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A typically Dutch sky, blue with woolly white clouds. Two people in an apartment with a large piece of Chinese embroidery hanging above the sofa. Nocturnal cityscapes with towering apartment buildings. The video installation that Yiyi Chen (1989) is showing at Prospects, interlaces images that, at first sight, appear to have little in common. Together they tell a story about transition, urban transformation, and migration.
Chen grew up in the Chinese city of Changsha in the 1990s, a time when China started opening itself up to the rest of the world. She witnessed how her city changed dramatically during this period. The old city centre was replaced by skyscrapers and shopping malls, a process that involved the displacement of many original residents. Her grandparents too were forced to move. The transformations are still continuing. Having moved to the Netherlands in 2015, Chen hardly recognizes her city each time she returns to it.
In her video, Chen compares this urbanization process and the forced displacement of her grandparent to her own self-elected displacement, from China to the Netherlands. Associatively, images of the Dutch sky that sometimes weighs heavily on her, alternate with images of her grandparent’s apartment and Changsha’s current urban environment. The video visualizes the desire to bridge distances in both space and time. Distance and proximity frequently play a role in Chen’s videos and paintings. By depicting people and things she brings them closer while at the same time emphasizing the feeling of separation.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)