DATES: SEPTEMBER 11 - OCTOBER 21
OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 11, 6-8PM
ARTISTS TALK: SEPTEMBER 12, 7-8PM
LOCATION: 41 ROSS, SAN FRANCISCO
In partnership with Bamboo Curtain Studio of Taiwan and WMA of Hong Kong, Infinite Cycle convenes diverse artistic voices to address how social-minded arts organizations -- and artists as individuals situated within specific geological contexts -- leverage civic awareness of environmental issues through art. The group exhibition explores how art practice and institutional model can be incorporated into the cycle of environmental sustainability, and what that translates back to inform and influence the community at large. As an affiliated event of the Global Climate Action Summit, the exhibition is an invitation to join the global creative conversations around the urgency of taking action and demanding change, calling attention to decision-making processes that are dominated by mainstream authorities.
Participating Artists:
Stephanie Cheung, Dancecology, Gao Ling, Lee Pei-yu, Cathy Lu, Francis Solano, Weston Teruya, TRES Art Collective
Bamboo Curtain Studio was founded in 1995. It has been long-termed overserving and focusing on three main issues: Artist-in-Residence, Creative Programing in Reuse of Spaces, and Creative city through action research. Through such researches and its international exchanges, it has built a regular unofficial micro culture think tank. Since the project “Art as Environment - A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek” in 2010, BCS has put more concentration on the issues and actions of environment and ecology. BCS was invited to participate the exhibition in National Taiwan Science Education Center, Micro-Micro Revolution in Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester, Jakarta Biennial, ArtCop 21 in Paris to share their practices. BCS also set up Green Art Lab Alliance Asia to invite art organizations in Asia to talk about their environmental practices. We wish to influence more people via art movements. BCS, as an international Artist-in-Residence, plays the role of pilot. Art as media to reopen five senses and strengthen the connection with surrounded environment.
Initiated by WYNG Foundation, WMA is a series of non-profit programs developed to spark awareness and engage the public on social issues of great importance to Hong Kong, with a view to fostering positive change. They include WMA Masters, WMA Commission, WMA Open, WMA Student and WMA Film. The programs have been encouraging dialogues through selected annual themes, including “Poverty”, “Air”, “Waste”, “Identity”, “Mobility” and “Transition” in the past. The theme for 2018/19 cycle is “Opportunity”. For more information, please visit wma.hk.
Chinese Culture Center (CCC) is a culturally-rooted arts nonprofit based in San Francisco’s Chinatown with the mission to elevate underserved communities and give voice to equality through education and contemporary art. Over the last decade, it has built a unique reputation for supporting innovative, emerging local artists alongside mid-career international artists, building a shared context for their works that foster transnational artistic dialogues. CCC has had an outsized impact in bringing together these connections for artists who have been underrecognized. As an award winning institution, CCC is a proud partner of the prestigious Andy Warhol Foundation, recipient of the competitive Kenneth Rainin Foundation award, and a finalist for the national Robert E. Gard award for arts and community integration. Founded in 1965, CCC communicates the humanity of our community through arts and culture, and shifts the dominant narrative about Asian Americans.
Artists:
Stephanie Cheung is Lead Curator of Make A Difference Institute in Hong Kong. She curates process-oriented and participatory art projects in communities and public space, and works primarily with text as a creative medium. She sees art as an arena for exploring better ways to inhabit the world. In 2015, she went to Orchid Island (Lanyu), off the east coast of Taiwan, with support from the Angela Gill Memorial Award and Bamboo Curtain Studio. There she befriended indigenous resident Awen and his volunteers, who were taking the initiative to tackle excessive solid waste on the island. Their encounter grew into Message in a Bottle, a picture book reflecting on sustainable development. The book also aims to promote Awen's cause and raise funds for his continuous endeavours. She also received an Asia Cultural Council fellowship for a residency in the United States in 2016.
Dancecology (Dancecology = Dance + Ecology) was selected as creative talents by Bamboo Curtain Studio (BCS) in 2010. Since then, Dancecology and BCS has built up a strong connection. Inspired by the power of all living beings in the environment, and by the principles of sustainability, Danceology seeks to explore all sorts of artistic forms, in order to offer their audiences a new vision and a new way to live. Dancecology is a group that’s founded by Peng Xiao-Yin (choreography), Chen Yi-Shu (photography), Zeng Huan-Xin (video) and other members. Their works fuse performances, visual art and technology, presented in the form of environmental theatre, dance film or video art. They zealously engage in environment-related artistic activities, bringing their ideas outside theatre. "Recycle Project," directed by Peng Hsiao-yin, is the dance film produced by Dancecology. It's the commission work of Jumping Frames International Dance Video Festival 2016, and has been screened at USA, HongKong, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Macau and Beijing. "’We repeat, we recycle”.’ In this loop of "recovery," we continuously to be filled and to be the emptied of humanity and wastes, which co-exist and then be discarded together. In waves of life, we are coming back and forth in the failure of resistance."
