“The Archival Impulse: An Exercise in Counter-Narrative and Counter-Memory” brings together the recent practices of six artists to activate the more complex connections between archives and identity, memory and history through artistic interventions. The exhibition is not only a focused discussion of artistic practices that use the archive as a medium and form, but also provides new interpretative contexts for the shifting power relations and cultural values behind archivalization. The works take on iconographic, taxonomic, indexical, typological, or archaeological qualities. They are either appropriated, extracted, and collaged, or showcased, superimposed, and compiled; translating the archival material into aesthetic principles and artistic patterns into historicized construction. Some testify to certain unidentified labor. Some confess to memories that are forced into oblivion.
The Archival Impulse: An Exercise in Counter-Narrative and Counter-Memory: aaajiao, Hu Yun, Liu Beining, Shi Zheng, Lishuang Xu, Andong Zheng
Past exhibition
3 September - 15 October 2022