Impermanence (无常)

Creator(s)

Jin-Shi ZHU 朱金石

Preview

Date

1996

Format

Poster

Date of Exhibition Event

1996

Location of Exhibition Event

Art Museum of Capital Normal University Beijing

Materials

Rice paper, bowl, water, winter melon

Dimensions

1500 x 1500 x 300 cm

Description

For this work, the artist has filled up a room with impressive piles of rice paper. The choice of material represents the artist's cross-cultural identity as a Chinese creative working in Berlin in the 1980s who had experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall. The delicate rice paper represents his Chinese culture as well as the fragility of randomness and visual media. In his essay, "Zhu Jinshi: Toward Cultural Relativism", independent curator and art critic Huang Du says, "When connected to one's own cultural tradition and background, art becomes a strategy for the expression of one's free will. It highlights transcendent culture. Its spiritual element rethinks the relationship between tradition of one's own culture and contemporary western culture, and searches for a spiritual foundation and cultural basis. He has chosen the path of cultural relativism" (https://digital.kenyon.edu/zhoudocs/504/). (Nicole Wang '26)