Working within the Interstices
Written by Tan Fangying
At the ongoing solo exhibition “Mount Analogue" by artist Hu Yun at the Rockbund Art Museum, the hollow spaces between the fourth and fifth floors are connected by large structures made of black, semi-transparent gauze, which also partially or completely envelops several exhibits, creating a certain visual obstruction and interference for viewers. This sort of inadvertent "hiding" seems to be not uncommon throughout the exhibition: a suitcase, concealed behind a black curtain, silently plays slideshows of landscape photographs. The sounds and images of Jin opera seep through a wooden box, which only has a narrow opening that prevents viewers from seeing its entirety. Additionally, small botanical paintings hang above the doorframe at the entrance to the fourth-floor gallery and transparent color cards on the stairwell nearly blend in with the stained-glass windows.
"Hu Yun: Mount Analogue", installation view, Rockbund Art Museum, 2024.03.23-08.25, ©️Rockbund Art Museum, photo by Yan Tao
The artist does not seem eager to display all the content of the exhibition explicitly to the audience; “clarity and distinctness” are not the objectives pursued in this exhibition closely connected with the museum's collections and historical retrospection. Hu Yun told me that such exhibition design also responds to his own method of working: "This exhibition involves many topics or stories that are largely unknown, ones that are neglected or overlooked within our familiar structures of knowledge. The 'interferences' within the exhibition space make it difficult to find a vantage point from which one can see the complete panorama of the exhibit." This is also a common approach in his work: in an era of information overload, he continuously challenges traditional visuals and questions what we really see. Are all things visible?
"HU YUN: MOUNT ANALOGUE", INSTALLATION VIEW, ROCKBUND ART MUSEUM, 2024.03.23-08.25, ©️ROCKBUND ART MUSEUM, PHOTO BY YAN TAO
Incorporating the architectural history of this exhibition—which was once the site of Shanghai's earliest public natural history museum, the Royal Asiatic Society (R.A.S.)—heightens the awareness of the artist's interrogations focused on the authoritative narratives and established knowledge systems represented by the museum. Unlike many Western artists who practice radical and intense institutional critique, Hu Yun employs a more subtle approach to find and leverage the "interstices" within these solid structures. For Hu Yun, these interstices are crucial; he does not insist on confronting the vast and complex system of knowledge production and circulation head-on. As cultural authorities like museums undergo passive changes due to shifts in mainstream directions, it becomes more important for the artist to consider how to work from very small details or subtle observational angles.
In this exhibition, 22 works from the artist's past decade are "disorderedly" displayed across the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors and the stairwells of the Rockbund Art Museum. Through an editorial process involving various media such as photographs, sounds, videos, and installations, Hu Yun's creations from recent years are re-enacted and expanded.
"HU YUN: MOUNT ANALOGUE", INSTALLATION VIEW, ROCKBUND ART MUSEUM, 2024.03.23-08.25, ©️ROCKBUND ART MUSEUM, PHOTO BY AHstudio
In an interview, Hu Yun explained the narrative of his works and the relationship between his works and the audience as follows: "My ideal goal is to jump out of narrative through the works, or more precisely, through a scene, an exhibition, allowing people to feel a reality... This reality has no hierarchical relationship with various historical narratives or the content I fictionalize; they are all considered equal." [1] If viewed through the lens of "working within the interstices," the first interstice in “Mount Analogue" might exist in the artist’s disengagement from established historical events, allowing for misinterpretations or subjective interpretations to intervene in the "historical scene." Presented on the fourth floor, The Secret Garden: Reeves’s Pheasant (2012-2015) comprises a suite of metal desks, wooden boxes, wallpaper, and colored video installations. A solitary chick feather, standing out on the desk against the surrounding wild fowl feather-patterned wallpaper, appears both mysterious and intriguing. This work traces back to 2010 when Hu Yun was a resident artist at Gasworks in London, where he conducted a detailed study of the archives of John Reeves, an amateur British naturalist. Reeves was dispatched to China by the East India Company in 1812 and during his stay in China from 1812 to 1831, he commissioned a group of Chinese painters to illustrate the earliest batches of Chinese flora and fauna specimens using Western taxonomic methods, and "discovered" and named a species of pheasant (which, scientifically named as the White-crowned long-tailed Pheasant, had already appeared in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica).[2]
Hu Yun meticulously placed archival photographs, drawings related to this historical segment, and feathers representing chicks within metal desks, thereby "returning" Reeves's botanical and zoological archives to their stages of accumulation, selection, and formation. A crucial incision here lies in the incomplete presentation of factual details about this history within Reeves's collections; the seemingly comprehensive museum collection system also omits the names of the Chinese painters. What kind of information needs to be preserved and recorded? Who has the authority to decide what is retained or discarded during the collection process? The inequities of power induced by the colonial context, alongside fantasies and misinterpretations of exotic cultures, subtly emerge in this artwork.
