Essential Matters: Çin Video Sanatı / Moving Images from China

The artists invited to participate in the exhibition represent different generations that use the technique of video, ranging from Zang Peili (born 1957) to Tao Hui (born 1987). This pluralism has been decisive also in terms of the exhibition's conceptual framework since it both grants the exhibition a historical perspective and enables the viewers to grasp the "differences of approach" between geneations. I tried to display recent works (single channel video) of the artists participating in the exhibition. The subject matters of these video works scrutinize different aspects of "everyday life"by means of social, economic and political facts. This point of view aims to look at the Chinese culture not from the outside but from the "inside" avoiding biases and stereotypes as much as possible, and through a "natural" perspective. Since "Essential Matters" in this context was a title deriving from the conversations I had with the artists, I found it better to make references to both its normal and ironic associations without translating it into Turkish. For in my dialogues with many artists including Ma Qisha living in Beijing, Li Xiaofei working in Shanghai, Kwan Sheung Chi from Hong Kong and Xu Zhen the founder of Madeln Company, we constantly talked about the challenges of artistic production, about the struggle to survive and the basic necessities. The expression of "Essential Matters" was common to all these conversations. Since I see that this expression comes up from different perspectives in the selected video works, I have to say that it is as if the title of the exhibition appeared on its own accord.