Lily & Honglei Art Studio’s new video art piece Crossroads (十字坡) will be premiered at the next Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin held on March 13-19, 2017 in Paris at Gaîté Lyrique.
Still of “Crossroads,” painting and animation by Lily & Honglei Art Studio
Crossroads is a three-part animated series. Aesthetically, the series mixes the imagery of classical painting with socialist propaganda art, while its narrative fuses the idioms of Greek mythology with that of traditional Chinese ghost tales. The piece offers insight into many facets of China’s political and social condition, shedding light on the country’s decades-long struggle between westernization and insulation.
We’re so honored and pleased to join NYFA Fellows this year. Under the category of Interdisciplinary Work, our portfolio comprises of multimedia projects that utilize VR, AR and video installations reflecting on the complex reality in China and its global implication.
Video still of “Elegy of the Middle Kingdom,” Lily & Honglei art studio
The New York Foundation for the Arts has announced the recipients of their 2015 Artists’ Fellowships. Awarded since 1985, the fellowships are reserved for artists living in New York state and are given out as unrestricted cash grants of $7,000 across fifteen categories over the course of three years.
The current round of fellowships were given out in the areas of fiction, folk/traditional arts, interdisciplinary work, painting, and video/film. Recipients include Jaimie Warren and Molly Lowe in the interdisciplinary category, while Kalup Linzy and Eve Sussman are fellows in the video/film area. For a complete list of fellowship recipients, see the NYFA website.
Invited by Dr. Alberto Guevara, the editor-in-chief of inTension journal of York University, virtual reality project Land of Illusion by Lily & Honglei Art Studio (currently with three active members, Xiying Yang, Honglei Li and He Li) will be published in the next issue of this academic journal.
screenshot of ‘Land of Illusion: Monkey King at Heavenly Banquet’ virtual reality art project, by Lily & Honglei Art Studioscreenshot of ‘Land of Illusion: Carousel of Sichuan Earthquake,’ virtual reality art project by Lily & Honglei Art Studio
Issues of the journal are theme-based, but space is provided in each issue for articles, reviews, and artwork that engage the core interests of InTensions: the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence, and sensory regimes.
Guest Editors:
Dr. David Harris Smith, McMaster University
Dr. Elysée Nouvet, McMaster University
To play is human. Play is a social act of often unclear boundaries. The delineation of playing as a special conditional form of doing or acting in the world relies upon registers of seriousness, authenticity, consequence and import, yet these registers are ultimately ambiguous. Play can materialize and relativize banal affective and social relations. Play can imagine, insist on the possibility of, or suppress, difference. Play may provoke shock or distraction, conceal or reveal intention. Play may be encouraged or denied, rewarded or punished, feared, disdained, addictive, fatal.
What becomes possible as a result of play in specific contexts? What socio-cultural relations are inscribed in the various sites of play? Are there limits to the social power of play, or limits to the social contexts in which playful acts may be asserted? Or is the very delineation of some actions as play itself a limit on imagination and transformation? To what extent do the connotative associations of theatre, sport, or childhood constitute a limit on what is considered play? What is the role of play in science, industry, politics, or war? What associations are can be traced between play and inductive, exploratory, or experimental knowledge generation?
Developmental theories situate play in the process of accommodating to reality, whereby the child first assimilates difficult and incongruous aspects of reality by revisiting them with familiar schema. For Baudrillard, the reproduction of the ‘real’ risks eclipsing its truth-value. These positions inscribe a vast territory populated by varying admixtures of representation and awe. Is play necessarily reactionary if it is absorbed into the normative and normalizing practices of (re)production and consumption (Debord)? When are play and playfulness critical distractions to organized protest? Alternatively, how might simulation and virtual worlds unleash important re-imaginings and re-mappings of the social (Deleuze)? What are the unique potentialities of play when engaged as formative, preliminary, inconsequential, non-serious, speculative, or exploratory?
