Exhibition
March 17–October 9, 2020

One (Illegitimate) Child

Open Hours for One (Illegitimate) Child: By appointment on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 12-5pm.

The International Studio & Curatorial Program announces the group exhibition One (Illegitimate) Child, organized by curator Jianru Wu, ISCP’s 2020 Jane Farver Curatorial Resident. This exhibition explores the theme of self and society in a time of post-socialism and surveillance capitalism, in China and elsewhere. When the one-child policy ended in 2016, formerly illegal Chinese children abruptly became legal, leaving a huge gap between their past and future. This questionable legitimacy is complicated today by institutional intervention enabled by digital technology, which fuels conflicts between disenfranchisement versus hegemony, and minority versus mainstream.

Artists included in the exhibition are Dachal Choi, Future Host (Tingying Ma and Kang Kang), and Li Shuang. Dachal Choi’s installation, Carve and Crave (2020), is comprised of sculpture and modified video footage of criminal activity collected from the Neighbors app using Amazon Ring technology. The project confronts the drastic erosion of individual autonomy and security. Li Shuang’s video, T (2017-18), interweaves contemporary Chinese internet-sourced marketing imagery of women’s socked feet with slang language and cultural symbols. Through non-linear narrative and fragmented visuals, the video interrogates socially imposed sexual stereotypes and other social constructs, as well as expansive performative possibilities of a virtual, suppositional world. Lastly, Future Host presents the sound work Future Host: A Speech Opera (2020), and Little Canon, a solo performance of a piece by New York-based artist and musician C. Spencer Yeh played by a child musician. Little Canon veers off from established rules, offering a deviation from the standards of music pedagogy. It alludes to promises of socialism, to a future that never was.

Jianru Wu (born 1985) is a curator and writer based in Guangzhou and a curator in residence at ISCP in 2020 sponsored by the Jane Farver Memorial Fund. Her practice looks at the consequences of rapidly diversifying structures of relationships and power in East Asia within the digital era. Her curatorial projects include Re/sentiment (2016) at A+ Contemporary, Shanghai; Southern Climate (2017) at N3 Gallery, Beijing; and Forget Sorrow Grass: An Archaeology of Feminine Time (co-curated with Sirui Zhang, 2019) at Guangdong Times Museum, among others. Wu has been the Director of Media Lab at Guangdong Times Museum since 2019.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Jane Farver Memorial Fund. This program is also supported, in part, by New York City Council District 33; New York City Council District 34; New York City Council Member for the 33rd District Stephen T. Levin; New York City Council Member for the 34th District Antonio Reynoso; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Hartfield Foundation; Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF); and William Talbott Hillman Foundation. Special thanks to John Moore for his continued support.

By visiting ISCP, you agree to abide by the following health and safety policies. Please make sure to plan ahead for your visit.
  • Four visitors are allowed in the galleries at a time, and appointments are required. Please write to info@iscp-nyc.org to schedule an appointment.
  • All visitors are required to maintain social distancing, keeping six feet from anyone not in their party.
  • Masks or face coverings are mandatory.
  • Hand sanitizer will be available for visitors.
  • If you have fever, chills, cough, muscle pains, headache, loss of taste or smell, or think you may have been exposed to COVID-19 prior to your visit, please contact us to reschedule.
  • An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 and other infectious conditions exists in any public space where people are present. Those visiting the International Studio & Curatorial Program voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19, other infectious conditions, and other hazards that may be present in a public space.
Open Hours: By appointment on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 12-5pm.
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Participating Residents

ISCP Talk
March 3, 2020, 6:30–8pm

LIR at ISCP with Mella Jaarsma

Artist Mella Jaarsma, who is participating in ISCP’s current exhibition Transient Museum of a Thousand Conversations: LIR at ISCP, will speak about the challenges of creating site-specific projects in other countries, with other cultures and new publics. She will also present her project featured at ISCP, The Right Shot (2019), which takes as its starting point a hostel in Kaliurang, Indonesia. The performance is based on the time she spent there after she left The Netherlands in the 1980s. In the spirit of this time, the performance activates the audience’s sense of heat and cold, much like the hot weather that the Dutch escaped in their second homes in Kaliurang.

Mella Jaarsma has become known for her complex costume installations and her focus on forms of cultural and racial diversity embedded within clothing, the body and food. She was born in The Netherlands in 1960 and studied visual art at Minerva Academy in Groningen, after which she left The Netherlands to study at the Art Institute of Jakarta and at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta. She has lived and worked in Indonesia ever since. In 1988, she co-founded Cemeti Art House, now called Cemeti Institute for Art and Society with Nindityo Adipurnomo, one of the first spaces for contemporary art in Indonesia, which to this day remains an important platform for young artists and art workers in the country and region.

This program is supported, in part, by Hartfield Foundation; New York City Council Member for the 33rd District Stephen T. Levin; New York City Council Member for the 34th District Antonio Reynoso; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF); The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

6:30–8pm

ISCP Talk
February 25, 2020, 6:30–8pm

Artists at Work: Dáreece Walker and Anton Kats

Dáreece Walker will speak about two works currently on view in Tell Me Your Story at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort and will discuss his newest series, Black Fathers Matter, which was primarily developed over the course of his ISCP residency.

Anton Kats will present Four before and after five, a performative and sculptural work rooted in the artistic investigation of a place (Satellite Island in South Ukraine) and a process (the early Space Program of the Soviet Union). Considering questions of memory loss and contemporary territorial agencies in South Ukraine, the work will be activated by ILYICH, a semi-fictional space traveler of an ambiguous origin. Embracing facts and fiction Four before and after five suggests a series of trajectories for inner and outer space explorations and is driven by the notion of concrete listening as manifested through sound, music and narrative.

This program is supported, in part, by Celebrate the Studio; Hartfield Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin; Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF); and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

6:30–8pm

Participating Residents