Asian Circumscription - 5.2 Square Metres 1
Chen Yujun
陈彧君
Production date
2008
Object Detail
Media
acrylic on gesso on canvas
Measurements
200 x 260 cm
Notes
Chen Yujun’s work focuses on the shifting, unstable identities of people today, subject to the forces of globalisation and the mass migrations that fragment families, complicating culture and language. Much of his work has been inspired by the Central Min diaspora, seventh century journeys from central China to the south-east, in response to the movement of Mongolian people moving southwards. In modern times, in Chen’s grandparents’ generation, some members of his own family relocated to parts of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Loss of cultural memory, uncertainty, and dislocation feature in the life experience of his own generation within China, too, in a time of constant change. Chen’s world is complex: the internal conflicts of those remembering a collectivist past from the standpoint of the aspirational and individualist present-day; permeable demarcations between public and private identities; considerations of how systemic change impacts on the internal life of the individual; and fluxing relationships between nation states: all these things inflect his work. Asian Circumscription – 5.2 Square Metres 1 (2008) is, as the name suggests, a canvas of those dimensions. The work depicts a bleak space, with a patterned tiled floor and striped walls that suggest peeling wallpaper. Vertical stripes of yellow, ochre, purplish brown and rose madder dribble down the canvas. What kind of abandoned room could this be? The echoing empty space makes us wonder about its absent inhabitants.
Accession number
2011.020