Galleria Continua is pleased to present InnerScapes, a group exhibition featuring the works of five of the most cutting edge contemporary female artists active in China today: Chen Dandizi, Kan Xuan, Qin Jin, Alice Wang and Yang Guangnan.

The show, curated by independent art critic and curator Manuela Lietti, showcases different bodies of work spanning video, installation, mixed media interventions and a massive site-specific mural painting covering the gallery’s largest wall.

InnerScapes pays homage to and underlines the different methodologies that characterize this group of artists, not aligned with any particular trends but devoted to pursuing highly individualistic, intimistic and independent artistic paths. Presented in the form of micro-solo shows that allow the visitor to gain a deeper sense of the latest developments in these artists’ careers and their long lasting inspiration, rather than a quick overview, their works revolve around personal yet universal issues: the construction and deconstruction of one’s identity, the intermingling and adherence of the micro (personal) and macro (societal/cosmological) dimensions, the frictions and tensions between the individual and the social structure he belongs to, the production of artistic language through gestures - often repeated in obsessive and maniacal ways, that unfold the different traces sedimented in the artists’ practices as a response to time and history, but also processes of personal growth.

In an epoch characterized by the spasmodic use of new technologies, and by the continuous need to look for the newest ways of expression, the practices of these artists are an invitation to re-evaluate the personal, physical and processual realms and not merely the mechanical involvement with one’s work, as well as with the feeling of transiency and indefiniteness it brings about, something which should be stoically embraced or at least consciously questioned. Their works act as a magnifying glass: on one hand they reveal the uncanny dimension hidden in the everyday, on the other hand they translate the metaphysical essence of things into something tangible and that pertains to us all.

The “scapes” these artists are confronted with but also contribute to shape are not the mere products of their retinas, but rather of their consciences, attitudes, and way of being.