Mythos is a large-scale animated installation by Sun Xun (b. 1980 Fuxin) is one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, whose hybrid practice fuses traditional Chinese artistic techniques with contemporary media. The work was part of There is no ‘I’ in Team, a landmark group exhibition showcasing a dynamic new generation of artists from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, all working in moving image, sound, and installation art — arguably the most potent and expansive forms of artistic production emerging from China at the time.
Sun Xun’s work defies boundaries, both in form and content. In Mythos, he draws from a richly layered aesthetic language that includes Chinese ink painting, charcoal drawing, woodcuts, and hand-drawn animation. The film operates as a kind of visual palimpsest — a collage of time, myth, memory and historical reconstruction — with a shifting narrative structure that resists linear storytelling. The animation presents a surreal landscape filled with symbolic imagery: kings, magicians, empty chairs, and engulfing flames. These elements evoke fragments of collective and personal memory, layered against one another in an ever-shifting, dreamlike timeline. Here, history is neither fixed nor whole—it is splintered, refracted, and presented as a subjective field open to multiple interpretations.
Sun Xun challenges the authoritative voice of official historical narratives by contrasting them with individual memory and myth-making. His work interrogates the tension between state-sanctioned stories and the lived experiences of ordinary people. The visual language of woodblock prints, often associated with traditional Chinese storytelling and propaganda, becomes a tool for subversion, enabling Sun to rewrite history from the margins, and ask: whose truth is being told?
Beyond its visual richness, Mythos operates as a commentary on contemporary social and political realities in China and beyond. Sun Xun’s practice blends the personal with the political, drawing on historical trauma, cultural amnesia, and technological advancement, creating a body of work that is deeply introspective yet globally resonant. His hand-drawn films, infused with voiceovers, texts, and sound collages, raise questions about truth, trust, and temporality. The surreal landscapes he constructs—at once fantastical and unsettling—invite viewers into a parallel universe where time collapses and history loops. These visual strategies unsettle the viewer, asking them to consider their own position in the flow of cultural memory and state narratives.
The exhibition There is no ‘I’ in Team, hosted at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and across several off-site venues in Newcastle and Gateshead, marked a significant moment in the UK’s engagement with Chinese contemporary art. It was the first major survey of young Chinese artists in the North East and formed part of CHINA NOW, the largest festival of Chinese culture ever held in the UK, as well as EAST’08, a celebration of contemporary Asian culture.
The exhibition’s curatorial intent was to highlight the diversity and vitality of new Chinese art and its global relevance. As China’s geopolitical and cultural influence continued to rise, the show presented art as a bridge—facilitating dialogue across borders and inviting British audiences to witness the complex interplay between tradition and modernity, individualism and collectivism, and regional and global concerns. In this context, Sun Xun’s Mythos stood out as a profound exploration of both national identity and global dissonance. His film, like much of his oeuvre, serves as a philosophical inquiry into the politics of perception, revealing how the act of remembering can become an act of resistance.
Born in 1980 in Fuxin, China, Sun Xun studied at the China Academy of Fine Arts and has since developed an internationally celebrated career. Known for his blend of traditional and contemporary media, his work has been exhibited globally, including major solo presentations at: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Yuz Museum, Shanghai He has also participated in prominent group exhibitions at: Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Venice Film Festival (2010); Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale Shorts, 2012); Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei. Sun Xun has received numerous awards and accolades, including: CCAA Best Young Artist Award (2010); Taiwan Contemporary Art Link Young Art Award (2010; Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship (2011–12); Audemars Piguet Art Commission (2016), with presentations in Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Times Square, New York. His work is held in major public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum.
There is No ‘I’ in Team was curated by Keith Whittle, Keri Elmsly (UK), Pauline Doutreluingne (Germany), and Jian Jiang (China). The exhibition was generously supported by Culture10, British Council China, and presented in partnership with ISIS Arts and Newcastle City Council. Following its UK debut, the exhibition travelled to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Program E.V. in Berlin.
