The History of Etiquette
Group Exhibition IFA gallery, Shanghai

Artists: SHAO Yi 邵一 | 

media preview: 9 april 4-6pm
vernissage: 10 april 3-8pm

Social etiquette is a set of rules by which a given society lives.  If one breaches those rules, one becomes an outsider or a rebel. The artist has always been the great critic of social etiquette, the corset of a functioning and therefore malfunctioning society. Everybody in his place. This is the way things should be. “Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes” (Candide). Are the new generation of Chinese artists, graduates of the best schools (in this case Hangzhou’s Academy of Art), playing their role as critiques of a fast-paced, capitalistic, modernizing society or have they simply retreated into their ivory towers as artists have in the past? Are they even making an attempt at formulating a critique of society and social etiquette?

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