gallery hours are 12 - 5pm weekdays and 10am - 5pm weekends. Admission is free.

June 6 to July 8, 2012
Opening | Tuesday, June 5 at 7pm
Charles H. Scott Gallery
1399 Johnston Street, Vancouver, BC
Tel: 604. 844.3809 | Web: chscott.ecuad.ca