In this issue, we invite scholarly/artistic contributions that engage the relations between play, power, and social reproduction. We welcome theoretical explorations, as well as reflections, experiments, reports, or ethnographies on play and playfulness in its lived, historical, and cultural contexts.
Milky Way is a single-channel video produced by Lily & Honglei Art Studio from 2009 to 2010, now on view at Zhulong Gallery, Dallas. Following is a description of the work:
Milky Way
Artists: Honglei Li, Xiying Yang, He Li
Medium: Oil on Paper, video
Film Duration: 4’20”
Completion Year: 2009-2010
Still image of ‘Milky Way,’ by Lily & Honglei Art Studio. On view at Zhulong Gallery, DallasStill image of Milky Way, by Lily & Honglei Art Studio.Still image of Milky Way, by Lily & Honglei Art Studio.
An ancient folklore has become reality in present-day China.
The tale of the Weaving Maiden and the Buffalo Herder is known to practically every segment of the Chinese population. The narrative, which roots could be traced back thousands of years, revolves around a romance between the two namesake characters. The Weaving Maiden, a deity of the traditional Chinese pantheon, comes down to Earth and falls in love with the poor mortal Buffalo Herder. They marry in secret, transgressing against the boundary set between the human and the divine. When this serious offence is discovered by the Maiden’s mother, the chief goddess of Chinese folk religion, tragedy becomes inevitable. The mother calls her daughter back to the celestial realms, intending to undo the forbidden relationship. The Buffalo Herder, though, does not relinquish his love with such ease; he tries to reunite his family by sneaking into heaven with his two children. The plan is nonetheless foiled when the mother goddess draws a line in the sky, dividing the husband and the wife. The line becomes a river as deep waters gushes in and pushes through the heavenly nether.
Their love, though, finds a glimpse of respite when the mother decrees that they may reunite for one night each year. Only on the seventh night of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar were the mythical lovers allowed to seek each other’s company. Such a tragedy is crystallized in the saga of Chinese astrology: the constellation Altair represents the Buffalo Herder while Vega is likened to the weaving maiden. The Milky Way is the celestial river which separates them.
As fancifully heartbreaking as the story is, it is undoubtedly more tragic that the tale has become reality for rural families in contemporary China. The traditional lifestyle of the agrarian population has been destroyed by the economic development that has been taking place over the past few decades. In order to fulfill their basic needs of living, hundreds of millions of rural people have poured into cities as migrant workers. True to the folklore, families have been separated and have no means of reuniting except for a day or two each year during the traditional Spring Festival. Such separation has not only brought dread to families, but also the collapse of cultural morality that roots in the relationship between land and people.
The animated film Milky Way reimagines the story of the Weaving Maiden and Buffalo Herder to reflect the social reality of present-day China. Settings include the urban landscape of Shanghai, the fireworks ceremony at the Beijing Olympics Stadium, and the ruinous aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake that was concurrent with the 2008 Olympic Games.
The short film Milky Way is composed of a series of original oil-paintings created by Lily & Honglei from 2009 to 2010.
Milky Way, video by Lily & Honglei. Zhulong Gallery. 2014Lily & Honglei’s video piece Milky Way at Satellite new media art exhibition, Zhulong Gallery. 2014Lily & Honglei’s video piece Milky Way, Zhulong gallery. 2014Painting of Milky Way, at Satellite new media art exhibition, Zhulong Gallery. 2014Milky Way, oil on paper, Zhulong GalleryPreview Reception of ‘Satellite’ inaugural exhibition presenting new media art. Zhulong Gallery, 2014.State-of-the-art facilities, Zhulong new media art gallery. 2014Preview night: new media art exhibition ‘Satellite’ at Zhulong Gallery.
