In Practice: Zishi Han and Wei Yang at Sculpture Center, New York

For In Practice, Zishi Han and Wei Yang present a new phase of their ongoing collaborative research project into historical Chinese homoerotic literature, intertwining multiple narratives that explore queer existences in China and of Chinese diaspora. Emerging from their shared interests in the power dynamics inherent in desire and intimacy, the artists’ point of departure is their own translation of
the late Ming dynasty anthology of homoerotic stories 弁而釵 (Biàn ér chai) by the pseudonymous “The Moon-Heart Master of the Drunken West Lake,” the title of which suggests the action of a man removing his ceremonial headgear and donning a woman’s hairpin.

Han and Yang’s performance-and-video works loosely interpret and transposes the text’s storylines (notably, of an affair between a student and a disguised academician, expressed here in conversations between the student and a close companion) to dwell amidst the blurry boundary between the fictional and the biographical, while drawing on a variety of Chinese historical and contemporary cultural practices, such as poetry, Chinese Opera, literati landscape painting, Danmei literature, C-pop and reality TV shows.

Their exhibition includes a new video alongside sculptures of an overhead net and a fallen gong, creating a visual pun (legible in Mandarin) that plays on the idiomatic impasse of being caught between “two nets,” one in the sky and one on the ground.

at Sculpture Center, New York
until March 24, 2025