Tong Wenmin
Tong Wenmin
1989 Born in Chongqing, China. 2012 Graduated from Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chongqing Currently Works and lives in Chongqing, China.
Solo / Duo Exhibitions
2022
From South to North, Macalline Art Center, Beijing, China
Dormant Landscape: Yang Xinguang and Tong Wenmin’s Exhibition, Essence Contemporary Art Museum, Chongqing, China
2021
As if Gone from the World, OCT Boxes Art Museum, Foshan, China
2019
Emerald, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China
Escape from Discipline, Thousand Plateau Art Space, Chengdu, China
Stone, Organ Haus Art Space, Chongqing, China
2018
Castle, Dimensions Art Center, Chongqing, China
Yang Jian and Tong Wenmin, Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germany
2017
Above The Tree, Organ Haus Art Space, Chongqing, China
2016
Stars on the Earth, Rebel Art Space, Bangkok, Thailand
Fly the Wind, Xining Contemporary Art Space, Xining, China
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023
Stepping Out! – Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art, Salzburg Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria
Bread, Succulent, White Conch, HONIN Art Center, Chengdu, China
Looking at the Stars, Golden Eagle Museum of Art, Nanjing, China
2022
2022 Screening series Living in the New Century: Chinese Media Arts since 1989, Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan, Korea
Stepping Out! Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art, Gamle Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark
Transformation: The Seventh Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China
A Show About Nothing, BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou, China
Twelve Years: The Archives of Scene – UP-ON International Live Art Festival 2008-2020, Luxehills Art Museum, Wet Run, The 13th Shanghai Biennale “Bodies of Water”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China
From the mundane world Launch Exhibition of He Art Museum , He Art Museum, Foshan, China
Flicked
Flicked
Flicked is part of a long-term project From South to North Project that the artist has been working on for the past three years. One of this project’s earliest iterations was Chongqing Weeds as an early work of Tong Wenmin’s ‘Ruins Project’.
The ‘Ruins Project’, which began in 2018, focuses on the various ruins that are prevalent in cities, and through extensive fieldwork and research, the artist addresses diverse subjects including nature, architecture, memory, consumption, as well as literary and emotional space. Unlike adopting ruins as historical relics, this project is concerned with byproducts engendered from temporary ruins of urbanization.
Painted Sketch for Archive of Botanical Specimens (Sketch)
Tong Wenmin,
Acrylic paint over photograph printed on paper
130 cm x 80 cm, 2020.
In Chongqing Weeds, Tong zooms in on specific and commonplace weeds in Chongqing’s ruins, carefully identifying and categorizing their species and names, before attributing values to these insignificant individual beings.
She then paints their forms and figures in equal ratio onto the clay, and writes down their detailed location, traits, and characteristics in an encyclopedic fashion. Finally, these clay tablets are placed in a kiln at 1300 degrees, becoming fragile yet non-degradable clay plates.
In 2022, the artist spent a year collecting plants in Chongqing and Yunnan, among other places, and pressed them into specimens. She placed the plant specimens on her body, so that the sun would tan their images onto her skin.
Chongqing Weeds (Section of large-scale installation)
Tong Wenmin, Underglaze on Ceramic, 2021-present
The artist then completed a series of outdoors performance artworks in Xishuangbanna, one of which is the performance video Flicked which we exhibit here for audiences so that viewers may gain a glimpse of the long evolution of the artist’s From South to North project.
If one looks closely, one can see how the skin of the artist’s body is tattooed from the process described above of placing plant specimens on her body, so that the sun would tan their images onto her skin.
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