Silk is a symbol of both nature and of luxury and materialism. In a dramatic multimedia installation by Qiu Anxiong, a silk moth escapes its silken cocoon prison and returns to nature.
A huge empty silkworm cocoon - this one of resin - lies on the floor in the lobby at Bund 18. The silk moth has flown, fleeing the high-end boutiques in the temple of materialism.
There's more about the silkworm, materialism and the meaning of life up on the fourth floor in the Bund 18 Creative Center.
Titled "Void and Existence," Qiu Anxiong's solo exhibition features video, sound, painting and sculpture - he put it all together in a moth. The works, he says "reveal something that resists the erosion of time."
The installation features the "song" of the silk moth and the chimes of other insects and sounds from nature, like flowing water. Three huge screens feature tranquil scenes from the countryside.
Qiu, a professor of new media at Shanghai Normal University, says his exhibition contrasts sharply with the values embodied by the building's fashionable outlets and trendy cafe on the first floor - luxe and materialism.
Qiu says the empty silkworm cocoon represents rebirth; the hollow cocoon is titled "Nostalgia."
"When the silkworm moth flies out from the shell, it liberates itself from the bondage of the cocoon," says Qiu who is highly critical of rampant consumerism. The imagery of the silkworm symbolizes precious, luxurious silk.
In the exhibition area, a fabricated two-meter-high tree hangs inverted from the ceiling. Two oil paintings feature a tree, symbol of life. An upside-down tree, however, represents inverted, or perverted, values.
At first Qiu thought of using a real tree, but a friend persuaded him that it was wrong to destroy one tree on earth simply for one exhibition.
Qiu's artwork explores contrasting and sometimes conflicting traditions of the East and the West, says Sunhee Kim, curator of the show.
Born in Sichuan Province in 1972, Qiu studied painting at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute, furthered his studies at the University of Kassel in Germany, and returned to China in 2003.
After stepping into both Eastern and Western cultures, he has carried on his own analysis of the two, especially of their different systems of thought.
The depth of Chinese culture and its meditative philosophical nature have stimulated Qiu's creative process and helped him to use his Chinese culture to its best. His works subtly evoke the viewer's common understandings, as he believes everything evolves from past history.
"I don't think that contemporary art should be revolutionary and overthrow everything old," he concludes. "What should happen in art has already happened, and it is just a circle."
(Shanghai Daily March 13, 2008)