Collective Subconscious by Yin Xiuzhen
on 2/4/10
The Trend Boutique really like this site-specific installation by renowned Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, it really represents for us some of the trends we are seeing filtering through for Spring Summer 2011 & Autumn Winter 2011-12 for incorporating very obvious recycled clothes & fabrics into new hybrid products.
Collective Subconscious is a '38-foot-long minivan that has been bisected and lengthened via a tube covered in a patchwork of secondhand garments and set upon rows of tiny wheels'. The installations and sculptures created by Yin Xiuchen, for the Projects 92 exhibition for MOMA, represent an opportunity to 'bridge the past and the present, the environmental and the personal'.
Collective Subconscious Installation by Yin Xiuzhen Image Courtesy of MOMA
What we also think is very current, but also very cute & quirky about the installation is that a limited number of visitors can delve inside the caterpillar-like sculpture, take a seat on the stools provided and listen to a very popular Chinese pop song “Beijing Beijing” (2007) by Wang Feng. For us reminiscent of when you were kids and those long car journeys listening to endless cheesy pop music whilst fighting with your siblings, or even making & sitting in cardboard boxes pretending they were cars.
Collective Subconscious Installation by Yin Xiuzhen Image Courtesy of MOMA
Yin often works with found and 'repurposed' textiles, and this installation uses clothing taken from friends, family, and strangers, which for the artist have 'the power to evoke memory, retain human experience, and convey time and place'. It is exactly these elements that we feel make this installation very relevent in terms of an aesthetic visual reference point for forthcoming trends.
This large scale sculpture also uses the Songhuajiang minivan, which before the days of widespread car ownership in China used to be commandeered as a taxi. Dubbed by the Chinese as xiao mian (“little loaf of bread”) because this type of minivan was seen as a status symbol for those who were wealthy enough to own or hail one. The artist has taken this particular part of the sculpture to reflect 'the rapid social and environmental change in urban China, as communal vehicles have given way to private car ownership, and shared communist ideals have been eclipsed by individual material success'.
Collective Subconscious Installation by Yin Xiuzhen Image Courtesy of MOMA
Although long established as an artist, The Trend Boutique also see major exhibitions by Chinese artists as further evidence of the larger macro trend of us looking to the East rather than the West as a key point of reference whether that be on an economical or artistic level.
The Trend Boutique also love some of Yin's other work including her 'Portable City' exhibited at the Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney last year and 'Supermarket' presented some years ago.
