Bees left their lives in the very wounds they had created for themselves.
Virgil
GC, DF, CSQ, WXD, SQX, LS, HL, ZHF, HL, LY, GYY, ZMT, LTP, LWT, GLW, SY. They are the initials of names, women’s names, young chinese women’s names. This book is dedicated to them because – as the artist said – “without their incredible trust and friendship these photographs would not exist”.
They are the “bees” of the eponymous book by Chinese photographer Zhe Chen. The fragile lady bees, the photographer shows the scars, marks, burnt skins, of women that escape from pain through physical self-destruction. The escapee finds several suffering solutions from deep hand-made tattoos or serious body modifications, up to taking a final tragic and fatal solution. Self-injuring is an unknown and hidden subject matter in China, more than in other countries, acknowledge in Japan where the photographer Kosuke Okahara told of a true reality in his Ibasyo black and white work. Zhe Chen, travelling through many cities, focuses on her native country and that world that she knows well from inside.
Many are the reasons of self-injury practices.The book has no titles and no descriptions , only the power of the images ,worthy intentions and personal need allow the photographer to keep a sincere, confident and trusting relationships with the beautiful “bees”. Zhe Chen’s earlier work, The Bearable (2010), is a series of self-portraits concerning her private auto-mutilation experience. So the “bees” group could include also ZC who tells with images more than is possible using words.
Words that in the exhibition currently exhibited at UCCA in Beijing will fly from beehives to open skies.
I talked directly to Zhe Chen asking her about intentions, messages and ultimate aim of the Bees.
Eliseo Barbàra: You said – more than once – that Bees help you think deeply about the community of the “beautiful and obstinate souls”. Do you think you have achieved this aim? After The Bearable, we know you were one of them, even if it’s not exact to talk about “they” as a unique recognizable community. Today, do you still consider yourself one of the “obstinate souls”? Does your work help you?
Zhe Chen: I do consider myself one of the obstinate and beautiful souls. And by exhibiting the complete series (including journals and letters, which are as – if not more – important than the photographs) in the way I did in January at UCCA*, I believe I achieve my goal to present each as one particular individual. And the two-year-span making of Bees did shape me in an otherwise impossible illuminating way. I now understand that even though sometimes what we end up composing this is not the answer, but the question , it doesn’t mean we stayed still. We evolved. We changed bit by bit. Each of us are every day further from the “us” we were, for better or worse. In this sense, Bees as a projects did help me as well as my subjects to better understand ourselves and our history.
The Artists:
Zhe Chen (1989) is a Chinese photographer who lives between Beijing and Los Angeles. She is the winner of 2011 Inge Morath Award (Magnum Foundation), Three Shadow Award and International Photography Award.
Her images have been exhibited, among others, at Beaugeste Gallery (Shanghai, China), Regent Park Arts & Culture Centre (Toronto, Canada), Tokyo Photo (Tokyo, Japan), CAFA Art Museum (Beijing, China), Fotohof Gallery (Salzburg, Austria), Delhi Photography Festival (New Delhi, India), Getty Images Gallery (London, UK), Les Recontres d’Arles (Arles, France), New York Photo Festival (New York).
Eliseo Barbàra
* Bees is currently exhibited in “ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice” at UCCA, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China. January 13 – April 14, 2013
Bees – Zhe Chen
Co-published by Beaugeste Photo Gallery, Shanghai, and Zhe Chen
Distributed by Jia Za Zahi Press.
China, 2011
First edition of 500
Text by Jean Loh
Interview by Tingting Xu
