25 August – 25 November 2009
At the centre of Yingmei Duan’s performance art is her exploration of human instincts, longings, and dark desires. She examines the processes of society and questions its conventions and behaviours.
Duan is an inquisitive observer who asks questions of all facets of life in order to continuously learn and develop. She often works impulsively and spontaneously develops performances as situational experiments, but she can also plan her performances with an intense attention to detail. She loves to interact with the public and likes to work with artists and people from all areas of life. Her artworks are works in progress, and are often stretched over long periods of time. She often performs sleeping in a melancholic dream world, or as someone sick or dead.
Since 2003 Duan has been realising different performances through installations, in which the artist becomes a vital component. Influenced by the controversial German film/theatre director Christoph Schlingensief and her experiences of different cultures, Duan has begun to interact her live performances with different social groups.
Having grown up in China, Duan has lived in Germany for nearly 10 years. She has experienced societies differing attitudes to across diverse cultures. The basis of her work at Chinese Arts Centre will explore her family’s negative attitude towards her career as an artist. During her residency she will investigate how art is taught in the UK by observing school children. Duan will discuss her observations with her family in back in China throughout the residency via the internet. These communications exploring the convergence between art and life form part of a work Duan commenced in 2008, ‘The Circle Dream’.
During her residency, Duan will also continue her previous practice of performance installation. She intends to develop a series of works derived from her encounters in Manchester. Constructed within the Breathe Residency space, the studio will be open for a set period and the public are recommended to visit daily to gain a full experience.
Born in 1969 in China, Yingmei Duan is part of the Chinese avant-garde, and worked as a painter for many years, living in the legendary art district of Beijing’s East Village. In 1995 she participated in the performance “To add one meter to an anonymous mountain”, which is considered to be one of the classics of Chinese modern art. She became a pure performance artist under the influence of Marina Abramovic, with whom she studied at the HBK Braunschweig in Germany from 2000 to 2004. There, she also worked for one year with the film-maker and action artist Christoph Schlingensief. In the last fifteen years Duan has made her name in numerous national and international exhibitions, festivals and workshops through her remarkable thought provoking and emotional performance art.
This project is supported by Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony
