As a witness to the city where she grew up being submerged under the water as the result of the Three Gorges Dam Project in 2003, Chen Qiulin's artistic practice is closely related to urbanization and its consequences, making works that reflect the rapid and profound changes and contradictions that disrupt the landscape and society, and evoke her personal memories with often a touch of nostalgia. In the Insights sector, A Thousand Plateaus Art Space presents several of her recent works, among which is The Hundred Surnames in Tofu, a large-scale video installation composed of dozens of screens showing Chinese surnames, carved with tofu, turning from fresh, white and delicate to smelly and spoiled in the end. The artist has recorded the gradual process of deterioration of tofu as a metaphor for the change and disappearance of traditional cultures. Yet if the passage of time, the vicissitudes of life and memory are important in Chen's works, so is forgetting, or more precisely, what has been forgotten. In the installation 14,235—the intriguing number refers to the day count the 39-year-old artist has gone through in her existence—trigonal hexahedrons of different sizes sprawl out in the space. The artist uses ceramic to reproduce the origami shape that she made unconsciously with paper over the past, with hundreds of thousands of sharp edges and corners calling to mind her pains of seeing her city crushed under the nation's ambitious development plan.
作為目睹她所生長的城市於2003年因
三峽水壩工程為水淹沒的見證者，陳秋林的
藝術實踐與中國的都市化過程密切相關，一
方面反映了中國超高速而劇烈的變化與矛盾
對城市景觀和社會的衝擊，同時帶著一絲懷
舊情感地追溯她個人的記憶。千高原藝術空
間在“亞洲視野”展區展出陳秋林數件近
作，其中包括《豆腐百家姓》。這件大型錄
影裝置由數十個屏幕組成，畫面呈現以豆腐
雕塑的中國姓氏從新鮮、潔白、精緻到最後
發臭、腐爛。藝術家以記錄豆腐逐漸敗壞的
過程，作為對傳統文化質變、消失的隱喻。
若說時間流逝、生命的悲歡離合以及記憶，
是陳秋林作品的核心要素，那麼遺忘，或者
更確切地說，那些被遺忘的人事物，也同樣
關鍵。在《14235》這件裝置裡—引人啟竇
的數字乃藝術家39年生命所經歷的天數—同
樣數量、大小不一的三角六面體在空間蔓延
開來。藝術家用陶瓷複製她過去無意識間會
動手摺紙的形狀，數千上萬個銳利棱角令人
想到她眼睜睜地看著家園在國家巨大野心的
發展巨輪下遭到碾碎的痛楚...