Untitled (from the narrative of a five years expedition), 2016-2017, ink on tracing paper, 7 pieces, 52 x 36 cm (framed) each; wallpaper, dimensions variable.
This approach of "reconstructing the historical scene" is also manifested in the installations comprising Journey without a Destination (2017) and Untitled (2016). Situated at the center of the exhibition hall, elements like a yoga mat saddle, a stereo viewer atop a tripod, and stereoscopic archival photographs come together to form both a real and illusory expedition scene. The story originates from an expedition to the Shaanxi-Gansu region in 1909, organized by the American Robert Sterling Clark, during which scholarly investigations were conducted. Within the publications of the expedition team, Hu Yun discovered a photograph of one of the team members, the Indian-born geodesist Hazrat Ali, poised on horseback ready to depart. Hu Yun learned that Ali encountered conflicts with local villagers due to language barriers while conducting hillside surveys, ultimately resulting in his tragic death after being pushed down the slope. The saddle's yoga mat not only subtly aligns with the misunderstanding arising from the yoga practice (villagers believed Ali was performing some sort of witchcraft), but also allows visitors to engage in the act of yoga within the museum, thereby generating a new collective narrative and memory in the re-enactment of the event.
No Such Person, 2024, Chinese wax candle, electroformed copper plate, and Danh Vo, 2.02.1861 (2009-), with Chinese ash wood frame. Overall dimensions variable
Interestingly, the use of yoga mats first appeared in Hu Yun's installation work at the Guangdong Times Museum, in 2014, and the retrace and reuse of elements from his own oeuvre is a recurring method in his practice. By integrating works that represent personal artifacts or memories with broader historical narratives, his approach gives rise to new perspectives on the interconnections between individual experiences and macro-historical, collective destinies. This layer cannot disrupt or subvert the entrenched knowledge systems or museum authority—indeed, that is not the artist's intention—but it does provide viewers with additional viewpoints to consider how they are situated within the current world and how their own histories intertwine with others. No Such Person (2024) comprises a candle, a copper plate, and a letter. The letter is part of a work by Vietnamese-Danish artist Danh Vo titled 2.02.1861 (2009-), in which the artist's father, Phung Vo, copies a letter written by the French missionary Jean-Davat De Vernier right before his execution in Vietnam in 1861 whenever someone acquires the piece. The candle in the work utilizes wax originating from the secretion of wax insects during the Song-Yuan dynasty, a method later documented and transported to the West by missionaries. As the candle burns and melts, the dripping wax falls onto a rubbly cast from the "Epitaph of the Propagation of the Da Qin Christian Religion" from the Tang dynasty, splashing ultimately onto Danh Vo’s work. Here, Hu Yun foregrounds a series of time-accumulated physical transformations that link histories across different epochs and regions, thus creating a novel narrative form. Moreover, the art market's conventional production-display-exchange-collection circuit, as represented by Danh Vo's work, is revalued and reinterpreted through Hu Yun’s artistic intervention.
Furthermore, several of Hu Yun's works are connected to his grandfather, presenting a private perspective that explores the rich possibilities of depicting and interpreting history. Lift with Care and Escape (Revisit Memory 1941-2013) draw on the Shaanxi-Gansu region that the artist's grandfather spiritually aspired to, and his hometown remembered in memories, respectively, revealing the intricate interweaving of personal fate with historical narratives. This thematic engagement extends into Everything Is Possible in the Darkness (2016), where Hu Yun selected ten significant moments from his grandfather's life, re-photographed them, and deliberately interrupted the development process during printing. This manipulation causes the photosensitive layer of the paper to darken progressively under exposure to light, eventually transforming the photographs into indiscernible surfaces devoid of any individual identity or temporal context. In contrast to the depersonalized knowledge systems upheld by authoritative institutions like museums, Hu Yun’s works undoubtedly possess a life-like warmth and breath, softly yet assertively contesting the established museum systems, structures, and the modes of knowledge dissemination.
Upon viewing this exhibition, I was reminded of Japanese artist Hikaru Fujii’s video work The Anatomy Classroom. This film commences with the reconstruction of the Futaba Town History and Folklore Museum in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, which was affected by the 2011 tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, focusing on how a museum should record and represent history after such drastic changes. Which artifacts should be preserved, and what items are necessary to document these immense traumas and threats of disaster? Fujii invited museum professionals and artists to visit the ruins of the museum and held a discussion in the anatomy classroom of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Could this approach act as a potential new narrative method for museums? At the same time, does an ideal state of historical recording truly exist? While definitive answers may be elusive, continued dialogue might bring us closer to the truth.
