Shen Yuan: Pieces of Memory

The Cernuschi Museum is pleased to welcome a creation by Chinese artist Shen Yuan, never exhibited before.

The first contemporary installation presented at the museum, it will be visible from October 14, 2021 to January 30, 2022 in the Buddha room.

Fragments of memory is an unprecedented installation which, after the renovation of the museum in 2020, inaugurates a policy of one-off presentations of contemporary installations in the Buddha room.

It is the work of the artist Shen Yuan (born in 1959). She has been a leading contemporary art actress since her participation in the avant-garde movement in 1980s China. This is evidenced by the presentations of his works, in recent years, in multiple personal and collective exhibitions within institutions as diverse as the UCCA - Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Guggenheim museum in New York or Money of Paris.

After arriving in Paris in 1990 with her husband, the artist Huang Yong Ping (1954-2019), Shen Yuan has developed a work marked by constant questions about otherness, identity and language.

For this proposal to the Cernuschi Museum, however, she preferred, in order to engage in a rich dialogue between her installation and the collections that surround it, to explore another theme that is dear to her, that of the relationships between memory, intimacy and everyday objects. .

Shen Yuan and Eric Lefebvre, director of the Cernuschi museum, during the opening on October 14, 2021

Shen Yuan's installation "Fragments of Memory" in front of the great Buddha.

Shen Yuan explains his work: “The comb is a personal object that can accompany us for a lifetime. In the morning, it is used to get rid of the snatches of dreams of the day before and to open new furrows of thoughts. Dreams are germs of memory that break down into fragments, light and fragile, like dandruff that comes off the scalp.
Collectibles are witnesses of the past, and they make visible the past that we can then imagine. They also embody many stories of yesteryear and my comb installation is a new object that tells a new story. The links that are woven between these stories thus form our history. "

Free access to the permanent collections