CENTRO PECCI exhibitions

YU JI
Hide Me in Your Belly
 

curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol

from June 28 to September 8, 2024

opening Thursday 27 June 2024

Centro Pecci presents the first solo exhibition in Italy of Yu Ji, a Chinese woman artist who came to international attention with the 2019 Venice Biennale. Yu Ji's work draws inspiration for her practice as a sculptor from the context in which she lives and works, resulting in unfinished forms that evoke bodies and situations in transition and related to the everyday life. The exhibition stems from the daily confrontation with the context of the city of Prato and the spaces of Centro Pecci where the artist will produce new works alongside existing ones. The exhibition continues the investigation begun by the artist at CCA Berlin during her solo exhibition in 2023, to which Hide Me in Your Belly serves as an ideal continuation.

YU JI

Yu Ji. Artist Portrait, 2022 © Yu Ji. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Lok Cheng / M+, Hong Kong
 

Yu Ji is known for a diverse practice that spans sculpture, installation, performance, video and most recently drawing. Much of her work is motivated by the investigation of the concept of place and the capacity for specific loci to be charged with both geographical and historical narratives. She frequently conducts field research, as part of which she has staged temporary interventions in different sites around the world, which reflect upon and interrogate the place of the body within everyday environments. In 2008, she co-founded am art space – an artist-led space in Shanghai, promoting experimentation and exchanges between artists, curators and the public.  
 

Yu Ji (b. 1985, Shanghai) obtained her MA from the Department of Sculpture, College of Art of Shanghai University, in 2011. Yu Ji has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions including Protrude, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2024); We the singular in multiple ghosts. I the multiple as parts of whole., ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, NYU, Shanghai (2023); A Guest, A Host, A Ghost, OCMA Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa (2023, her first major institutional exhibition in the USA); Column-Untitled No.3, commissioned by Friends of the High Line, New York NY (2023); Miss Shell, Delta, and Two Noughts, CCA Centre for Contemporary Arts, Berlin (2023); Against Shadows / 无视阴影, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2022); Wasted Mud, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2021, marking her first institutional exhibition outside of Asia); Spontaneous Decisions II, Gallery 0, Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum, West Bund Museum, Shanghai (2021); Forager, Edouard Malingue, offsite at Avenue Apartments, Shanghai (2020); Stones in Her Pocket, Project Terrace, Shanghai (2020); Black Mountain, Beijing Commune (2016), Dairy of Sulfur Mining—Pataauw, Mind Set Art Center, Taipei (2016) and Never Left Behind, Beijing C-Space (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Sigg Prize 2023, M+, Hong Kong (2023); Bodily Reaction: Vitalizing the Bare Life, TAIKANG SPACE, Beijing (2023); ATP The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2021); Soft Water Hard Stone, Fifth New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (2021); May You Live in Interesting Times, 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice (2019); Soon enough: Art in Action, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2018); Entropy, Faurschou Foundation, Beijing (2018); HUGO BOSS ASIA ART: Award for Emerging Asian Artists, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2017); The Eighth Climate (What does art do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016); Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories, 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016); INSIDE CHINA. L’Intérieur du Géant, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014). In 2021 Yu Ji’s first artist book, Wasted Mud, an extensive bilingual publication in English and Mandarin Chinese, was published to accompany her solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery. In 2017 Yu Ji was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize Asia and in 2023 she was nominated for the prestigious Sigg Prize.  

Cover: Yu Ji, Flesh in Stone - Anthropos IV, 2024 concrete
75 x 46 x 40 cm / 29 1⁄2 x 18 1⁄8 x 15 3⁄4 in Edition 1 of 4 + 1 a/p © Yu Ji. Courtesy the Artist, Sadie Coles HQ, London and Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong. Photo: Katie Morrison