THE LVY CHELSEA garden (2019)
Installation, performance, single-channel video
Dimensions variable
SHANGHAI international ARTS Festival ,SHANGHAI,OCTOBER 2019
For three days, the gallery functioned as a film set, where a large audience watched Xuefei and her crew filming a short film as a continuous live performance.
The film, a satirical presentation of table etiquette based on a 1945 American television commercial, centers around a chocolate fountain dinner party, where a narrator raises questions on the potential faux-pas of the dinner guests. As the party goes on, a sense of absurdity accumulates.
In reference to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) where, during a dream sequence, it is revealed that the bourgeois dinner party participants are in fact dinning on a stage set in a theatrical performance,The lvy Chelsea Garden(2019) examines the concept of a performative and make-believe Western Utopia.
