Master Project

Rui Yuan

Bio Art Archive Drawer – Absence of the Authority


7-15 July 2018
OnCurating Project Space

Artists: Bienvenue Publishing, Egami Etsu, Sara Rutz, Yongjian Su
Curator: Rui Yuan

“Bio Art Archive Drawer (BAAD) – Absence of the Authority” brings together various Bio Art and new media artworks that utilize different approaches to address the topic. Namely, BAAD reflects human social civilisation and sciences by blending contemporary art and anthropology presentation methods. The exhibition will present its totality by a large amount of articles, images, videos, documentaries and prints, which would develop narrative influxes. The influxes would shift and change based on the way that the viewer explores the exhibition space. The international exhibition consists of materials in relation to the practices of a graphic design duo, new media artists and Bio-artist from Switzerland, Japan and China.

The establishment of the BAAD will enable artists to create small, close-knit networks, platform their works, and have their work understood through new angles. Arranged and displayed by using methods associated with contemporary art curation, the materials will be transformed from pure data into visually expressive art works. BAAD aims to arouse audience’s diachronic and design thinking about the nature of biology, art, and naturally Bio Art itself. It dematerialises the art object and provides an open-ended messaging platform in which viewers are prompted to draw their own conclusions as to the “message” of the material. Furthermore, it demystifies this highly specialised genre of art, making it accessible and tangible.

Curating acts as a mediator instead of its classical discourse-defining role during the BAAD exhibition. The exhibition will provide open answers and evolving status to allow the audience to abandon the ideologism or dependence on the curator’s intention. The exhibition does not emphasize the unimportance of the curator’s stand, but encourages the audience to read this exhibition in the “removal of the authority“ manner. During this exhibition, the audience does not need to mind if its perception is correct, or if it is close to the original intention of the author and the essence of the work. Be bold and open.