Chen Shaoxiong: Ink. History. Media

The Seattle Art Museum presents Chen's two recent video works—Ink History and Ink Media—as well as their companion ink drawings.

Chen Shaoxiong (born 1962) was a founding member of the “Big Tail Elephant Group” of conceptual artists in Guangzhou in the 1990’s. Today, he works both independently and collaboratively as a member of an Asian artist collective called “Xijing Men” as well as another Chinese artist collective, “Project without Space.” His art crosses mediums, including painting, photography, collage, and conceptual art.

This exhibition presents Chen’s two recent video works—Ink History and Ink Media—as well as their companion ink drawings. For Ink History, Chen created over 150 ink drawings of historic photos of major events in China from 1909 to 2009. He then turned the drawings into a three-minute video of modern Chinese history as the clock ticks in the musical score. For his most recent work, Ink Media, Chen downloaded news photos of protests around the world from the Internet, and then re-enacted these scenes with ink drawings. Although not in any chronological or spatial order, the video shows protest—both strong and vulnerable—as a universal political expression.