Riddle Bodies’ combination of the hyperhygienic, the fantastical and the ornate offers hope in a deteriorating world
Twisted cotton fabric is suspended from the ceiling like intestines. Connected to plastic bags of soap water through IV tubes, an air pump pushes at the liquid, generating suds that ooze from the plastic-bag ‘mouths’ like clouds and then fall on the floor and disappear, leaving only watermarks on the tiles. The fantastical clouds of Super Clean (all works 2022) are grounded by the disturbing flesh-coloured, wrenching guts powered by the buzz of electric motors. The 15 installations that make up Riddle Bodies further Shao Chun’s decade-long exploration of imagined lifeforms, which have comprised e-textiles and found materials transformed into kinetic hybrid beings. Here, silicone, latex, fishhooks, wigs, eyelashes, dried sea creatures, plastic wraps, IV tubes and lamps manifest a hyperhygienic clinical vibe with delicate Victorian twists.
An underlying theme of these works is attraction, but with an ultimately lethal intent. The Lure is a set of metal-skeleton urchin-shaped traps wrapped with flesh-pink synthetic wigs. On a smaller scale, Chaos Abacus-1’s fishhooks are ornamented with fake eyelashes and synthetic wigs. And for Entrance, assemblages of urchin shells, fishhooks, embroidery frames and fluffy boas seem to act as flamboyant traps for prey.
The titular ‘riddle’ manifests in the exhibition’s various ‘bodies’ made up of an enigmatic combination of inorganic and organic components. In Air Chrysalid, mist-shrouded plastic bags of water are suspended from the ceiling, shaped like jellyfish, touching their ‘tentacles’ to a glass surface on the floor. Fireplace-3 is a small, two-part installation made of glass flasks with floating wigs inside, daintily capped with a lampshade and a tutu. Both works seem like laboratory apparatuses used to examine unknown specimens that might float or flux within them. I tend to interpret them as silicone (not silicon)-based lifeforms, originating perhaps from an alternate reality, where these camouflaged predators done up in flashy costumes lure prey into their digestive cavities. What prey they are trying to capture remains the riddle.
In Riddle Bodies, Shao doesn’t appear to want to create some puzzle to be solved, but rather to create an imaginary fantasy world, a shelter for her hybrid lifeforms. While the appearance and manifestation of these creatures aligns with her work of the previous decade, such escapism has, in recent years, taken on a more significant connotation. Such hiding away feels like a gesture of surrender to our deteriorative reality. But there is also the suggestion of an eventual exodus and escape; then the riddle of who or what is the prey might be solved.
Riddle Bodies at The Cloister Project, Macalline Art Center, Shanghai, through 24 July
