CUI XIUWEN

ÁNGEL SANJIE She was born in Harbin, province of Heilongjiang, in 1970. She graduated in Fine Arts at the Northeast Normal University in 1990 and in 1996 in Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where she currently lives. Her series Sanjie was made with three methods: oil painting, photography and video. The topic is always the same: a Chinese little girl that wears a red scarf (symbol of being member of the Young Pioneers Group) playing the thirteen figures of the Last Supper. “The red scarf and the white skirt represent a period of my memory: the wish of being honoured and the exciting and yet unsettling feeling of being urged on by the martyrs who created the People’s Republic. And even more, the doubts and quest to identify the relationship between individual and group. With this series I come back to the innocence of youth and delete the whole process of growing up; I let the little girl take the consequence of History, let her balance herself in the process of braking up, converging, evolving and duplicating”.

Ladies Room (6’ 35’’)

Cui Xiuwen’s work is based on the problems surrounding the women’s existence in our society. In Ladies Room, the main characters are a group of women in the toilet of a posh night club in Beijing dedicated to provide “night services”. Professionals who use it give a new function and a new meaning to these women toilets. There, they reveal their intimate secrets. It is interesting to highlight how the social condition is staged and, at the same time, how we interpret the work from cultural, historical and economic perspectives.

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Courtesy of: Magee Art Gallery, Beijing – Madrid