SHANGHAI.- Prada presents “Distance of the Moon,” an exhibition by Shuang Li (b. 1990, China) with the support of Fondazione Prada. The exhibition will be on view from 6 November 2024 to 12 January 2025 at Prada Rong Zhai, a 1918 historic residence in Shanghai restored by Prada and reopened in October 2017. “Distance of the Moon” is Li’s first solo institutional exhibition in Asia and features a series of new works conceived especially for Prada Rong Zhai.
As stated by Shuang Li, “Communication and technology have always inspired my works. When communication can only happen digitally, technology and algorithms become draconian, where everyone is flattened into pixels, and physical bodies are rendered helpless.
Communicating with loved ones, especially parents, has always been challenging and it becomes harder in this context. All of the tools that were supposed to make communication easier—instant messengers, video calls, stickers— have lost their magic, and actually create more distance. Words seem to lose their meaning when sent digitally. Texting became frustrating; sometimes, it even became a chore. Words are sent, but nothing is communicated… Every attempt at communication seems to end up as miscommunication. I grew up in a typical East Asian household, with a typical intergenerational tension exacerbated by the biopolitical measurements in the era of the one-child policy. In this new installation, I am shining a light into the shadows of technological ‘progress’.”
Shuang Li’s work encompasses various artistic languages, including performance, interactive websites, sculpture, moving images and multimedia installations. Her work, deeply rooted in the contemporary digital landscape, focuses on the diverse forms of interaction and intimacy between the medium and its users, as well as between the mediums themselves. In particular, Li highlights the way various forms of technology both interact with us and themselves, as part of a globalized communication system that regulates our bodies and desires.
Stemming from the artist’s own experience growing up in China under the historical period of the one-child policy, the exhibition “Distance of the Moon” delves into the dilemma of communication in the highly mediated reality we live in today, as well as the complicated mother-child relationship. Starting with the artist’s personal challenges in exchanging emotions within the household, the exhibition unfolds by highlighting the complexities of maternal bonds through a multi-dimensional narrative. At the heart of the exhibition lies a lost letter to Shuang Li’s mother, translated into a site-specific light and sound display, thereby transcending into the ethereal.
The title Distance of the Moon comes from Italo Calvino’s book Cosmicomics. Its opening story with the same title describes a prehistorical time when the gravity between the moon and the earth was different than today. At one point during their orbits, they would get really close to each other, and people on the earth would take out a ladder to climb up to the moon to collect something called moon milk. One night, when people were on the moon as usual, gravity suddenly changed, drawing the moon far away from the earth. Amidst the chaos, some people managed to jump back to earth before it was too far, while others remained on the moon forever. Li found a lot of comfort in this story during the pandemic while stuck in Europe, unable to travel home.
The domestic and historic spaces of Prada Rong Zhai offer an architectural and decorative dialogue between Chinese and Western traditions and host new works, including light and sound installations and resin objects, as well as a video produced during the pandemic.
One of these new installations, titled With a Trunk of Ammunition too (2024), combines the form of a large-scale windchime and a chandelier, in which lights blink chaotically, translating a letter in telegraph code, as if it is “speaking into the air” to quote the title of John Durham Peters’ seminal book on communication. A sound piece made in collaboration with Chinese DJ and producer Hyph11e accompanies this installation and other chandelier-like works, which explore the ambiguity and complexity of language in communication processes, orchestrating a mesmerized play of lights and shadows.
The works made with semitransparent resin encase various materials, including fabric, beads, prints on vinyl, wires, electric cables, and found objects. They crystalize fleeting memories, personal desires, and intimate regrets in permanent and solid structures, while at the same time taking on the look of a phone screen. Even though Li’s work is rooted in technology, it is also rebellious against the techno-system in its essence. Li actively seeks out and embraces lo-fi glitches that have the potential to disrupt or even break down the technological system. Contrary to concrete forms, resin lends the works a liquid-like surface, as if they are submerged in water. Some of them, such as Shackles (2024), include photography printed on mesh in the background, with found objects and cables, giving images and screens a new materiality. Other works featuring large quantities of pearls, such as Kingslayer (2024), appear to be made up of pixels forming a screen, alluding to the formation and mutation between the screen and the physical.
The video Déjà Vu (2022) features an orchestrated performance with twenty people dressed like the artist on the occasion of a previous exhibition opening in Shanghai, which she could not attend due to Covid travel restrictions. This video relates to the artist’s experience of the pandemic and conveys the sense of physical distance and displacement, as well as the inefficiency of language. The video explores the story of a town that is completely silent. At the beginning, people start to forget words, and as a result, they mix objects together... an apple can be a pear, a pear can be a turtle. As the video progresses, it becomes harder and harder for the characters to form complete sentences, and ultimately, when they open their mouth, they can’t utter a single sound.
Another chandelier installation, Distance of the Moon (2024), is an interpretation of Li and her mother’s conversation on Wechat during the pandemic, translated into light. In the form of light, language and the meaning it carries seem to be lost forever, while the only thing that remains are its signals.
The last work in the exhibition, Stolen Time (2024), features two clocks installed back-to-back, one set to Shanghai time and the other Geneva time. Resembling a hotel front desk signaling time difference, the time marked on the Shanghai clock shows the time of the flight Li took to leave in 2020, while the time marked on the Geneva clock depicts the time of the flight she took when returning after the pandemic and travel restrictions eased. The time ‘stolen’ here marks the personal ending of the pandemic for Li, but mentally and collectively, its aftermath remains unsettled.
Shuang Li (b.1990, Wuyi Mountains, China) received her MA in Media Studies from New York University in 2014. Shuang Li currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Geneva, Switzerland.
Recent solo shows include “I’m Not”, Swiss Institute, New York, United States (2024); “Forever”, Peres Projects, Milan, Italy (2023); “Death Star”, Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon, Portugal (2023); “nobody’s home”, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2022); “Among Us”, Cherish, Geneva, Switzerland (2021); “Exit Wound”, Callie’s, Berlin, Germany (2020); “I Want to Sleep More but by Your Side”, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2020); “Intro to Civil War”, Open Forum, Berlin, Germany (2019); “If Only the Cloud Knows”, Sleepcenter, New York, United States (2018); “Comment il s’appelle”, Lab 47, Beijing, China (2016).
Recent group exhibitions include Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2024 (BIM’24): “A Cosmic Movie Camera”, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva, Switzerland (2024); Whitney Biennial 2024: “Even Better Than the Real Thing”, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, United States (2024); Out of Place, Beijing Commune, Beijing, China (2024); “Paraventi”, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; “Cosmos Cinema”: The 14th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2023); “Inner Voices and Exterior Visions”, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2023); RAM Highlights 2022:” The Good Life”, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2022); “The Milk of Dreams”, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2022).
