Continuing our June Summer Session theme of labor, today we bring you this review that deals with gendered, often invisible labor. Author Luise Guest explores the work of several contemporary Chinese artists using embroidery in revolutionary ways. This article was originally published on January 10, 2014. Mao Zedong once said that revolution is not a dinner party. Less famously, he said it is not embroidery, either. Interestingly,[…..]

For Labor Day weekend, we bring you this piece from the archives that deals with gendered, often invisible labor—the kind not celebrated on national labor days. Luise Guest explores the work of several contemporary Chinese women artists using embroidery in revolutionary ways. This review was originally published on January 10, 2014. Mao Zedong once said that revolution is not a dinner party. Less famously, he said[…..]

The word commune, whether used as a noun or a verb, has complex connotations. From earnest Utopianism to grim, state-enforced collectivism; from familial relationships and networks to our connection with the natural world—all of these possible associations are present in the new show at Sydney’s White Rabbit Gallery of Contemporary Chinese Art. From Judith Neilson’s impressive collection, curator Bonnie Hudson has selected works by twenty-three artists.[…..]

Mao Zedong once said that revolution is not a dinner party. Less famously, he said it is not embroidery, either. Interestingly, however, some female contemporary Chinese artists have chosen to work with thread and textiles—and embroidery—in experimental, maybe even revolutionary ways. From Lin Tianmiao’s overt exploration of sexuality, fecundity, and the aging and decay of the body, to Yin Xiuzhen’s use of the embodied memories[…..]

Things are not quite what they seem in ‘Double Take’ at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney. The exhibition presents some new works and others which have been seen before but deserve re-examination. A heap of porcelain sunflower seeds, a shiny Harley Davidson which turns out, on closer inspection, to be a bicycle, and the doorway of a Beijing apartment which reveals itself to be[…..]

Initially I suspected the title of the 18th Biennale of Sydney, the trendily lower case ‘all our relations’, might be one of those curatorial conceits that work better as an intellectual device in the abstract than in the physical reality of the exhibition. I was wrong.  Joint artistic directors Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster have successfully created a coherent and evocative series of narratives[…..]