July 7 - September 10, 2023
Seedlings and Offsprings is an exhibition that brings together a selection of artist-in-residence alumni Xin Liu’s recent and ongoing projects. Comprising sculptures, video, virtual reality, and an outdoor installation, the presentation expands upon the artist’s explorations into space travel, vitality, mutation, and immortality.
As a way of looking into humanity’s innate desire to sustain and to perpetuate its species, Xin has created a new series of mixed-media sculptures inspired by biological and medical innovations such as cryonics and egg freezing, each designed to interfere with natural life cycles. Embedded with a cooling mechanism that causes thin layers of frost to appear on its surface, the works also reference scientists’ research into subglacial lakes in Antarctica and ice-covered oceans deep beneath the surface of moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, where probing devices search for traces of life from ancient and unknown worlds.
Another component of the exhibition is Living Distance (2019-2020), a three-part project comprising a performance conducted in outer space, a two-channel video installation, and a virtual reality experience. Partially realized during Xin’s residency at Pioneer Works, the series centers on the fantastical journey of her wisdom tooth, which traveled aboard the International Space Station before returning to Earth. Carried by a crystalline robotic sculpture engineered by the artist, the tooth metaphorically becomes a newborn entity as it enters an infinite darkness. While the video installation mixes documentary footage with dreamlike imagery of Xin’s performance, the virtual reality component allows viewers to experience the tooth’s journey from a first-hand perspective.
The artist, together with collaborator Lucia Monge, similarly sent potato seeds into Earth’s lower orbit in March 2020, initiating a series titled Unearthing Futures (2020-ongoing). Even though more than four thousand varieties of the root vegetables exist in the world, only eight types are grown commercially in the United States, and only one has been selected by the Chinese National Space Administration to be cultivated in miniature ecosystems sent to the moon.
Conceived as a response to the rise of homogeneity both in agriculture and in politics, Xin and Monge’s project casts potatoes as subjects that call for a diversified imagination of what the future can look like, particularly for space exploration in non-colonial terms. A selection of these spacefaring potatoes will be grown and harvested in Pioneer Works’s garden, where the outdoor installation will give way to a dynamic host of educational programming.
The exhibition also lays a thematic framework for a new iteration of Scientific Controversies, a programming series that brings creative minds together to celebrate the passionate spirit of scientific curiosity. Hosted by Pioneer Works Director of Science Janna Levin, the conversation will center on the topic of space colonization, and feature geneticist Christopher Mason, whose book The Next 500 Years proposes a ten-phase program that would engineer the genome so that humans can tolerate the extreme environments of outer space—with the ultimate goal of achieving human settlement of new solar systems.
Xin Liu: Seedlings and Offsprings was supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
2023年7月7日—9月10日
《幼苗和后裔》展出驻留艺术家刘昕的最新项目。该展览由雕塑、视频、虚拟实境和户外装置等组成,表现了艺术家对太空旅行、生命力、变异和不朽等命题的探求。
永续生命是人类与生俱来的愿望,艺术家创作了一系列混合媒体雕塑,其灵感来自于如冷冻术和冻卵技术等生物科学和创新医学,每一个都是对自然的生命循环的人工干预。作品嵌入一种冷却机制,使作品表面呈现薄薄的冰霜。这些作品亦参考科学家对南极洲冰川下的湖泊研究,以及环木星和土星及其卫星地表下的冰海研究,在那里,探测设备正寻找着来自古老和未知世界的生命痕迹。
展览的另一个部分是《脱离》(2019-2020),一个由三部分组成的项目:在外太空进行的表演、一个双频影像装置,以及一个虚拟实境体验。该系列的部分作品是艺术家在先锋艺术中心的驻留期间创作的,围绕她的智齿的奇幻之旅展开,该智齿曾被送往国际空间站并返回地球。由刘昕制作的晶体机器人携带,这颗牙齿被送入无限的黑暗中,隐喻了一个新生的实体的诞生。影像装置混合镜头和艺术家的梦幻表演,观众将从虚拟实境体的第一视角体验智齿的旅程。
艺术家与合作者露西娅·蒙吉 (Lucia Monge)一起,在2020年3月将土豆种子送入近地轨道,开启了一个名为《挖掘未来》(2020始,进行中)的系列。尽管世界上有四千多种根茎类蔬菜,但只有八种在美国进行商业化种植,而且只有一种被中国国家航天局选中,被送入月球的微型生态系统中进行培育。作为对农业和政治中同质化现象的回应,刘昕和蒙吉的项目将土豆作为主题,呼吁对未来的进行更多样化的想象,鼓励去殖民化空间探索。先锋艺术中心的花园里将种植和收割一部分航天培育土豆,并由户外装置起开发一系列教学项目。
该展览还为《科学论坛》的全新版本奠定了主题框架,这是一个汇集创意思维以庆祝对科学的好奇与热情的系列栏目。由先锋艺术中心科学部主任扬纳·莱文 (Janna Levi) 主持,对话将以太空殖民为主题,由遗传学家克里斯托弗·梅森 (Christopher Mason) 主讲。他的书《未来500年》提出了一个十阶段计划,该计划将改造基因组,使人类能够忍受外太空的极端环境以便实现人类在新太阳系的定居。
《刘昕:幼苗和后裔》由纽约市文化事务局与市议会合作的公共资金支持,并受到州长办公室和纽约州立法机构下的纽约州艺术委员会支持。