Shen Yuan

Inspired by a toy whistle that becomes longer by blowing out, Shen Yuan created the large-scale work with this same mechanism. The huge tongue suspended from the ceiling of the gallery provides a feeling of non-presence in the space when it is rolling up, then all sudden menaces the visitor on blowing down. And, the top of this tongue is forked. In Chinese sayings, "Curled up tongue" or "Diverged tongue" means the lingual sounds of the different races caused by trilling a tongue in a mouth, and also means that speaking unclearly as one who has a diverged tongue tries to say two different things at once. This raises the issue of the migration related with the people who live in a foreign country in new reality of the society at our times, which associated with the isolated position with difficulties of expressions by their ambiguous and unclear words.

Shen Yuan stayed at CCA Kitakyushu as a professor of the Research Program from December 16, 1998 to January 31, 1999.

Shen Yuan
Diverged Tongue