Idiorrhythmic
Canadian & Chinese Artists Urban Art Creation Project
Exhibition Dates: November 12 to December 11, 2016
Opening: November 15, 2016 Exhibition Site: Suzhou Industrial Park Culture & Expo Square
Participating Canadian Artists
Mark Lewis (UK) ［quitted］
IAIN BAXTER& (Windsor)
Ian Carr-Harris (Toronto)
Yvonne Lammerich (Toronto)
Nadia Myre (Montreal, an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation)
Xiaojing Yan (Toronto)
Alexandre David (Montreal)
Yam Lau (Toronto)
Mani Mazinani and Scott Harber(Toronto)
Curators: Yan Zhou, Xiaojing Yan
Advisory Board: Ben Portis (curator, critic) Matthew Brower (curator, critic, director of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto) Yang Chao (city planner, curator, director of Xi’an Art Museum, China) Fu Xiaogong (curator, art critic)
Curatorial Assistant: Xue Yajun
Organizer: Jiangsu Meijing Cultural Industry & Development Co., Ltd.
Supporters: The Embassy of Canada to China; The Consulate General of Canada in Shanghai; Canada Council of the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; University of Toronto; Windsor University; The International Communication Office of Suzhou Municipal Government; Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio and Television, Press and Publication; Suzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles; Cultural Development Bureau of Suzhou Industrial Park Administrative Committee; Suzhou Industrial Park Federation of Literary and Art Circles; Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum; Suzhou Museum; Suzhou University; Nanjing University of the Arts; College of Art & Design, Nanjing Forestry University; Suzhou Art & Design Technology Institute; Daniel Faria Gallery; Lonsdale Gallery (Toronto); Art Labor Gallery (Shanghai);
Caption: Six Records of a Floating Life (1763-2016), pavilion architecture & installation site view, 2016, Suzhou Industrial Park
Suzhou, China, 2016 Yvonne Lammerich & Ian Carr-Harris
Exhibition Introduction
Toronto based curator Yan Zhou and artist Xiaojing Yan co-curated a large Canadian and Chinese art / cultural exchange project in Suzhou Industrial Area, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. The exhibition, titled Idiorrhythmic: Canadian & Chinese Artists Urban Art Creation Project will be held from November 12, 2016 to December 11, 2016 at Suzhou Industrial Area, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. The opening of the exhibition is November 15, 2016.
The title of the exhibition Idiorrhythmic, references French thinker Roland Barthes’s ideas on how different forms of life and practices can be entwined as a creative process. By adopting the term, we wish to explore how different artistic processes, cultural practices and urban fabrics can be creatively implicated as a bundle of rhythmic entanglements. Participating artists composed of Canadians artists of national and international renown and some local Chinese artists. Canadian artists are: Mark Lewis (UK) [quitted], IAIN BAXTER& (Windsor), Ian Carr-Harris (Toronto), Yvonne Lammerich (Toronto), Nadia Myre (Montreal, an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation), Alexandre David (Montreal), Yam Lau (Toronto), Xiaojing Yan (Toronto), Mani Mazinani (Toronto), and Scott Harber (Toronto). Among these Canadian artists are winners of many prestigious awards, including three winners of the Canadian Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, two winners of the Gersho Iskowitz prize, and winners of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, Officer of the Order of Canada, the Canadian Council Molson Prize for the Arts, Sobey Art Award, and etc.
The artists will be invited to Suzhou to create new, site responsive works in different mediums ranging from sculpture, installation, intervention, performance and video projections. In addition, they will also create public programs to interact with local audience. These activities are intended to facilitate artistic and cultural exchanges.
As a cultural project, however, Idiorrhythmic extends the previous effort of curator Yan Zhou to enhance the profile of Canadian artists in China through ambitious exhibitions and programming (Touring exhibition The Transformation of Landscape in Canada: The Inside & Outside of Being, Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, China & Today Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2014-2015; and Mediated Memory: Canadian Focus Exhibition at the Sixth Beijing International Art Biennial 2015, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2015). Idiorrhythmic facilitates artistic and cultural exchange on an international stage, generating new channels for communication between Chinese and Canadian stakeholders. The project will also invite influential media, art critics and scholars from both Canada and China to attend and participate in the pubic and intellectual discourse of the exhibition.
