Jun Yang
Friday, 7 May 2010
Work from Paris Syndrome.
“Jun Yang’s work reflects his background as an immigrant, an experience shared in various ways by millions of people in the age of globalisation. Born in China, but migrating to Europe as a child, the artist went through various stages of ‘naturalising’ himself, a process in which he discovered not simply what it is to be an immigrant (legal or illegal), but also how one is acculturated into a ‘European citizen’, and what it costs to be a European (born or naturalised), or in fact to be a social being in general. His work thus addresses specific issues of otherness, but usually from a much wider angle that bears on everyone’s life. Camoufalge – Talk Like Them, Look Like Them, for example, is a documentary film starting from a fictive interview with an illegal immigrant and ending with a deep analysis fo citizenship which moves from fashion, to speech acts, up to the politics of terror. Drawing on his own experience of the ‘right’ things to say and to do, and the hope of security, safety and prosperity which brings immigrants to a new land, Yang plays with his name and appearance, and explores ideas of landscape, home, architecture and social structure – mostly with quirk humour and intimacy.” – Manray Hsu; in: Liverpool Biennial, 2006, p. 110