Oriental Riff/t: After Chinoiserie – Erika Tan

Friday, March 31st 2017 – 14:00-15:00

The presentation takes as its focus the artists‘ 3 part work Sensing Obscurity: I, II, III.
Filmed in an English Manor House, now the property of the English National Trust, the work explores Edward Saids’ notion of the contrapunctal, forging connections between the contemporary global dominance of China on the worlds stage to the remnants of Chinoiserie and traces of Europe’s previous fascinations with China. Chinoiserie aesthetics of cut and paste are re-employed as a method to produce new connections and question the apparent continuities in its form.

Erika Tan is an artist whose work has evolved received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movements of ideas, people and things. Her work arising out of processes of research and responses to the unravelling of facts, fictions, and encounters related to events, locations, audiences and specifics that may already exist. Her work has been exhibited internationally including The Tate Artist & Empire Exhibition (National Gallery Singapore 2017), Come Cannibalise Us, Why Don’t You (NUS Museum Singapore 2013-4), Double Visions (He Xiangning Museum of Art, Shenzen, China, 2014), The Busan Biennale (2014), The Samsung Art Plus Prize (BFI London, 2011); There Is No Road (LABoral, Spain 2010); Thermocline of Art (ZKM, Germany 2007); Around The World in Eighty Days (South London Gallery / ICA 2007); The Singapore Biennale (2006); Cities on the Move (Hayward Gallery, London).
Erika studied Social Anthropology and Archaeology at Kings College, Cambridge; Film Directing at The Beijing Film Acade teaches in the faculty of Fine Art (4D Pathway) in Central Saint Martins School of Art, University of the Arts, London.