Too Loud A Dust / 過於喧囂之塵

31. May - 29. Jun 2023
exhibition tour on 4. Jun 2023
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London N1 6AQ
exhibition review ︎

Tabula Rasa Gallery is pleased to announce Too Loud a Dust, the latest solo exhibition by the artist Musquiqui Chihying (lives and works in Berlin and Taipei), opening on 31 May 2023 at the gallery's London location. As the former artist-in-residence of the Delfina Foundation, Chihying's research-based exhibition tackles the question of how to clean a museum, a complex issue that requires a diverse range of technical skills, such as dusting, microbial sampling, analysis, and preservation methods. The exhibition highlights how dust accumulation in display cabinets contains valuable information, such as the presence of biological species in the exhibition area and potential risks to the collections. Given the significance of environmental indicators in exhibition areas, museums specialising in human anthropology and natural history require meticulous monitoring, making museum cleaning intrinsically linked to the preservation of collections and the maintenance of exhibitions.

Beyond the physical space, anthropologist Mary Douglas has revealed the complex symbolic meanings of "purity," which encompass culture, rituals, and identity politics, with ambiguous concepts of cleanliness and dirtiness. Too Loud a Dust exhibition aims to present the latest works by Musquiqui Chihying, who has long explored the social functionality of museums, against the backdrop of a paradigmatic shift in museum politics.

Chihying's research, conducted during the pandemic period at the Delfina Foundation, delves into two events from 1910: the construction of the Formosa Hamlet by the Japanese Empire at the Japan-British Exhibition in London, and the publication of "Diseases of China: Including Formosa and Korea" by British missionary James Laidlaw Maxwell in the same year. This exhibition, in collaboration with the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, aims to re-evaluate the complex relationships among displays, images, and ideological constructions, employing perspectives from microbiology and pathology.

Installation view at the Tabula Rasa Gallery in London, UK, 2023

This exhibition is supported by the Delfina Foundation's research programme Collecting as Practice
Special thanks for the support from Delfina Foundation team, Pitt Rivers Museum
Philip Grover, Andrew Hughes, Liu Sammi, Li Yisi, Shen Yiren, Zoe Diao

Tabula Rasa Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery founded in Beijing's 798 art district in 2015.
In April 2021, Tabula Rasa Gallery opened its second space in Hoxton, London, providing a wider platform for artistic exchange globally.

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© 2024 Musquiqui Lab

Too Loud A Dust / 過 於 喧 囂 之 塵

© 2024
Musquiqui Lab

Too Loud A Dust / 過於喧囂之塵