Richmond BC, Canada #richmondartgallerybc
Guest Curator: Rebecca Wang 王晨釔
In a realm where ancient mythology collides with modern dilemmas, Shanghai-based artist Qiu Anxiong and Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui invite us to step into their fantastical worlds, reimagining the mystique of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Through contemporary adaptations of classical literature and martial arts fiction (wuxia), their work brings to life mythical creatures, otherworldly spirits, and shape-shifting swordsmen who navigate landscapes fraught with the tensions of resource extraction, war, urbanization, and surveillance. This exhibition offers an immersive journey through a diverse selection of animation films, video works, paintings, and prints, where fragmented narratives of the past, present, and speculative futures converge into one dynamic, ever-evolving dimension.
Artist Biography
Qiu Anxiong (邱岸雄) was born in Sichuan, China in 1972. He graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1994 and later earned a degree from the Kassel Academy of Fine Arts in Germany in 2003. Currently, he is a professor at the School of Design, East China Normal University. As a leading figure in contemporary ink animation, his works are part of the collections of prestigious international and domestic institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Arken Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo), Kunsthalle Zürich, and M+ Museum of Contemporary Art (Hong Kong).
Howie Tsui (徐浩恩), b. 1978, Hong Kong – raised in Lagos and Thunder Bay, is based in Vancouver*. Working in ink brush, sound sculptures, lenticular lightboxes and installation, Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that undermine venerated art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm broadening regimes and their programs of cultural hegemony. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order, chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, surveillance and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to cast light onto liminal and diasporic experiences.
This exhibition is presented with the support of the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia.
Narrated in Mandarin by Rebecca Wang Narrated in English by Rebecca Wang
