Paperback, full colour illustrations, 20 pages, W170mm x H240mm
MadeIn is a new artists’ collective founded by
Chinese artist Xu Zhen in Shanghai in 2009. Derived from ‘Made In’, two
words that refer to manufacturing (with country of origin not
specified), the name also phonetically translates into Chinese for
‘without a roof ’ (‘méi d˘ı∙ng’), thereby suggesting an openness to the
collective’s work.
Xu Zhen himself is one of the most renowned conceptual artists to have
emerged from China since the 1990s, but now he is playing down his
personal identity. For Seeing One’s Own Eyes, MadeIn
impersonates a fictional group of Middle Eastern artists. The work
however is all made in China for a kind of exhibition in disguise – ‘an
exhibition of an exhibition’.
Through a range of media including sculpture, video and installation,
clichéd images of the Middle East such as oil, religious conflict and
war raise issues of cultural perception.