The Stories of the Unpublished Local News Manuscripts

Taking the same title from Mu Shiying's novel, this exhibition marks the artist's return to the subject of realism after many years. The exhibition consists of two works, Ain't Misbehavin' and The Blind Man and the Images, which are both as the title of the exhibition suggest - stories that are either underappreciated or, for various reasons, unavailable for publication. Ain't Misbehavin takes the ending event of a story as the starting point of the work, and builds up the characters by piling up pieces of information, with documentary and fictional images presenting on multiple screens in different spaces. In contrast, The Blind Man and the Images adopts a linear narrative, taking the beginning event of a story as the starting point, and uses still photographs to tell the story.

Ain’t Misbehavin’

Ain't Misbehavin’ is a semi-fictional work built around the life of a real person, Lolo (@lololovevintage). It consists of a screenplay and a series of visual works. The script is a retrospective work, depicting the heroine's teenage years, while the visual works are current, telling the second half of her life by documentaries, feature film clips, still-frame images, and readymade, brought together through a specific ritualistic on-site setup. The screenplay was created by Wang Siying, and the comprehensive images were collaborated by Cao Mengqin and Fang Xiaohe. The next project is an image work based on this screenplay, which will be completed and combined with Ain't Misbehavin‘ to form a new work.

Blind Man and the Images 

Blind Man and the Images is a story told from a first-person perspective, originating from an event where a photographer is visually impaired due to an accident. He experiences two worlds after the unfortunate incident — the physical world where he relies on his hearing and blurred vision to take photos, and the mental world where he engages in photography by the memories of a collection of his past work. In this work, the artist continues to explore the symbolism of the past, while responding to snapshot photography. The entire piece consists of a wall of nearly 300 photographs, still photography, and a dual-channel sound anaglyphic film with still-frames montage.