After Deliverance

Sexual passion is always intimately linked with taboo, both social taboo and taboo of a kind most intrinsic to our nature as humans. "After Deliverance" has a double meaning. In post-cultural revolution China, a social liberation was accompanied by a sexual one, and young artists born in the seventies and eighties grew up with this reality unfolding in the background. In their art, contemplations of the body, of emotional experience, and of sex revitalized and transformed the aching realist reflection and representational political criticism of the two generations that preceded them, in turn becoming an important means by which to express the newly individualized self and to make sense of the complexities of a post-totalitarian society. This exhibition attempts to show that pivotal transformation in the history of contemporary art, and attempts, through its six component themes--" Remembering an Era of Confinement," " Populist Abandon," "Kawaii World," " Nomadic Zone," " Dialectics of Expression," and " The One and Only Myth "--to initiate a meaningful discussion of what has has arisen out of the shift as well as what may still be in store, all the while sharing the eye for inquiry with regard to civilization and the depth of aesthetic construction that marks this young generation.

Curator, Zhu Zhu