Kunstmuseum St Gallen

The first solo museum exhibition by Jiajia Zhang (*1981 Hefei, China) focuses on the relationship between private and public space, which is being redefined by social media such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The line between what is deemed “public” and “private” has blurred in unprecedented ways, leading to the emergence of what the artist describes as an “intimate public.” Zhang translates this notion into a spatial setting for her exhibition.

Next to three existing video works, the show brings together new video, sculpture, photography and drawing, all made exclusively for the show, within a scenography created for the specific architecture of the sublevel gallery of Kunstmuseum St.Gallen. The artist uses the lack of daylight, the crude materiality of concrete and artificial stone, and the long corridors to create an, at times, oppressive setting reminiscent of urban non-places such as underpasses or parking garages. Zhang punctuates this setting with moments of domesticity and warmth. Selected artworks from the museum’s collection (by David Bürkler, Ayşe Erkmen, Sylvie Fleury, Rita McBride, Pablo Picasso, Michael E. Smith und Andreas Schulze) are also part of Zhang’s presentation.

Curated by Melanie Bühler