Bonniers Konsthall

Kan Xuan works primarily with video, but also with photography and installation. Her work has been exhibited in the Chinese pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale and at the Istanbul Biennial the same year. Kan Xuan was born in 1972, and lives and works in Beijing and Amsterdam.

 

Three questions to Kan Xuan

Caroline Elgh, Assistant Curator: China is a big country and the living situation I understand varies a lot depending on which city or region you live in. The big cities on the east coast like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou where most of the artists in this exhibition live are also very different from each other. You live in Beijing so in your work as an artist, how do you relate to your city and home environment?

Kan Xuan: Yes, in general, these factors do influence my works as a whole. As for how they influence me, it would be difficult to describe that in words.

Caroline Elgh: What would you say that contemporary art in China is about (if it’s at all possible to talk about “Chinese art” in this way)? It does not seem to be about politics, sociology or philosophy as a part of a more academic tradition, but something else. Would you agree on this? I also wonder, independent of the city you live in, would you say that there is something that Chinese artists in general have in common (except that you were all born and bred in the same country)?

Kan Xuan: I’ve always felt that in China, art is a kind of “intervention” to get involved with practical and concrete living and psychology.

Caroline Elgh: What is your driving force as an artist? Is it important to make a change?

Kan Xuan: Truth and happiness. It is not important to make a change.