This exhibition is a collaboration among the Japanese artist Ozawa Tsuyoshi, the Chinese artist Chen Shaoxiong, and their families. In it, the two artists and their relatives spend twenty days on holiday in Beijing. They divide the exhibition space into twenty units¡ªone corresponding to each day¡ªand using the form of a diary, they move each day into a new unit and create a new work on-site. Their spouses and children will participate in this process. For the artists, it is a chance for both artistic and social exchange. Ozawa Tsuyoshi and Chen Shaoxiong began their collaboration in 2005 with a correspondence piece using ink painting to explore cross-cultural understanding and misunderstanding. The result was displayed a the 2005 Guangzhou Triennial under the name ¡°Guangzhou-Tokyo.¡± This collaboration counteracted an overwhelming emphasis on individual production in contemporary art, and gave form to a meaningful inquiry into the boundaries of personal space and cultural difference.
The question of how to provide for interaction and exchange between different regions, cultures, and nationalities has loomed large in the art world in recent years. The question of how to preserve cultural difference even amidst this interaction has also been important. Ozawa Tsuyoshi and Chen Shaoxiong have agreed on the three-person family as the unit of creation. The notion of the family as the smallest social core is comprehensible by people of any cultural background; this interaction between two families of different cultures is thus able to show a more intimate and truer side of cultural exchange. It is not artistic or cultural exchange in the simple sense, but a deep exploration of understanding and misunderstanding and their complications. Only part of the artistic creation will occur before the opening; after the opening, the artists and their families will remain in the space for another week, and the audience will become an important agent in the realization of the works.
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