Xi Jin: Breakdown, Mistake, Discontinuity [ a reset of how language represents]
to
FAB Gallery 1-1 Fine Arts Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2C9
Xi Jin, "google map mumbled!," 2020-21
print-based multimedia
Xi Jin: Breakdown, Mistake, Discontinuity [ a reset of how language represents]
Xi Jin’s print-based, multi-media practice utilizes breakdown as a method, mistakes as experience, and degrades the complexity and continuity of language to uncover its strange black shapes, its poetry, its embeddedness in the everyday and its strangeness as well.
No matter what imagery she uses in her work, it explores how we jump out of the manipulation of language we live in, sometimes just its form, sometimes its meaning. It is as linguist Noam Chomsky proposes, that “some random mutation took place, maybe after some strange cosmic ray shower, and it reorganized the brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain.” She thinks she may be involved in a strange space, imitating these evolutionary processes, and resetting what and how language represents.
The exhibition is made up of three print-based installations that the artist has been working on over the last two years as the final visual presentation for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking.
FAB Gallery is currently open by appointment only during our hours of operation Wednesday-Friday Noon-4 PM. Please contact Kalyna Somchynsky at FAB Gallery by email (gallery@ualberta.ca) to schedule an appointment to view the exhibition. If you are unable to visit the gallery during our hours of operations, contact us and we will strive to accommodate an alternate time.