Gao Ling , born in 1980, currently lives in Shanghai. Her interdisciplinary approach encompasses diverse mediums of visual art, including photography, installation and performance. Her work closely scrutinizes the “norms” of daily life and creates surprising and often humorous interventions and re-appropriations that challenge our relationship with them. Her artworks have been featured in exhibitions including the E-flux project: PAWNSHOP, traveling exhibition “WOMEN 2011," the 1st Biennale of UK Chinese Artists in 2013 and the WMA Masters in 2014. The “Big Mist” project was launched in 2013 to create a global archive of “selfies” that playfully engages our contemporary attitude to air pollution. As an extension of the study, she initiated “The Big Mist Organic mask” project since 2016.(Gao Ling was interviewed by the Asia-Pacific Research Centre of the Tate Modern, for details, please visit http://www.tate.org.uk/research/research-centres/tate-resear....)
Peiyu Lee graduated from the Department of Material Arts and Design at Tainan National University of the Arts. Experiencing the economic ups and downs, and the diminishing consciousness of mountains, ocean and lands, she used pottery to re-discover the relationship between human and the entire environment.
Cathy Lu (b. 1984 Miami, FL) is an artist working in ceramics, sculpture, and painting. Her work explores traditional Chinese art imagery and presentation as a way to explore cultural authenticity in relation to objects and contemporary identity. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her BA&BFA from Tufts University. She has participated in artist in residence programs at Root Division, Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Recology SF. Her work has been exhibited at Johansson Projects, Somarts, Aggregate Space, and Berkeley Arts Center. She teaches ceramics classes and workshops throughout the Bay Area, and currently lives in San Francisco, CA.
Francis Sollano is a trashion and installation artist known for his contemporary takes on up-cycling garbage into wearable art and converting decaying landscapes to lush urban spaces. Co-founder of Youth for a Livable Cebu, he has been promoting his advocacies on various international forums. He was awarded by World Economic Forum as a Cultural Leader. In 2015, he has received the highest distinction by the British Council as an Elevate Awardee for using his creativity for different community works. In 2016, Francis was invited by Bamboo Curtain Studio and Creative Reused Center to create a series of “Bleached into the Deep." It is an initiative that reimagines the future of our oceans and its life beneath it. This will focus on how the arts can encourage sustainable social, economic and environmental practices, particularly with our seas.
Weston Teruya was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai‘i and currently resides in Oakland, California As an artist, he has had solo exhibitions at Intersection for the Arts and Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco and Pro Arts in Oakland. He has been an artist-in-residence with the Lucas Artist Residency of the Montalvo Arts Center, Art+Practice+Ideas at Mills College, Recology San Francisco, Sedona Summer Colony, and Ox-Bow. In 2017 he will be a Fellowship Awardee resident with Kala Art Institute and a deYoung Museum Artists Studio resident. Weston is one of the three founding members of Related Tactics, a collective of artists, writers, curators, and educators of color creating projects and opportunities at the intersection of race and culture. And in partnership with the online arts criticism platform Daily Serving-Art Practical, he launched (un)making, a podcast in discussion with artists, arts administrators, and cultural workers of color.
TRES (Ilana Boltvinik + Rodrigo Viñas, Mexico City) is an art research collective founded in 2009 that has focused on exploring the implications of public space and garbage through artistic practices that concentrate on the methodological intertwining and dialogue with science, anthropology, and archaeology among other disciplines. Of particular interest has been the inquiry on the subject of garbage as a physical and conceptual residue that entails political and material implications. They were the 2015 WMA Commission in Hong Kong, and the 2016 recipients of the Robert Gardner Fellowship for Photography Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard with which they are currently investigating marine debris of Australian beaches. www.tresartcollective.com
Supported by: Community Challenges Grant
Additional support: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Grants for the Arts, CCC Contemporaries
BCS funding is supported by Ministry of Culture of Taiwan (The Rainbow Initiative Funds)
