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Room (3) Observ
2022-2023
Single-channel HD video, color, sound
15 min 37 sec
Yao Qingmei collaborated with a dancer she met in an improvised street dance group.The dancer’s silhouette differs from conventional masculine standards of beauty, revealinganother form of beauty in a relaxed posture. With extraordinary concentration and amysterious aura, he guides the spectator’s gaze into the hotel room. The LCD screen in theliving room reflects the mirrored interior, then the exterior. With backlighting, the dancer’ssilhouette moves from the window to the interior light source, eventually trapping his head inthe lampshade and maintaining this position for a long moment.
«Room» series
In « Room «, Yao Qingmei collaborateswith five contemporary dancers andperformers, gathered successively in thesame standardized hotel room to explorethe space. All have different physiques,genders, ages and skin tones, andpractice different types of dance. YaoQingmei maintains the diversity of thedancers’ profiles, subtly capturing theindividuality of each and guiding theirphysical expressions, urging them toexplore the various angles of an enclosedspace.
These experiences are born of the artist’spersonal observations and perceptionsof the details of the hotel room during hisisolation in 2021 in Shanghai. Yao seeksan empathetic physical experiencedrawn from the improvisations of bodiesin the «room». This place refers notonly to a confined space, but also to apsychological one. This video seriesis the most reality-related part of the«mole» exhibition, a true testament tothe physical expression of dancers inan enclosed space, where the freedom,agility and diversity of the bodiesthemselves transcend the physical limitsof space and stereotypes.
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