Shen Ruijun : Self-Reserved Land
September 25.2021-November 1.2021
Shen Ruijun : Self-Reserved Land
Self-Reserved Land Project
The policy for self-reserved land launched in 1956, the agricultural collective economic organization, by the law, allocated a small plot of land to peasants for long-term usage. Its ownership belongs to the collective, and the peasants exercise the right of use on a household basis. The private property of self-reserved land stimulated farmers' production enthusiasm and effectively supplemented the collective economy. Until today, the cultivation of self-reserved land is still a source of daily subsistence for many impoverished farmers.
Farmers grow vegetables and crops on their land to meet their family needs. The crops grown on these plots vary from household to household, depending on their specific needs. Farmers do not use pesticides in their fields. Hence, the products come in different shapes and forms, building into a complex and intriguing ecosystem with insects and particular geography. In the context of globalization, industrialization, and information technology, the private, independent, self-sufficient, and interdependent system of self-reserve land offers us some insights. Cultivating a self-reserve land can be spiritually or materialistically significant. It doesn’t have to be big, but the presence of this “land” allows us to become complete and autonomous individuals.
The self-reserved land project has been carried out for over two years. During this time, I have researched its history and policies. I observed one or more plots in different seasons on multiple occasions, wandering through the crisscrossing, high and low fields, talking to farmers, and recording the details that appeal to me. By creating a garden with crops from the "self-reserved land" in an art museum, I became familiar with the pattern of natural growth and forms of the crops and tested the relationship between the modern urban living model and natural agroecology. In high temperature and humidity climates, plants in the south grow vigorously and uncontrollably, embodying a unique aesthetic. Through painting, I explore the logic behind this aesthetic experience while "reshaping" these crops with my state of mind. Slowing down my steps and changing my landscape, I hope to practice a way of life that endows the spirit in the everyday, observing the changes in the world through the simplest experience, and allow my soul to return home; to touch the efflorescent world without distractions.
—Shen Ruijun
Shen Ruijun, artist and curator, born in 1976, Guangzhou, currently works and lives in Guangzhou and New York.
Her works take painting as a starting point and draw inspiration from nature, emphasizing experience and process. Her practice covers a variety of media, including installation, animation, and new media. Through perceptions of multi-dimensional space and multiple angles, her works explore the state of instantly shifting and intertwining contradictions such as, the virtual and the real, spirit and matter, the quotidian and the demystified, the individual and the collective, the norm and the exception, etc. In recent years, she practices a way of life that endows the spirit in the everyday through self-reserved land projects and maintains an independent lifestyle within connectivity. Shen Ruijun graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2000, received her MFA from Montcalm State University in 2004, and was rewarded the Joan Mitchell Award in the same year. She received her MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, who was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. Her works were included in the 8th Shenzhen Ink Biennale (2013), the 2013 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, and the 6th Guangzhou Triennial (2019). They have been collected by MAXXI, Italy, KADIST, Guangdong Museum of Fine Arts, the White Rabbit Collection, Australia, and the Teirochi Deleon Collection.
As a curator, Shen Ruijun has curated many successful exhibitions, including "Gentle Wave in Your Eye Fluid-A Pipilotti Rist Solo Exhibition" (2013), the “Pulse-Reaction" series (2012, 2016), and "Polit-Sheer-Form!" at Queens Museum of Art, New York (2014). She also co-curated the 6th Chengdu Biennale (2013). Her ongoing research and curatorial direction include using Chinese gardens as an entry point to study the ideological roots of Chinese culture, traditional culture-inspired approach to addressing the dilemmas faced in contemporary life, and the possibility of translating the spatiality of gardens into contemporary art practice. She has been curating a series of garden-related exhibitions since 2015.
Formerly the Chief Curator of Guangdong Times Art Museum (2014-2017), Shen Ruijun is currently the China program director of KADIST (San Francisco/Paris) and an independent artist.
