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For Immediate Release

Media contact:

Leslie Weddell
(719) 389-6038
Leslie.Weddell@ColoradoCollege.edu

Photography, performance art and theater meet in Chinese ‘Body Art’ exhibit

Colorado Springs, Colo – Jan. 6, 2009 – “Body Art: New Photography from China,” an exhibit featuring the work of six contemporary Chinese artists who use the human body as an expressive medium, will be on display from Jan. 27 through March 11 at the I.D.E.A. Space, located in the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center, 825 N. Cascade Ave., on the Colorado College campus.

The exhibition will open with a reception at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 27 with featured artist Huang Yan and exhibition curator Julie Segraves. Segraves, the executive director of the Asian Art Coordinating Council, will give a gallery talk at 4:45 p.m.

The I.D.E.A. Space also will host “Faculty Throwdown III: Body Art” at 3:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 25 with Christina Torres-Rouff, assistant professor of anthropology, and Tom Lindblade, drama professor, hosting a lively discussion of the exhibition in the context of their respective disciplines.

The six artists featured in the exhibit, Cang Xin, Huang Yan, Li Wei, Liu Ren, Ma Yanling and Wu Yuren, fabricate their own worlds rather than documenting aspects of the world around them. Virtually all the works in the exhibition blur the boundaries between photography, performance art and theater.

The worlds they create are fanciful in some way or another. With the aid of digital imaging, many of the featured photographs illustrate a realm that only exists within the artist's imagination. Occasionally using themselves as the central protagonists, the artists create carefully constructed scenes through complex staging, digital manipulation or some combination of the two to explore realities of China's complex contemporary society.

Some photos are humorous, others disconcerting, but all are fascinating reflections of life in China today.

The I.D.E.A. Space is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The Body Art exhibition and all related events are free and open to the public.

“Body Art: New Photography from China” iscurated and organized by the Asian Art Coordinating Council in Denver, and is funded in part by Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, China, and The Scientific and Cultural District in Colorado. Funding for the exhibition at Colorado College is provided by The Robert & Ruby Priddy Charitable Trust and the Colorado College Asian studies department.

For more information about the InterDisciplinary Experimental Arts program at Colorado College, visit www.theIDEAspace.com. For directions or disability accommodation at the event, members of the public may call (719) 389-6607.

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