Artist Wang Yimo with her project "Theater on Earth" nominated by curator He Guiyan won the 2021 Jimei x Arles Discovery Award. Wang Yimo will receive a prize of 100,000 RMB and be invited to hold an exhibition at the 2022 Rencontres d'Arles in France.
Zhong Weixing, judge of Jimei x Arles Discovery Award and founder of Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum, said in his speech: "Theater on Earth" is a site-specific portfolio set in a deserted former power plant. Wang Yimo integrated animation, performance and video installation into a polyphonic performance. The artist-directed live drama is designed to commemorate the Industrial Sublime and its fate in the age of the Internet. The factory residual is transformed into a theatrical scene to put on a play of collective memory on the field. "Theater on Earth" is not only an elegy for the "past" based on personal experience but also a dramatic and visceral exploration of the relationship between time and memory. It also demonstrates Wang Yimo's unique understanding and imagination of industrial themes, and her ability to mobilize and use multiple media and artistic means to fully realize her creative goals.
Wang Yimo
Born in 1996 in Chongqing, China. Currently lives in Chengdu.
Wang Yimo is an independent artist who graduated from the Experimental Art Institute of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts with a master degree. The main creative direction is experimental video, and her works involve experimental animation, installation art, and video photography. The current research direction is to explore the interactive relationship between film and animation, to find the expansion and extension of the boundary between them, and to discuss social changes and unknown subjects.
Recent exhibitions include: The 2019 Brillac Emerging Artist Award (Cognac, France, 2019), The First WULONG LANBA INTERNATIONAL Earth Art (LAB Art Museum, Chongqing, China, 2019), Personal Evidence, Material Evidence-Eight Female Artists in 2020 (He Duoling Art Museum, Chengdu, China, 2020), XingMing - Psychological Theater of Ten Contemporary Female Artists (Yuelai Art Museum, Chongqing, China, 2021).