Detail: Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie, chief curator
of the last edition of the Shanghai
Biennale, will present at the Querini
Stampalia Foundation a selection of new
works on the occasion of his first solo
exhibition in Italy during the 55th
edition of the Venice Art Biennale.
Through a comprehensive and diverse
range of works, the artist will explore
the complex dynamics that outline space
and time routes between the East and the
West, the Past and the Present.
Considered a real intellectual in the
Renaissance meaning of the word, Qiu
Zhijie is all in one—a thinker, an
artist, a cartographer and even an
archivist of knowledge. Nobody could
explore these intricate paths that span
parallel across time and space better
than he.
As an artist Qiu Zhijie defines his
modus operandi as total art, centered on
the awareness that artistic creation
cannot be uprooted from the historical
and cultural background.
This exhibition of Qiu Zhijie's is the
first stage of New Roads, a three-year
international cooperative project
between China and Italy, born from the
will to create a platform for
intercultural dialogue through
contemporary art.
There are three institutions involved:
the Aurora Museum of Shanghai and the
Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice,
which, through the critical intervention
intercultural and artistic mediation of
Arthub Asia, will compare their history
and their collections, analyzing and
expanding them with projects
commissioned from Eastern and Western
contemporary artists.
The site-specific works by Qiu Zhijie,
as well as all the previous contemporary
art projects included in the program
Sustaining the future and developed at
Fondazione Querini Stampalia since the
year 2000, are designed in relation to
the objects within the permanent
collection. In this case, the comparison
and analysis will extend beyond the
usual project, building conceptual and
stylistic bridges between the works of
the Venetian foundation and the valuable
collection of ancient Asian Art at the
Aurora Museum of Shanghai.
Transcending the geographical distance
and exposing the prejudices built over
centuries of cultural exchange between
the East and the West, the mapping
approach used by Qiu Zhijie trails,
discovers and highlights the connections
between the two museums along with those
between Venice and Shanghai, two cities
sharing many features, including their
intrinsic attitudes towards external
influences and exchange, typical of all
places overlooking the sea.
The title of the exhibition, The Unicorn
and the Dragon, A map of the collections
of Fondazione Querini Stampalia and
Aurora Museum, is inspired by Umberto
Eco's conference—"They were looking for
unicorns"—held at Peking University in
1993. The renowned scholar, analyzing
the mechanisms that arise when
discovering and comparing different
cultures, pointed out a tendency that
has existed for centuries to classify
symbols, ideas and concepts of foreign
cultures by adapting them to our
cultural reference system.
The new series of maps by Qiu Zhijie,
some of them produced on paper using an
ancient Chinese technique of dab rubbing
and others drawn with ink directly on
site, will expose these very bizarre
misunderstandings that stem from the
relations of cultural exchange between
Italy and China and in a broader sense
between the East and the West.
These hybrids of mystical significance
will be represented by Qiu with a series
of sculptures of mythologycal animals
created by the combination of images
sourced from two warehouses of memory,
such as the collections of the Querini
Stampalia and the Aurora Museum.