SHI YUNYUAN

i Yunyuan’s 66 Writings (2016) is based upon the artist’s extensive research of Beijing’s old city wall, a series of inner and outer fortifications established during the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) to keep foreigner at bay. The inner wall was taken down in 1965 to construct the present day Second Ring Road. What remains are not only fragments of the wall but also incomplete understanding about the wall and its many gates. To reinstate its memory, Shi collected 66 different pieces of passages from orally transcribed and written accounts by scholars, architects, government officials, journalists and business people who argued to retain or demolish the city wall. The artist eventually amassed an archive of near-forgotten oral and written viewpoints, which she re-inscribed for reflection in her calligraphic series 66 Writings (2016). In 1-16/2016 Manuscripts (2016), Shi has constructed her own vision of a city wall on panels of mounted xuan paper, which cover two corners of an adjoining wall. By meticulously re-writing in pencil the information she has collected, the remnants of the memory in regards to the original wall can literally be re-read and re-engaged by the viewers.