Curator: Aja Martin
Curatorial Statement
Satellite, the inaugural exhibition at Zhulong Gallery, features New Media works by 11 contemporary artists. Satellite frames the primary focus of our technologically-driven gallery as a hub for receiving and transmitting art and ideas. Projecting information through time and space, the selections presented in Satellite indicate future solo exhibitions at Zhulong Gallery. The works and the exhibition interpret and respond to data, culture, travel and time. Some works present subject matter relating to the exploration of outer space, and others hint at the satellite and its functions in an abstract, yet tangible manner. Of course, many of the works help raise the inevitable question, “Whose technology is it?”
Lily & Honglei (New York and Beijing) – This two-person collective meld the virtual and ‘real’ offering augmented realities (AR), video works, and virtual films communicating ideas about Chinese history and culture and their relationship to the globalized present. They are also members of the collective Manefest.AR, which uses mobile technology as strategy for visual art
(Dallas, TX—March 11) Zhulong Gallery launches in Dallas on April 3. Designed to showcase New Media art, its multi-level galleries reclaimed from industrial space provide a high-tech platform for contemporary art. The gallery’s façade is a 17 x 10-foot screen for projecting images, text and video. Downstairs, the gallery space presents a museum-like setting that creates a sense of discovery for guests. Upstairs, a poetic gallery deck provides views of Downtown Dallas and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
Aja Martin, director of Zhulong Gallery, said, “In Satellite, we just begin to explore the wide-ranging field of New Media art.” She added, “Satellite is a sampling of artists who will be featured in future exhibitions.”
Zhulong Gallery, 1302 Dragon Street, Dallas, TX 75207
Premiere Exhibit: Satellite
Preview, April 3, 2014, 6 – 9 pm, To RSVP, http://www.zhulonggallery.com/RSVP
Exhibit continues April 4 – May 10, 2014. Beginning April 5, Zhulong Gallery will be open Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm or by appointment.
Satellite features New Media works by 11 contemporary artists and frames Zhulong Gallery as a hub for receiving and transmitting art and ideas. The artists interpret data, culture, travel, and time. Some of the works contain subject matter relating to space exploration and others hint at the satellite and its functions in an abstract, yet tangible manner.
Artists in Satellite present works that explore the expanding parameters of New Media:
• Hiba Ali (b. Karachi, Pakistan, currently Chicago, IL) creates virtual environments and documents that explore power formations and alternatives to current Western infrastructures.
• Erika Blumenfeld (USA) – With special devices, Blumenfeld records light and presents it as phenomenon in the form of installations, sound and video art, and artist books.
• Lily & Honglei (New York and Beijing) – This two-person collective meld the virtual and ‘real’, offering augmented realities (AR), video works, and virtual films communicating ideas about Chinese history and culture and its relationship to the globalized present. They are also members of the collective Manefest.AR, which uses mobile technology as strategy for visual art.
• James Geurts’ (London, UK and Melbourne, Australia) ‘Expanded Drawings’ take an abundance of forms: public installations and sculptures, graphite drawings, projections and video works. All iterations convey the artist’s observations of specific geologic phenomena.
• Susan Giles (Chicago, IL) presents architectural sculptures that relay the fragility and folly of memory. Working with spectacular and banal architectural forms and features, the artist creates large and small-scale sculptural works and video deal with transmission of experience into language—audible and gestural.
• Ira Greenberg (Dallas, TX) works in the computation medium and most recently explores new life forms through programming. His ‘protobytes’ respond to their environments living and dying among us in real-ti
• Paul Hertz (Chicago, IL) will present works from his latest series of glitch art, a program that visualizes the collapse of time and memory.
• Chris Lattanzio (Dallas, TX) creates glowing relief sculptures and environments that play on Pop Art and render the banal and the spiritual with equal affect. Highly saturated or cool and atmospheric, the works alter both space and psyche.
• Anh-Thuy Nguyen (b. Vietnam, currently Claremore, OK) is a performance and video artist who explores our significant cultural relationships with food in an attempt to present distinct but universal ideas.
