Parse Journal (Jan 2025)
Shen Yuan: Angling for “Home” in Displacement
Abstract
This article studies a set of works by Chinese-born French artist Shen Yuan presented in her solo exhibition—titled “Angling” (2 November 2022–9 July 2023)—at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing. Modelled on familiar household or personal items, Shen’s works materialise intimate life scenes “at home” while evoking multiple situations of displacement linked to transnational travel and migration, and, more recently, Covid-19 lockdowns. This article investigates how the specific material configuration of Shen’s works heightens people’s awareness of the affective agencies of quotidian things to cultivate affinities and alliances that are often neglected in the human-centred construction of identity, home and belonging. Moreover, it considers how Shen’s practice sheds light on the productive relational dimension of displacement, which makes it possible to unsettle and rework systems, orders and power relations that underpin the persistent hegemony of the Global North in the production of knowledge and discourses about nations, cultures, histories and otherness.
