Peihang Benoit:All Her Bright Times

29 April - 22 May 2021 YIRI ARTS

Sometimes we could only fully understand a person, when we miss him/her.

When looking back to the past, we realize that our experience of growing up is always inseparable from ideologies such as "nation/family" or patriarchy". The resistance to patriarchy that extends from the so-called "always to be a child" is also engraved in life as the years pass. This is also the centre of the artist Peihang Benoit's serial works: from the Fleshy Fairytale series with obviously feminism, to the later series of paintings focusing on the issues of European immigrants/refugees and their governmental policies (Wonderland series), which are all the results in this thinking context. The new works exhibited this time connect her mother's youth times through the "(China Youth Corps) Youth Activities". By the comparative clue hidden within the title "All Her Bright Times (her mountains 她 ⼭ )", some landscapes seem to be Déjà vu, which can be vividly found in the artist's self-understanding and the memories. The "young men" who are longing for the future, wandering through the enlightenment scene set by the party-state system in the past, challenge the "mountain that needs to be conquered" guised as bright, sunny and beautiful scenery; who can conquers it is the promised. Besides, a good family needs to have their children immersed in the nurture, for the sake of physically and mentally health. Nature and landscape have become a set for fostering the personality corresponding to a certain civilization by the State. Today, it has been passed down through family albums, showing the promised "national youth."