I Know Something About Love

International Fri 28-01-2011

I Know Something About Love
Press Release

On 8 March 2011, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art will preview a multimedia group exhibition devoted to works by Yang Fudong, Shirin Neshat, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Yinka Shonibare MBE. Each of these artists explores the theme of love in different times and cultures through the spectrum of their personal experience, observation and commentary.

Artist Yinka Shonibare | Photo courtesy of the Bibliophile-weblog

The exhibition title takes its cue from a 1960s song written by Bert Berns and performed by The Exciters, in which there is the recurring lyric, ‘I know something about love’.

Yinka Shonibare MBE will re-create the installation Jardin d’amour (Garden of Love), which he originally showed in 2007 at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, it will be reconfigured for the ground floor gallery at Parasol unit. In this work Shonibare applies a playfully political perspective to his exploration of the theme of love in the eighteenth-century Rococo period in France.

The Chinese artist, Yang Fudong uses the medium of moving image to explore the theme of love in one of his early works, the 3-channel video installation Flutter, Flutter... Jasmine, Jasmine, 2002. In it, Yang Fudong – known for his critical view on contemporary life in the rapidly changing society in China – looks into the private world of a young Chinese couple.

Artist Yinka Shonibare | Photo: The Guardian

Shirin Neshat examines the theme of love through the lens of gender, as established and enforced since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. In her two-channel video work, Fervor, 2000, Iranian artist Neshat not only highlights the frustration and helplessness of Iranian women in this new paradigm, but also demonstrates how the negative view of love within the revolutionary culture affects natural human feelings.

Slow dance marathon, 2005, by Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou, explores the social construction of love through pop music and the form of slow dancing. In this video documentation of a 24 hour long performance, a human chain is formed by strangers who slow dance to the music of well-known love songs.

This exhibition is curated by Ziba Ardalan and will be accompanied by a new publication, co-published and distributed internationally by Koenig Books.

Posted By: Hirum Ndungu

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Related Links

I Know Something About Love

Yinka Shonibare: 'I wanted to do a work connected to Trafalgar Square'

GREENWICH: National Maritime Museum celebrates artist Yinka Shonibare

I Know Something About Love at Parasol Unit

I Know Something About Love

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