Chinese artist scoops 2021 Jimei x Arles Discovery Award

Artist Wang Yimo with her project Theater on Earth nominated by curator He Guiyan won the 2021 Jimei x Arles Discovery Award. Wang Yimo will receive a prize of 100,000 yuan and will be invited to hold an exhibition at the 2022 Rencontres d'Arles in France.

Zhong Weixing, judge of Jimei x Arles Discovery Award and founder of Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum, said that Theater on Earth is a site-specific portfolio set in a deserted former power plant. Wang Yimo integrated animation, performance and video installation into a polyphonic performance.

The artist-directed live drama is designed to commemorate the Industrial Sublime and its fate in the age of the internet. The factory residual is transformed into a theatrical scene to put on a play of collective memory on the field.

Theater on Earth is not only an elegy for the "past" based on personal experience but also a dramatic and visceral exploration of the relationship between time and memory. It also demonstrates Wang Yimo's unique understanding and imagination of industrial themes, and her ability to mobilize and use multiple media and artistic means to fully realize her creative goals.