MATILDA LIU

23 June - 8 July 2023

180 Studios

180 Strand, Temple, London WC2R 1EA

“飲食男女，人之大慾存焉

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman--- The source of people’s greatest desires are comprehended in food, drink and sexual pleasure.”

This exhibition takes its name from the opening quote of The Book of Rites by Confucius.

Eat Drink Man Woman sums up the idea that food and sex are ultimately all that is important and all that drives human beings. Identifying our social behaviours as rooted in unavoidable physio-psychological urges, The Book of Rites argues for the importance of balancing and understanding them through social protocols and etiquettes.

An impetus for this exhibition comes from the idea that complexities in cultural logics are often lost in translation and develops new meanings when imported into new social contexts. Take the title ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’ as an example--- the pidgin-grammar English translation often interpreted as an encouragement to indulge freely in one’s primal desires contrasts with the original Confucian emphasis on civil discipline. This flux between origin and destination, intention and interpretation is an reoccurring lens through which contemporary Chinese culture is studied. As seen in Ang Li’s 1994 film of the same name, scenes of food and dining-centred exchanges are constantly used as backdrops to conflicts between Chinese tradition and Western-led globalisation. For Ang Li, the concepts: eating, drinking, man, and woman, are all components of a globalisation driven by not only by dissemination of technology and economics, but also of cultural symbols.

Using the Confucian quote and Ang Li’s film as points of departure, this exhibition explores how hunger, lust, together with the objects and rituals around them have informed emerging Chinese artists. In particular, the various ways that examination of these psycho- physio drives and their symbols have been vehicles for creative self-expression, and for questioning ‘Chinese-ness’ in a globalised, post-passport reality. Here, the dichotomy of Eat and Drink, Man and Woman, are again dissected and reassembled, taken from its origin and reinterpreted in the contemporary.

Eat Drink Man Woman is curated by Matilda Liu and features works from Yushi Li, Amanda Ba, Caroline Wong, Deng Shiqing, Hannah Lim, Xu Yang, Yaya Yajie Liang, Yage Guo, and Yutong Deng.

The exhibition is on view for public from 23 June to 6 July 2022 at 180 The Strand, Monday to Friday 10am - 6pm.