In the previous post, I spoke about an afternoon of studio visits in the Taopu district of Shanghai with Michael Kurcfeld, an arts and culture editor and journalist from LA-Paris. Since his time in Shanghai, he travelled to Beijing to embrace the contemporary art scene there and is now back in Europe thinking about possible assignments he can pitch to magazines and newspapers back in the West. He is interested in hearing about the Chinese artists I consider to be “high-caliber” (which in my mind can be interpreted so many ways) who will have exhibitions in the fall, or abroad, as he will back in China at that time…so dialogues are to continue. It’s nice to know my view is professionally respected. On Saturday, he very kindly e-mailed across photographs of me from our afternoon together with artists at their studios, and from Xu Bing‘s exhibition opening for ‘Book from the Ground’ at Shanghai Gallery of Art where we first met. I really appreciated these as I don’t have many photographs of “me” as such. I just don’t like to ask, when I really should. I find it funny that I have my camera to hand in most of these images…always documenting at every step as my good friends know only too well. So here, you can see me with renowned contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing, who is also my third PhD supervisor (this photograph means quite a lot to me)…then with Yu Ji in her studio, also known as Jam, one of the curators of am art space…and finally with artist-friend Jin Shan. Thanks again to Michael for helping me show you all my reality..if anyone else has photos from my time here e-mail them to me…it would make my day. You know I love to archive my experiences…
Rachel Marsden's Words 