Hui Ye: Romance

We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition by Hui Ye on Friday, June 21, 7pm.
In the downtown area of Guwangju (Southkorea), parallel to the shopping streets filled with shops and restaurants, a well-known “wedding street” is located in the very city centre together with several evangelic churches and love motels in extraordinary, flashy designs. It is an unique city-scape, which perfectly demonstrates the juxtaposition between the emotional desire for sexuality and the responsibility for taking conventional roles, which are still expected by the society for both men and women.
At the other hand these two contradictory subjects are becoming consumable and emotions, as well as memories, can be apparently acquired and constructed by purchase. So what remains of feelings? Does romance still exist?
By slowly evolving the content, combined with documentary and narrative sequences, the artist chooses the perspective of a silent observer. Personal, partly fictional stories of women living in Gwangju are recounted in form of staged, anonymous interviews. An extra layer of text comments found online represents the superficial view of people, who meet their curiosity as a cultural adventure. These voices are without any attempt in considering the local social conditions.

Hui Ye
born in Canton, China.
2004–11 studied composition and electroacoustic composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
2010–18 studied Digital Arts and TransArts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Having an artistic background as composer and sound performer, exploring the relationship between sound and moving image, along with experimenting with how these time-based media can be transformed in new and challenging ways, is one the main concern of her work.
As a Chinese artist based in Vienna/Europe since years, Ye observes and understands her personal experience as a state of being ‘in-between‘ which influences her artistic practice. How social identity is shaped by different cultural and political context is of great importance to her.

Hui Ye received several scholarships and prizes, i.a. state scholarship for composition by BKA Austria 2015 and Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2018.
Her works were shown internationally, e.g. at Kunsthalle Wien, Künstlerhaus Wien, Krinzinger Projekte (Vienna, Austria); Ohrenhoch Sound Gallery (Berlin, Germany); WRO Media Arts Biennial 2017, 2019 (Wroclaw, Poland); am Art Space (Shanghai, China) and Times Museum (Guangzhou, China).

https://yehui.org/

Opening times by appointment