{"id":1536,"date":"2024-06-07T13:58:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T13:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2026-02-03T03:25:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T03:25:29","slug":"sun-xun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/?p=1536","title":{"rendered":"Sun Xun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mythos<\/em> 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 \u2018I\u2019 in Team<\/em>, 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 \u2014 arguably the most potent and expansive forms of artistic production emerging from China at the time.<\/p>\n

Sun Xun\u2019s work defies boundaries, both in form and content. In Mythos<\/em>, 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 \u2014 a collage of time, myth, memory and historical reconstruction \u2014 with a shifting narrative structure that resists linear storytelling.\u00a0The 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\u2014it is splintered, refracted, and presented as a subjective field open to multiple interpretations.<\/p>\n

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?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Beyond its visual richness, Mythos<\/em> operates as a commentary on contemporary social and political realities in China and beyond. Sun Xun\u2019s 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.\u00a0His hand-drawn films, infused with voiceovers, texts, and sound collages, raise questions about truth, trust, and temporality. The surreal landscapes he constructs\u2014at once fantastical and unsettling\u2014invite 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.<\/p>\n

The exhibition There is no \u2018I\u2019 in Team<\/em>, 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\u2019s 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\u201908, a celebration of contemporary Asian culture.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s curatorial intent was to highlight the diversity and vitality of new Chinese art and its global relevance. As China\u2019s geopolitical and cultural influence continued to rise, the show presented art as a bridge\u2014facilitating dialogue across borders and inviting British audiences to witness the complex interplay between tradition and modernity, individualism and collectivism, and regional and global concerns.\u00a0In this context, Sun Xun\u2019s Mythos<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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:\u00a0Hammer Museum, Los Angeles;\u00a0Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney;\u00a0Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel;\u00a0Yuz Museum, Shanghai\u00a0He has also participated in prominent group exhibitions at:\u00a0Guggenheim Museum, New York;\u00a0The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;\u00a0Venice Film Festival (2010);\u00a0Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale Shorts, 2012);\u00a0Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei.\u00a0Sun Xun has received numerous awards and accolades, including:\u00a0CCAA Best Young Artist Award (2010);\u00a0Taiwan Contemporary Art Link Young Art Award (2010;\u00a0Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship (2011\u201312);\u00a0Audemars Piguet Art Commission (2016), with presentations in Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Times Square, New York.\u00a0His work is held in major public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum.<\/p>\n

There is No \u2018I\u2019 in Team<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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Sun Xun (b. 1980, Fuxin, China)<\/p>\nRead More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects","col-md-4 col-sm-6"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/keithwhittle.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Sun-Xun.jpeg?fit=672%2C448&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4422,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/4422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}