The tetrachromatic dream of the dichromats

2018

Exhibition （Paris）

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YAO Qingmei immerses the visitors toa spectacular, parodic and ambiguous installation.

The exhibition consists ina triptych of metaphorical videos revealing the doubts of the artist and her skeptical view of current political patterns : can dichromates imagine a tetrachromatic world?

 

The video « Dichotomic Flag » showsa game of « pavement-painting » leading to a « canvas-flag ». As a nod to the Action Painting movement, «the canvas is an arena », a common territory absorbingsymbolic, subversive and sporting gestures. This painting becomes the set of the « Chameleon » show where the magician-politician imitates empty, purely gestural political speeches. This wordless speech is accompanied by a "Lexical Symphony" composed of six video portraits similar to the electoral advertisement. The lexical repetition, obsessive, takes the actors' bodies as far as exhaustion and empties the meaning of the words.

 

The art of Yao Qingmei constantly switches between the game and the engagement, the spectacle and the political discourse, the playing body and the acting body, the speech and the gesture, the individual and the collective, the real and the imaginary.

 

The nuanced bipolarity alternates red and blue. Will she succeed one day inescapingfrom this spectrum of colors to tetrachromaticnew horizons?

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