MA QIUSHA

text source: Beijing Commune website

Collective and individual experiences are being modified and twisted in our quick pace of contemporary life. Starting from China’s opening up in the late 1970s, the rapid modernization of culture and economy has been drastically breaking off the link between us and our past experience. Traces of life and experiences have been unceasingly wiped off and replaced by new ones, and the space we are living in is losing its peculiarity and become timeless. In this process, interpersonal experience and also their relationship towards everyday life are also becoming abstract and illusory; this turns our experience, with which we connect ourselves spiritually to the world, fragile and ineffective. Ma Qiusha, a young artist born and bought up in the 1980s, expresses, in an individualized way, her own perspective towards the collective anxiety and uncertainty among contemporary life in China.

In Ma Qiusha’s art, we can see how delicately and sensitively she tries to reveal hidden worries. Intimacy in family members and love relationship is always one of the major concerns in her works. She questions so much about her own experience; she contemplates on those seemingly strong but fragile relationships. From her earlier video work “From 4th Pingyu Li to 4th Tianqiao Bei Li” to the three-channel video work “We” showing in this exhibition, we can see that Ma leaves the people in the video in a timeless blank space devoid of any distinguishable elements, presenting her hesitation, doubt and uncertainty in any kind of intimacy with her unique tender and sentimental approach. In “Snow White” we can feel that Ma is expressively challenging the standardized “perfection in life” by the two different video of “Snow White” dancing in the music box.

However, at the same time, we can feel that Ma is trying to resist and minimize the feeling of insecurity and uncertainty. Once you enter the gallery, you may notice there is wall-sized thin paper moved by even light wind. The artist tries to transfigure fragile hairs into a durable web to achieve a sense of certainty. And the necklace made of the fallen teeth of her grandfather can be regarded Ma’s search of “certainty” of intimacy in the dimension of time. Maybe the artist is rebuilding the faith to experience in life and its validity through these attempts.

Snowhite, 2 channels video, 3’30” 2009



Gift, mixed media, 25cm x 76cm 2009



Intimate, 3 channels video, 2’00” 2009



Snowhite, 2 channels video, 2'00, 2009


Exhibition dates: 2009.09.19—2009.11.09
Venue: Beijing Commune
北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路4号798艺术区内 北京公社
T: +86 10 84562862
E-mail: info@beijingcommune.com
Website: www.beijingcommune.com