CAMOUFLAGE – LOOK like them – TALK like them
20 April 2004 – 29 May 2004
Curated by Manray Hsu
Jun Yang analyses in his works the construction of cultural identity and control. He juxtaposes power structure, social order and pop cultural forms.
By using his autobiography as an axis around which meanings of rituals and codes are spelled out, he constructs sarcastic and pungent narratives that verge on fact and fiction.
His video, produced in 2002, Soldier Woods, or Soldat Holzer, is an elaborate play on his name “Jun Yang,” and thus exists in two separate versions, English and German. He tries to trace back all different possible meanings of Jun Yang in the Chinese language as well as various misunderstandings incurred during the last twenty years of living in Europe.
What’s lost in translation is not only things to deal with, but the person himself whose persona cannot but engage in the most simple fact of his life: his name.
Yang’s work touches on the gray area between legal power and illegal fall-outs, personal memories and collective representations. In his latest video CAMOUFLAGE – LOOK like them – TALK like them (2002/2003), he interrogates the situation of illegal immigrants and legal foreigners from the perspective of a fictive person, called X. The video is based on a fictional interview the artist conducted with X, whose generic identity as an illegal immigrant smuggled into the land of wealth, hope, consumption, and, above all, behavioural control, has to be disappeared in order for him to exist again. Using news clips, found footages, ads, and images of public display of power, Yang creates a video of everyday social control laid bare in a documentary form.
In addition to the two videos, the exhibition also includes wall drawings based on CAMOUFLAGE, which intervene into the architectural space to create multifaceted conceptual folds.
Jun Yang was born in China 1975, he lives and works since 1979 in Vienna.
Among his recent exhibitions: Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig; Museum für angewandte Kunst Galerie, Vienna; 2001: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery; De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam; Frankfurter Kunstverein; 2002: Manifesta 4, Frankfurt; PS1, New York.
Manray Hsu is an independent critic and curator based in Taipei and Berlin. His major exhibitions include: 2000 Taipei Biennial: “The Sky Is the Limit” and “How Big Is the World?” (OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, 2002).
Manray Hsu served as a jury member for the 49th Venice Biennale and for UNESCO Prize at the 7th Istanbul Biennial in 2001.
For further information, please contact Waling Boers or Alexandra Saheb
