Ray Art Center is pleased to present Me and Me on view from March 28th through May 28th 2016. This exhibition features a series of works about self-exploration by two emerging Chinese photographers Chen Wenjun and Jiang Yanmei, based on their eight-year-long photography project of the same name. Since 2007, the two artists have been photographing each other and recording the intimate worlds around them. This process also helps them to re-recognize who they are in this relationship.

The photographic practice conducted by Chen Wenjun and Jiang Yanmei is not only a reflection and examination towards the personalized “self” and the private life of “self”, but also a dialectical explora-tive process that builds within their mutual relationships. As the curator Lin Ye indicated, in their works, “we can clearly perceive various situations originate or developed from human’s loneliness— recognition, integration, suspicion, confliction, persistence, tolerance, independence, and respect. This is also a process of establishing ‘privacy.’” The very status that incorporates both independence and integration in “Me and Me” series offers a meaningful perspective for our discussion on “Shi Sha Shin” (private photography).

This exhibition will showcase nearly 30 pieces of photographs and selected book pages from the “Me and Me” series, supplemented with the artists’ hand-made photo books and relevant videos. The “Reading Corner” specially set in the exhibition hall will present over 60 copies of photo books, mono-graphs, magazines on “Shi Sha Shin”, as well as relevant essays collected from different websites, peri-odicals, and photobooks. We hope that this arrangement would help to facilitate a better understand-ing about this project among visitors; and for people who take interests in “Shi Sha Shin”, they will also have a chance to comprehensively receive this concept through in-depth reading and study. During the exhibition period, we will also invite artists and scholars from home and abroad to give talks on “Me and Me” project, works by other relevant artists, as well as other various topics on “Shi Sha Shin”.

As part of “The Dimension of Privacy” series subordinated to the Comparative Research Project on “Japan-China” Photography initiated by Lin Ye, this exhibition intends to present excellent examples of “Shi Sha Shin” and private images, to inspire communication and discussion on relevant topics from perspectives of history of photography, photography critiques, and the comparison of photographic practices between China and Japan. We also expect that there will be more in-depth reflections emerged in regard to the concept of “private/privacy”.

About the exhibition

Date: March 28 – May 28, 2016

Venue: Ray Art Center

Curator: Lin Ye

Courtesy of the artists and Ray Art Center.