2019. 12. 8 - 2020. 2. 16

Opening: 4-6pm, December 8, 2019

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Linseed is delighted to present its inaugural exhibition, Yu Feifei’s solo show Facsimile Room. The exhibition will open December 8th, 2019 and run through February 16th, 2020. Facsimile Room is Yu Feifei’s ongoing project since 2016, in which the artist continues to examine and appropriate her personal and family history and artifacts, unraveling the threads of passing eras through the iteration of memories.

 

The imagery of a quintessential mid-century intellectual exemplified by the artist’s deceased grandfather is restored through the sorting of his plethora of belongings. As a shipbuilding designer and senior engineer of the New Republic of China, her grandfather’s years of journals, diaries, notes, correspondence, periodic, drawing tools, cameras, films, and even outrageously mundane objects such as hair gel and coffee spoons become the point of departure for the artist’s reconstruction of that bygone era, which eventually outlines the idiosyncrasies of her grandfather that transpire beyond his time. In dealing with the restricted materials and narratives that are the written-over and redacted texts or the images obscured by multiple duplications, the artist offers a nuanced portrait of the past generation’s self-expression in an even more restricted milieu.

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The project can be traced back to a copy of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus by the artist’s grandfather. It seems that the grandfather’s copy is rendered with his definition of beauty, perhaps along with the afterimage of the beauty he encountered in life. Having been reprinted for 33 times, this particular image of Venus almost becomes synonymous with that of the artist’s grandfather. In addition, the grandfather’s copy of the third volume of Resurrection uncannily echoes his reality, becoming a unique personal statement that reflects the political and cultural milieu back then. Given the peculiarities of his era, he rarely left any commentary in his diaries. Upon close reading, his highlights and notes come across with an astounding assurance. Upon rereading, these passages seemingly open up a conversation that transcends time and space. By sampling the family archives and multimedia reproduction, the artist attempts to subvert the paradigm of self-portrait and self-expression, exploring the displacement and overlaps in the fleeting of time.