SHIXUAN YAN

Yan Shixuan reveals the foibles of our desires by exposing them as archeological remnants. She creates an odd juxtaposition by contrasting the useless plaster casts of traces that informed her past such as a yo-yo, a cassette tape, a tin mug, a ping pong paddle, a calculator, an abacus, a plastic flute, an alarm clock, to name but a few, held fast inside the frame with the actual objects placed upon a pedestal. The relationship between the real and the surreal is heightened, specifically due to the ambiguous nature of their propinquity. The relationship of the actual and its sculpture shadow is further complicated by the insertion of photographic images of two empty school classrooms and two local neighborhood commodity shops. Both places allude to places from Yan’s childhood. When she was young, the artist was brought up in two separate cities and cultures - Jiayi, Taiwan and Zhuhai, the Special Economic Zone in Guangdong Province of southern China. Yan admits she had to struggle for her identity, attempting to reconcile the disparate languages and cultures of two different territories of her childhood. Time inside a Box (2016) serves, not only as a personal capsule of saved memento from Yan’s childhood, but it also acts as a diary of contrasts. The real paraphernalia and their mirror-image replicas relay the tale of two cities that is officially asserted as one nation yet continues to operate under different socio-political contingencies.