Aranya Art Center is delighted to present Swedish artist Alina Chaiderov’s first solo exhibition in China, comprised of two newly commissioned sculptures, Core of Existence and Into Vastness, and a series of photographs. Chaiderov often chooses to work with the simplest materials and plays with the intertextuality of their physical properties and their psychological implications. Born in the former Soviet Union and exiled to Sweden with her family in the late 1980s, the artist integrates collective experience, and individual encounters, in addition to the perception and sensation of her body and the subconscious, into her works, exploring the fundamental propositions of matter, time, memory, and space.
The materials presented in this exhibition are minimal; the transparency and fragility of the glass in Core of Existence contrast with the frigid and rigid qualities of the metal support. The copper in Into Vastness is the artist’s most commonly used metal, an element that’s particularly dangerous and even deadly for a patient suffering from Wilson’s disease like her, and the intake of which in food should be carefully controlled. At the same time, the artist believes that copper pipes in infrastructure are like the veins in the human body, transporting energy throughout the city-conceived as an urban “body.” In this sense, she draws our attention to the broader social and cultural landscape through the mechanism of our bodies.
Although we may discover intertextuality between Chaiderov’s photographs and sculptures, the artist prefers to consider them two independent creative paths. The photos in this exhibition are taken by the mobile phone, which the artist compares to an extensive organ of the contemporary body. With this device, her sensitive observations allow her to capture the subtleties of everyday life promptly.
This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director of Aranya Art Center and curatorial assistant Jiang Ruoyu. The exhibition is open to the public from August 20, 2023, and will be on view until October 15.
