The First Trip

Artist: Shen Yuan

Material: resin

Sizes: 200x200x600cm

Year: 2007

Shen Yuan was born in Fuzhou, China in 1959, and became involved in radical avant-garde art movements in Xiamen in the late 1980's. Together with her partner, Huang Yong Ping, she immigrated to France, and has lived in Paris since 1990. She has a special interest in bodily metaphors, such as the "tongue" which she interprets both for its role for tasting and for pronouncing the words. In 1999, Shen Yuan was a professor of the Research Program at the Centre for Contemporary Art, CCC in Kitakyushu, Japan. Shen Yuan has held solo and group exhibitions since the early 1990's in France, Germany, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan and China. In August 2000, Shen Yuan undertook an artist's residency in Bristol; since then, she has been based in China and France, creating new work for Arnolfini. Feel Just Like a Fish in Water incorporates a boat and fish skeletons cast in Bristol blue glass set on a sea of salt. Another new piece, The Dinosaur's Egg, has involved casting an array of Chinese characters derived from the toys contained in Kinder Surprise eggs.

Using sculpture and installation, Shen Yuan's work ranges from monumental site-specific interventions to intimate, visceral objects. Her work transforms everyday objects into poetic - but often disturbing - meditations, touching on contemporary questions around migration, memory and language. Shen Yuan is the first solo exhibition of the artist's work in the UK; including new installations and earlier works made over the past decade.

She has participated in many major international exhibitions including "Cities on The Move "(curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist; Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Denmark, London, Bangkok, and Helsinki, 1997) and Guangzhou Art Triennial, Guangzhou, China, 2005.

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