Nina Yuen

Magic and nature, her father and her adolescent students, the painter Joe Andoe and the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir play a role in the recent work of Nina Yuen (USA, 1981). In the exhibition she presents a constellation of new video work, and for the first time sculpture and photography as well. Drawing on domestic rituals and personal memories (sometimes fictionalized), mixed with historical facts and factoids, Yuen creates an alternative dream world.

This spring director Ann Demeester says goodbye to de Appel arts centre with two exhibitions that mark the end of het tenure: Asco No Movies and Nina Yuen. Performance is central for each exhibition.

On the ground floor photos and videos let one experience the guerilla performances of the Mexican-American artists collective Asco, active in the 1970s. One floor above, Nina Yuen (US, 1981) presents a series of new performative works in which autobiography and world history ‘contaminate’ each other. The video productions Hermione, Lea and Raymond will have their international premiere in de Appel arts centre, and Yuen is also showing drawings and photos related to them here for the first time.

In her videos, Nina Yuen (USA, 1981) circumspectly creates an intimate world in which the ultrapersonal comes together with the general human condition. Yuen threads together reflections that might be committed to a diary, childhood memories, references to forgotten figures from art and general history and philosophic speculations on great themes such as death, love, beauty and creativity to produce films in which the boundaries between fiction and reality are tissue thin. They draw from a range of sources: magic and nature, events from the lives of her father and mother, the painter Joe Andoe and the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, or the adventures of the adolescent students she teaches. The results are videos that are dreamy, hypnotic, and sometimes enchanting.

http://ninayuen.com

Thanks to: Lombard Fried Gallery and Galerie Juliètte Jongma