Min-Jia: World of Interiors

EVENT DESCRIPTION

PODIUM is proud to present World of Interior, Urumqi-born, Berlin-based artist Min-Jia’s first solo exhibition in their career and with the gallery, on view from 20 September until 15 November.

Built upon their apprenticeship in Shaanxi Huaxian shadow puppetry under master Wang Tianwen in Xi’an, China, this body of work samples and remixes traditional techniques, materials, and ornamental forms across cultures, creating an enigmatic site from which to investigate the interior life of the migrant. Drawing from the analysis of how economic and migratory cycles construct subjectivities in Chinese-Australian writer Aurelia Guo’s eponymous book, as well as the artist’s experience in the transnational Asian diaspora, the exhibition fractures and recycles narratives of transformation to destabilise myths of origin and identity.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Min-Jia (b. 2001, lives and works in Berlin) destabilises the myths of origin and identity through narratives of transformation. Their work samples and remixes folk and ornamental arts and their global transformations—from Orientalist kitsch to Art Nouveau to manga—to re-examine fantasies of the Other across canonical and outsider art histories. They have completed a Shaanxi Huaxian shadow puppetry apprenticeship under Master Wang Tianwen in Xi’an, China, and graduated from Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).