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EVENT DESCRIPTION
MOU PROJECTS is pleased to present “Main Switch,” Düsseldorf-based Chinese artist Yang Dingliu’s debut gallery solo exhibition, following her first collaboration with the gallery in the Discovery section of Art Basel Hong Kong in 2023. Featuring a selection of recent video works centered around the intriguing world of free diving, this captivating showcase provides a deeply immersive experience for viewers, offering glimpses of the divers’ lives beyond imagination. Through a quasi-documentary approach, Yang captures the daily endeavours, rigorous training sessions, and heightened ambiance of competition of free divers in China and Panglao, Philippines—a well-known heaven for enthusiasts of this extreme sport.
The exhibition’s title, “Main Switch,” metaphorically signifies the diver’s need for absolute body control and the nuanced regulation of every body part, mirroring the act of using a main switch to activate their physicality. This symbolism extends to an “extreme” state of existence, suggesting that engaging this switch marks the beginning of a life far beyond the ordinary, and pertaining not solely to the physiological control of the body but also to the cognitive dominion of the mind, as freediving is a sport that rigorously evaluates one’s psychological fortitude.
ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER
Yang Dingliu (b. 1992, Leshan, Sichuan, China) mainly works in video. Often taking as a departure point an objective, restrained observation of objects, Yang convenes and reproduces recalled sites to orchestrate specific forms in the presentations of her works. In her practice, she avoids overinterpretation in the recombination and reassembly of images to make the invisible "gaze" visible, conveying her perception and understanding of the external environment that surrounds, envelops, and constantly influences us.Yang obtained her BFA in printmaking from the China Academy of Art in 2014 and her MFA from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2022, graduating as an honored student of Professor Rita McBride.
The artist currently lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
