The Third Today's Documents will be held in Exhibition Hall of Building No.1 and No.3, Today Art Museum, on December 10th, 2016. Titled BRIC-á-brac: The Jumble of Growth (Chinese title: “ 另一种选择”), the exhibition will invite over 50 artists/groups from different countries including China, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, India, Russia and South Korea, by which discuss the general themes from different cultural contexts and present the hybrid power spurt in the course of globalization.
Entitled by multiple languages, the exhibition reflects the features of contemporary culture and art. "BRIC-á-brac" is a French expression which means jumble, odds and ends, or an uneven group of things, with a certain undertone of confusion. The first word of this idiom coincides by chance with the acronym BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China –, which has been extended to BRICS when South Africa joined in 2010. So, the pun in the title refers to the qualitative complexities that economic growth and accelerated modernization have unchained in the "living" societies of emerging countries. As developing countries are undergoing the social transformation driven by the globalization, on the one hand, the encounter with the "others" highlights the contradiction and difference. The cultural integration based on global political economy leads to cultural conflicts and resistance. On the other hand, along with the discovery of other cultures lies the self-recognition. As a result, a mixed landscape in which the global and the local interact is emerging, and such a landscape is so-called "BRIC- á-brac". The Chinese title "An Alternative" is actually a further explanation of "BRIC-á-brac", emphasizing the cultural subjectivity of emerging countries and their independent cultural development. The art trend of emerging nations (represented by BRICS) characterizes an alternative modernity, and that is why the exhibition chose "An Alternative" as the Chinese title.
The exhibition consists of four dimensions."The Jumble of Growth" shows the revolution and symbiosis of different regional artistic foundations, requiring a dialectical thinking of the artistic practice influenced by local and global cultures. "Chaotic Space" reproduces the multi-dimensional spaces in our complicated and diversified society. When these spaces encounter artists' rational visual metaphors, a reflection on our living circumstances will be stimulated."Discourse Practice" shows the artistic practice where artists response actively and personally to real life, thereby demonstrating the cultural consciousness and subjectivity. "Individual Narrative and Microscopic Bodies" aims to display the consciousness of life and status of individuals within the macroscopic social landscape. Using the body as a medium, artists go beyond the meanings of body in the postmodern context: the body of nature, the body of society and the body of science, which expresses the inf inite potential in our bodies.
The Third Today's Documents aims to put forward a sharp cultural proposition. Working as a platform for different cultures to encounter each other, the exhibition also illustrates– by vivid and philosophic images – the rise of fast emerging countries like BRICS and the growing crisis in globalization and capitalism: the relationship of contradiction, conflict, interdependence and competition.To summarize, the 3rd Today's Documents is held to reflect on traditional issues while facing contemporary problems, and to explore cultural connotations while displaying the status quo of contemporary art.
About the exhibition
Dates: December 10, 2016 – March 5, 2017
Venue: Today Art Musuem
Courtesy of the artists and Today Art Museum, for further information please visit www.todayartmuseum.com
