Shen Yuan

Shen Yuan's dramatic sculptural installation Un Matin Du Monde re-created the entire roof-top of a traditional Chinese house.

Using terracotta clay tiles in the style of the Fujian Province, the roof was adorned with spices and dried duck, and housed the sounds of everyday life.

Un Matin Du Monde was a memento of the artist's Chinese hometown, directly transplanted into Chisenhale's large East End space. However, the forms, sounds and odours of Un Matin Du Monde were essentially fragments, unloaded from Shen Yuan's own biographical narrative. The work not only embodied questions of identity: it was a concrete display of the critical global issues of displacement and transmigration.

Shen Yuan's expansive practice ranges from monumental site-specific interventions to intimate, visceral objects. Shen Yuan is a Chinese-born artist who moved to live and work in Paris in 1990. Her recent work, including Un Matin Du Monde, is manifest with observations on her cultural environment.

This major solo exhibition at Chisenhale was produced in collaboration with the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), and Arnolfini, Bristol, where Shen Yuan showed a range of work in a complementary solo show. The project was accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph, published by inIVA.

Shen Yuan
Un Matin Du Monde