Exploring CHEN Xuefeng’s Imaginary Garden
Mon 30/01/23
13:00-14:00
Training Room 2, McClay Library
Speaker:
Rosalind Silvester is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen’s and has research interests in contemporary literature, migration studies and the environmental humanities, especially in the area of francophone Chinese writing, film and installation art. In 2010 and 2019, she organised international colloquia in this field, with the Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian and the installation artist Chen Xuefeng as the respective keynote speakers. She has published articles on Ying Chen, François Cheng, Dai Sijie, Ya Ding, Gao Xingjian, Chen Xuefeng and Shen Yuan, a monograph on Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging (2020), and an edited book on francophone Chinese verbal and visual art to be followed later this year by a special journal issue on francophone Chinese creativity.
Outline
This talk is about the francophone Chinese artist, Chen Xuefeng, and her latest art installation, ‘Bô: the imaginary garden’, followed by discussion/questions. The talk will touch on the influences on the artist and her trajectory from China to France; the features of the ‘garden’ and its correspondences with aspects of a traditional Chinese private garden; the cross-cultural encounters afforded by the garden and the possibility of self-cultivation and social cultivation.
