Chen Chieh-jen/Cao Fei in Vancouver
Chen Chieh-jen Factory 2003 (video still)
In a fast-paced, mass-produced consumer culture, it is dangerously easy to lose sight of the human side of global economies. "Nowhere But Here" brings together recent projects by Taiwan’s Chen Chieh-jen and China's Cao Fei that refocus perspective to individual and collective human scale. For Factory, Chieh-jen invites former seamstresses from a closed textile factory back to the building to re-enact their work. Filmed without sound, the slow-moving images of workers exploring the abandoned space and at work constructing garments are intercut with archival footage of the factory at the height of its production. The result is at once a bittersweet portrait of the lasting personal bonds between labourers and a subtle critique of the social impact of shifting economic realities. Fei’s video Whose Utopia? takes a similar measure of individual identities within the superstructure of global industry. In a collaborative project with workers at a Chinese light factory, she translates their histories and ambitions into songs and dances. Recorded in the factory environment, these performances offer a view of personal dreams and hard realities that, according to Fei, “resists the state of amnesia in consumer society.” To January 18. (Western Front, 303 E. 8th Ave., Vancouver, BC.)
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
