JIMEI X ARLES INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL
Woo Ram Jung, #470-004, 2010. Inkjet Print, 60cm x 50cm © Courtesy of the artist
Crossover Photography 2018:
YOU ARE NOT PARANOID, OBSERVE YOURSELF BEING WATCHED
23 November 2018 – 2 January 2019
XIAO CHEN, WOO RAM JUNG, YOUNGHO Lee, CHONG Lu, XIYU luo, JONATHAN DAVID SMYTH, JINMING zhong, YICHEN zhou
MiA Collective Art is pleased to announce its participation this year’s Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, taking place in Jimei Citizen Square Main in Xiamen, China from November 23, 2018 to January 2, 2019. MiA Collective Art’s Grace Noh and Yichen Zhou will be curating Crossover Photography 2018: You Are Not Paranoid, Observe Yourself Being Watched, presenting recent and new works by Xiao Chen, Woo Ram Jung, Youngho Lee, Chong Lu, Xiyu Luo, Jonathan David Smyth, Jinming Zhong and Yichen Zhou.
Humans care a great deal about being watched. Our behaviors change and are affected by the idea of being alone or under the gaze of someone or something. Once we step outside of our homes, there is nothing entirely private about us. As we wait for the subway in the station, walk on the street, have a cup of coffee at a café or step inside an elevator, there are the gazing eyes of the cameras and people. Whether we consciously or unconsciously realize those gazes, we comply, without a thought, of such situations and leave our traces behind. Are we, then, safe from being watched once we are in our private spaces such as our very own home?
Jonathan David Smyth, The 25th of May - Midtown East, New York City, 2018. Inkjet Print, 30cm x 40cm © Courtesy of the artist
The artists in this exhibition explore the ways in which the digital media affect our understanding of privacy and surveillance. In their performance video, Chen Xiao and Zhou Yichen construct a tension of their violent struggles to be watched and confronted in a public space where the real or performative communication becomes distorted. In his black and white street photography, Woo Ram Jung captures strangers he encounters on the streets noticing that they are being watched through the minuscule camera lens and smartphones. Some greet with a smile, some observe with a wary look, some intentionally avoid and some are indifferent. In her sequential Photographic work, Lee Youngho explores the expansion of human senses and perception by analyzing, deconstructing and reconstructing material misprision. Elegant little film seems like the last gasps of the age of silver based photography, its imagery somewhat magically appearing from a clear photographic swell. On the opposite end of sharing self-portraits on social media, Lu Chong and Luo Xiyu uncover their unwillingly taken “self-portraits” from the surveillance camera at a parking lot. Jonathan David Smyth, with his fullest willingness, posts the overflowing number of his self-portrait images on social media, sharing his digital remains to the unknown. In her 13-hour film, Zhong Jinming presents a real-time narrative by giving the audience access through any digital device, but not allowing the control thereof. Together, these works examine and challenge our understanding of the flow of data in our contemporary lives. As the title, You Are Not Paranoid, Observe Yourself Being Watched, suggests, can we tolerate the supremacy of technology and observe ourselves being watched?
Youngho Lee, Clinamen - Matter misprision, 2018, 127cm x 95cm . © Courtesy of the artist
Lu Chong & Luo Xiyu, Self-portrait, 2018. Lightbox, 98cm x 146cm © Courtesy of the artists
About Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival
Co-created by Sam Stourdzé, the director of famous international photo festival Rencontres d’Arles (France), and Chinese pioneer photographer RongRong (also the founder of China’s first ever photography museum Three Shadows Photography Art Centre), Jimei x Arles features international artists selected from Rencontres d’Arles alongside Chinese and Asian photography talents.
The festival takes place in Xiamen, formerly known as Amoy, a coastal city that has been an important port for centuries. Located across the Taiwan strait, famous for the colonial-era Gulangyu island, it is a vibrant and modern city that is also the home of China's independent fashion scene. The festival's main sites are located in Xiamen's new district of Jimei.
Bringing each year to China exhibitions from one of the most renowned photo festival in the world, Rencontres d’Arles, Jimei x Arles also aims at providing a platform for new Chinese photography with several exhibitions showcasing young Chinese photographers and curators. Along with the exhibition program, a number of events are organized for photography professionals, art lovers and the public during the Opening Week: PhotoFolio Reviews, public discussions about photography, performances, university lectures, and exhibition tours guided by artists and curators.
