PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai 2025 | CHEN QIULIN

Created during COVID-19, Drown is an integrated project with live interactions and episodic performances, all of which make subtle connections to the geopolitical confinement of the global epidemic. Drown continues the artist's 20-year exploration of tofu as a medium and cultural symbol. Through tofu, an iconic oriental food, the work projects the artist's reflections on her local culture and identity. Compared to the “One Hundred Surnames” series created between 2003-2015, the artist tries to let the concepts of “anti-monumentality” or “anti-caste order” take a backseat to a high degree of integration of performance art, sound art, video and photography. By highly integrating performance art, sound art, video and photography, the artist continues to push forward a soft and fragile aesthetic system intertwined with different sensory systems, such as sight, smell, taste and hearing. Accompanied by the female performer's physical experimentation in the wooden installation - her body is constantly touching, intertwining and confronting with the tofu, revealing the vulnerability and resistance of contemporary society from a female perspective. At the same time, the artist abandoned the conventional live or post-soundtrack and invited sound artists to perform according to the artist's intention and the feeling of the live performance. The work captures the dramatic changes brought about by live dancers in holographic sound, interacting with body language to improvise, capture and create sound, and ultimately creating a holographic text of the live sound of the work Drown.