HomeNewsNews Archive 2007Memories for Tomorrow

Memories for Tomorrow: Works from The UBS Art Collection at the Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, 6 June - 20 July 2008

This is the first exhibition in China to showcase works from The UBS Art Collection. It includes all media; paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, photographs and videos. The artworks selected hold memories of our past and visions for our future. Memorials to the past can protect the present, while dreams of the future become memories of yesterday.

The UBS Art Collection represents artists from all over the world, from China to Colombia and from Australia to Albania, from the 1950s to the present day. Memories for Tomorrow concentrates on recent acquisitions most notably in the medium of video revealing links to earlier works, especially in the form of prints and drawings. Rather than include a single work by each artist, the exhibition, where possible, presents small monographic displays, revealing the depth of The UBS Art Collection rather than its breadth.

Difficult histories are memorialized by some of these artists. UK-based American artist Susan Hiller has photographed street-signs in Germany named after their Jewish residents, residents now painfully absent as a result of the Holocaust. Alfredo Jaar devised a poetic metaphor for a divided Chile under General Pinochet's right-wing regime, while Sandra Vasquez de la Horras small Surreal drawings capture the dreams and memories of her childhood shaped that regime. In relation to current circumstances, Chieh-jen Chen has made a moving portrait of unemployed garment-workers in their closed-down factory in Taiwan. Ócar Muñoz brings to life photographs of the disappeared in Colombia in two poetic attempts to capture their images for posterity.

While these are moving but crucial memorials, other works present more hopeful visions for the future.  Chinese artist Cao Fei has made a beautiful film of young workers of the Siemens plant, whom she invited to live out their dreams in the aisles of the factory floor. Thai artist Navin Rawanchaikul humorously makes himself the star of a Bollywood movie while Mexican artist Daniel Guzmán transfers a New York pop video to the streets of Mexico City in a parody of cool. Adrian Paci, an Albanian refugee now living in Italy, captures the mood of longing and anticipation in the faces of Mexican migrant workers in California. Globalized culture, globalized industry.

Amongst these works are portraits of individuals caught in private moments by such artists as Lucian Freud from Britain, Eric Fischl from the US, Stephan Balkenhol from Germany and Michaël Borremans from Belgium. Whether the men and women they depict are dreaming of their past or of their future, we'll never know. What we do know, as is evident in the exhibition, is that dreams can rupture the geographical boundaries that separate us.

	© Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

http://www.sh-artmuseum.org.cn/