Countries: China

The artist is the acute antenna of the age. Chinese Artist and Curator Li Xinmo, as well as German Artist and Artistic Director Roland von der Emden have planned the international art invitational exhibition entitled “Map and Territory” at Beijing Geely University. The two curators have invited artists from different countries with multiple identities, nationalities and cultural backgrounds to discuss this issue. Their works cover installation, photography, imaging, painting and theater art, which reveals that curators try to step across the “a spiritual map that is difficult to cross” by means of art and through art.

The exhibition locates in the library of Beijing Geely University. Entering the library building, a tall and open spiral structure stands impressively in the middle of the hall. This is the installation work “Personal Territory” by Swiss Artist Franziska Greber. The audience can walk into the installation. In the process of walking into the installation, the audience can see the questions written on the wall of the installation body sequentially: what is the content of my personal territory? What do I wish to add? What do I fear of losing? The deeper you go, the darker the light gets, the lower the question displays on the wall, which is a metaphor for going inward to the heart. Through the question of personal territory, it leads to thinking about the desire and fear deep in the heart, and the fear is often hidden in the deepest place – the deeper the more human.  The carpets under the spiral extending out of the spiral with the chairs surrounding outside, hint the connection within and outside of one’s territory and the communication with others. By means of self-questioning psychological analysis, the author explores the boundary of personal territory and its internal causes, as well as the possibility of communication between personal territory and others. The Artist touches on an essential problem of personal territory: fear of strangers is often one of the deep reasons for setting up personal barriers toward outside world. Fear seeks safety, builds barriers, resists change, thus, life repeats itself monotonously. Fear any unpredictable, incapable new life. Fear presses us inside our boundaries, whether there is happiness or sadness, it is a safe place to be, because it has been experienced by us, and it makes us blind to the reality we face. Hold on to the “safe” past in your territory to avoid the approaching of the present, and delay the passage of time. However, tomorrow will come and will correct what we have seen. Therefore, it is not desire, but courage, that allows us to face the things that are strange and surprise us, and to bear our existence more broadly. Desire is an exclusive egocentric feeling to possess something else for its own purpose, which just reduces the diversity of existence.