Funeral and Nostalgia

Artist list

Ting Deng, Yujia Gao, Chuxia Luo, Shuran Wang, Yunqi Zhang

The existence of men is a process of marching towards death and returning to life. Takovsky's film, titled Homesickness, follows two spiritual devotees as they return home at the end of their lives. This last exhibition formed by five Chinese artists before they return to their hometown also reflects a two-way structure of death and nostalgia. This is a collective funeral for nostalgia. The ending of the funeral echoes the destinations of Dominik and Gorchakov in the film, we find a resting place for our multiple identities in a twist of fate.

Modern homesickness is a lament about the inability to fulfil the mythical homecoming and a rehearsal for a return to a life where everyone paints themselves as they are. The story is not only about personal nostalgia and family values, as the exhibition's theme, but it is also full of contradictions, twists, false homecoming, false identification. It's a metaphor for human destiny. At the time of death, we finally return to our spiritual homeland.

I am a candle. I burned at the feast. Gather my wax when morning arrives so that this page will remind you how to be proud and how to weep, how to give away the last third of happiness, and how to die with ease— and beneath a temporary roof to burn posthumously, like a word.
/ Arseny Tarkovsky


The exhibition curated by Ting Deng, Supported by No Space, which is a gallery and online art experimenting space based in Beijing and London.