“I think it’s [an] ongoing laboratory, and I think this is what exhibition making should be about,” says Cosmin Costinas, executive director and curator of Para Site, who adds that closed borders have made it a real feat to create coherent negotiations between the artists’ divergent positions and interests.
“Curtain” was meant to be staged with live performances but the pandemic has prevented that, so it has been curated in a way where the multifarious ideas of the theme are activated by the audience.
One of the most powerful works at the Soho House venue is Gustav Metzger’s Historic Photographs: To Walk Into – Massacre on the Mount (1996). One lifts a light beige cloth to see a chilling photo taken in 1990 after the Israeli police killed 21 Palestinians following a dispute between Jewish and Muslim groups on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
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Once the curtain is lifted, the proximity to the greatly magnified image forces us to confront the monstrosity. However, your eyes are only able to see sections of the photograph at a time because of the scale. The work encourages a visceral interaction with the image – critical in an age when we are desensitised from a constant bombardment of sensational images – while questioning the limitation of understanding.
Another work is a video of Leigh Bowery performing at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in 1988. Donning various outlandish costumes made from drapery, the outrageous performance artist strikes poses in front of a one-way mirror.
“The curtain is something that lifts, used to reinvent the self. It allows you to choose what to put on for the audience. It hides, but also empowers through the act of hiding, as you get to decide what version of yourself to present to the world,” Costinas explains.
Other artists use curtain as a material and embed messages in it. For example, Hu Yinping’s Xiao Fang (2015) weaves stories into the fabric. Long strips of stanchions – ubiquitous barriers seen everywhere during social distancing – are emblazoned with bite-sized messages of care in Chinese, such as “No matter how busy you are, don’t forget to eat regularly”.
In Stella Zhang’s 0-Viewpoint-8-1, 2 and 3 (2015), gaps and tears, reminiscent of female genitalia, are made in black fabric forcibly pulled together. It is full of tension, a code that emerges from the rumpled canvases.
It is interesting to see how such a large show unfolds across different locations, and the North Point site evokes a markedly different atmosphere. As co-curator Celia Ho says, this space is immersive and has more “points of activation” inviting visitors to smell the air, or crawl under a cloth.
“At Soho House, you have a full view of the city, you’re much more in control of your place, whereas [in the North Point space], you’re confined within a universe created by [the artists and curators], It’s interesting to have two different modes of navigating the exhibition,” Costinas adds.
Upon entering the space, one is enveloped by the scent of herbs and spices.
It comes from Trancing Lap Hung (2021) where Tan Jing imagines her grandfather reincarnated as a dog to pursue memories of his youth spent in the subtropics of Thailand before being repatriated to China in the 1950s. A few paw prints on the floor guide to a beaded curtain, made with herbs, soil and laced with a sweet aroma.
But it’s not the first thing you see in the space, as eyes are inevitably drawn to Metzger’s Historic Photographs: To Crawl Into-Anschluss (1996), which invites visitors to literally crawl under a gigantic yellow cloth to come face to face with an image of Jewish people who were forced to scrub the streets of Vienna in 1938.
In the case of Chantal Akerman’s Walking Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge (Part 2) (2004), the actual opening of a door by the audience parallels the artist’s discovery of her maternal grandmother’s adolescent diary, discovered after her death at Auschwitz, with fragments of the records reassembled in the video installation.
And in Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (prototype, 2021), Cici Wu creates a sculptural lantern that supposedly “captures shadows”, evoking the early days of modern cinema. Mysterious and fragile, the device forms a sensory link between the viewer and images on the screen that represent the artist’s investigation into histories that “resist the nationalist and colonial narratives of mainstream cinema”, the catalogue says.
In contemporary culture, some curtains require a peeling away of, others need to be felled, but perhaps there are also those whose very presence, as mediator, allows us to reach certain, albeit fragmented, truths.
“Curtain” is on view at Para Site Art Space and 22/F Soho House until July 25. For opening hours and addresses, visit the Para Site website .This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: ‘Curtain’ exhibition reveals the power of a piece of cloth
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