Times Museum Restart with "Follow the Feeling"

March 23—June 23, 2024

Mar 22, 2024

Follow the Feeling

Vernissage: March 22, 2024 (RSVP with Invitation)
Exhibition Dates：March 23-June 23, 2024
Hours：Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30-18:30（close on Mondays and Tuesday, except for public holidays）
Entrance Tickets: RMB 50

Participating artists：
Avita Jinhong Guo, Rania Ho, Qiusha Ma, Marge Monko, Pan Lu & Bo Wang, Peng Ke, Peng Zuqiang, Phung-Tien Phan & Frieder Haller, Tao Hui, Hou Lam Tsui, Hui Ye & Qu Chang, Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Zhang Ruyi, Zhou Siwei

Curated by Qu Chang

Panel Discussion of Artists and Curator
March 23, Saturday, 15:00-16:30
(Please enter with the entrance ticket; limited sittings, first come first serve)
Participating Artists: Avita Jinhong Guo, Peng Zuqiang, Phung-Tien Phan & Frieder Haller, Hou Lam Tsui, Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Zhou Siwei
Modulated by Qu Chang and Nikita Yingqian Cai

The song Follow the Feeling, originally sung by Taiwanese singer Julie Sue, became an instant hit in Mainland China after a cover at the 1989 Chinese state television’s Spring Festival Gala. In Sue’s music video, she is dressed in the latest fashion, jaunting between urban vistas and open highways, describing the increasingly carefree, vivacious individuals, compelled by nothing but the “feeling”. It was over upbeat earworm soundtracks like this that the Mainland Chinese society at the time underwent a momentous gearshift.

The “modern individual” in China, conjured up by the ideas of freedom and love since the 1919 May Fourth, has rediscovered their modernity with exuberant feelings and affection during the societal transformation near the century’s end. However, as the lyrics depict, that “feeling” was as if not an internal, natural, self-initiated energy, a push; but an external, synthetic one, a pull. The exhibition Follow the Feeling thus attempts to examine the “feeling” in reform and post-reform China, around which the discourse of intimacy and love revolve. The exhibition explores the production of “feeling” alongside Times Museum’s long, narrow space, which resembles the highway. Meanwhile, it outlines the often neglected “foundation” of the “highway” by gazing into the residential units underneath the museum, delineating the entanglement between private life and state construction.

Biography of Curator

Qu Chang is an independent curator and writer based between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Previously, she served as a curator at Para Site, Hong Kong (2016-2020). Her previous curatorial projects include Thinking Magic (2022, Art Central, Hong Kong), Café do Brasil (2019, Para Site), Crush (2018, Para Site), Doreen Chan: Hard Cream (2019, HB Station), Law Yuk Mui: From whence the waves came (2018, Art Basel Hong Kong), Adrift (2016, co-curated with Leo Li Chen and Zeng Wenqi, OCAT Shenzhen), among others. She is a PhD candidate at the Cultural Studies Department at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Her doctoral research focuses on the discourse of "love" in Mainland China in the reform era. Previously, she served as a curator at Para Site, Hong Kong (2016-2020) and an assistant curator at OCAT Shenzhen (2013-2016).

For more information, please visit: timesmuseum.org
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