• Max Schich (Dallas, TX) culls massive data and interprets it into delicate visual representations. These info-pictures communicate trends, connections and disparities that might go unnoticed without this specific visual context.
• Lauren Woods (Dallas, TX) is a conceptual artist working in hybrid media. Her ‘inkblot projections’ and other video, film and sound works set up alternative means and roles for viewing, the viewer and subject.
Commissioned by New Radio and Performing Arts Inc., new media art project Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China is complete in May 2014 and soon to be launched via Turbulence.org.
Designed and produced by Lily & Honglei Art Studio, a New York-based collective with three artists, Xiying Yang, Honglei Li and He Li, ‘Urbanization of China’ is a multimedia project comprised several phases. Following the first phase ‘Shadow Play,’ more work will be unveiled over next 2-3 years period, with funding from varied channels.
Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China is a 2014 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for its Turbulence.org website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.
‘In spring the river rises as high as the sea,
And with the river’s rise the moon up-rises bright.
She follows the rolling waves for ten thousand li,
And where the river flows, there overflows her light.
‘The river winds around the fragrant islet where
The blooming flowers in her light all look like snow.
You cannot tell her beams from hoar frost in the air,
Nor from white sand upon Farewell Beach below.
‘No dust has stained the water blending with the skies;
A lonely wheel-like moon shines brilliant far and wide.
Who by the riverside first saw the moon arise?
When did the moon first see a man by riverside?
Moon still 2, Chinese ink painting on rice paper, 24x36in, by Lily & Honglei, 2012.
‘Ah, generations have come and past away;
From year to year the moon looks alike, old and new.
We do not know tonight for whom she sheds her ray,
But hear the river say to its water adieu
‘Away, away is sailing a single cloud white;
On Farewell Beach pine away maples green.
Where is the wanderer sailing his boat tonight?
Who, pining away, on the moonlit rails would learn?
‘Alas! The moon is lingering over the tower;
It should have seen the dressing table of the fair.
She rolls the curtain up and light comes in her bower;
She washes but can’t wash away the moonbeams there.
Still of “Moon,” Chinese ink painting on rice paper, video. Lily & Honglei Art Studio. 2012-13
‘She sees the moon, but her beloved is out of sight;
She’d follow it to shine on her beloved one’s face.
But message-bearing swans can’t fly out of moonlight,
Nor can letter-sending fish leap out of their place.
‘Last night he dreamed that falling flowers would not stay.
Alas! He can’t go home, although half spring has gone.
The running water bearing spring will pass away;
The moon declining over the pool will sink anon
‘The moon declining sinks into a heavy mist;
It’s a long way between southern rivers and eastern seas.
How many can go home by moonlight who are missed?
The sinking moon sheds yearning o’er riverside trees.’
Still of “Moon,” Chinese ink painting on rice paper, video. Lily & Honglei Art Studio. 2012-13
Since the years spent separately in Germany and China in the ’90s, we have been pondering on producing a contemporary piece based on Chinese poetry and ink painting traditions. Although many compositions were sketched around this idea, the complete piece had not been fully planned out until a discussion occurred in 2012 with curator Heng-Gil Han, who was then proposing a series of international exhibitions focusing on unification of Korea with his ambitious curatorial concept. Fitting the exhibition theme, video piece ‘Moon,’ inspired by Chinese shanshu (mountain-and-river) paintings and poems such as A Flowery Moonlit Night on a Spring River by Zhang Ruoxu, and Shui diao ge tou – Moon by Su Dongpo, was finally materialized.
Oakland Gardens & Alley Pond in New York, where we stroll on hilly forest paths discussing ‘Moon’-
our daily walking route by Oakland Lake, where we discuss new work…
Alley Pond, outside the art studio in New York
Moon is commissioned by Korean Art Forum and will be presented at Common Ground exhibition in UK in 2014, curated by Heng-Gil Han.
Lily & Honglei - Asian American Artist Collaborative 