Zhong Jinming, Nomadic Butterflies & Intellectual Properties From the Long Walk of Steven and Poppy, Including Streets, Songs and Flying Cigarettes, 2017. HD Video, 13 hours © Courtesy of the artist
Zhou Yichen & Chen Xiao, detail of Communication II, 2013. Digital C-print on rice paper, 50cm x 130cm. © Courtesy of the artists
About the Artists
XIAO CHEN
Born 1988, Shanghai, China. Lives and works in Shanghai and New York. Her work presents her understanding of things that can’t be understood. Meaninglessness and confrontation are the most important presuppositions of her projects. Chen’s work represents the method that she believes in to perceive life and universe. Her work has been exhibited at various galleries and venues in the United States and abroad.
WOO RAM JUNG
Born 1979, Seoul, South Korea. Lives and works in Seoul. Woo Ram Jung is a photographic artist whose background lies in architecture. Jung received his Master of Architecture at Virginal Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2010 and MFA in Photography and Related Media at Parsons School of Design in 2014. His street photography work is about how a human being interacts among anonymous people through the viewfinder of a camera. His work has been exhibited at MiA: Beijing Station:: First Chapter in Beijing, #IRL In Real Life, Aronson Gallery at Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, New York, in 2014, Street Shots/NYC, South Seaport Museum, New York, and ALIGN, Atrium Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, in 2013.
YOUNGHO LEE
Born 1979, Seoul, South Korea. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Seoul. Lee is inspired by digging through visual devices, film, and social history, which she recombines or restructures within her installation works. In her installations, Lee seeks to create personal fantasy theater spaces that arouse excitement for the experience of time and space, and the familiar and unfamiliar. Lee seeks to identify new relationships between the digital medium and human senses through the development of these synesthetic environments. She has participated in projects at Residency Unlimited Residency, New York (2017), Apexart New York Fellow, New York (2017), Seoul Art Space Geumcheon Residency, South Korea (2016-2017), Asia Culture Center/ACT Creator Residency, South Korea (2015-2016), Kuenstlerdorf Schoeppingen, NRW, Germany (2011), and took part in various exhibitions including Kunstforum Floesheim, Anita Becker Galerie, Staedelmuseum, Arko Art center, Daegue Museum, and Asia Culture Center.
CHONG LU
Born 1983, Beijing, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China. Lu Chong received his BFA in animation at Sichuan Fine Art Institute. Working in film post-production and video-editing, he has participated in many videos and documentary films.
XIYU LUO
Born 1987, Beijing, China. Lives and works in Beijing, China. Luo Xiyu graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in China. The rapid development of technology has changed the way we look and act in our daily lives. Luo Xiyu's image works are mostly about the new possibilities and relationship between images, human being and space. Her work has been exhibited in various venues in China and Denmark.
JONATHAN DAVID SMYTH
Born 1987, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Lives and works in New York. Jonathan David Smyth is an artist working with photography, video, performance, and incorporated text. He obsessively writes, records, and documents his life. As an adopted child in Northern Ireland, he was only too aware of the differences between his family and his friends at school. For years, he wasn’t allowed to talk about his adoption, and it made him feel angry and ashamed. He moved out of his parents’ house at sixteen. He then began to be honest through photography in the hope that other people might relate to his story. His work has been exhibited at various galleries and venues in the United States and abroad, including Free Range (London, U.K.), PH21 Gallery (Budapest, Hungary), Auckland Festival of Photography (New Zealand), LAST Projects (Los Angeles, CA), Photoville (Brooklyn, NY), Photographic Center Northwest (Seattle, WA), and Metro Pictures Gallery (New York City). Smyth’s work has been featured in Ain’t-Bad Magazine, Musée Magazine, Flat Magazine, and numerous other publications.
JINMING ZHONG
Born 1994, Chengdu, China. Lives and works nomadically. Zhong Jinming graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature: Screenwriting from Beijing Film Academy. She worked as screenwriter and film creator for mainstream movies and televisions in Beijing. She moved to New York City in 2015, where she has extended her practice on experimental films and analog photography. Jinming holds the MFA degree in the Photography and Related Media program at Parsons School of Design. Her work is placed at the intersection of fine art and filmmaking to explore the form and timeliness of film medium and storytelling in the contemporary era of new media. Her work was exhibited in various places in New York including Arnold and Sheila Gallery, Photoville, Metropolitan Pavilion etc. She has won the ‘Best Mobile Movie’ award at Cult Critic Movie Awards.
YICHEN ZHOU
Born 1986, Inner Mongolia, China. Lives and works in New York and Beijing. Zhou Yichen is a visual artist and photographer. She moved to New York City in 2010. Her performance-based work explores her identity as part of a new generation of Chinese artists and points to the challenges of living in a world where she finds multiple cultures and values in conflict. Zhou received her MFA in Photography and Related Media at Parsons School of Design in 2013 and had numerous exhibitions in Russia, United States and China.