Yu Ji: Wasted Mud

Chisenhale Gallery presents Wasted Mud, the first solo exhibition in a UK institution by Shanghai-based artist Yu Ji. Comprising sculpture, video, print and performance, Yu Ji’s work often responds to a specific context or location to examine the interplay between the human body and its surrounding space. 

Motivated by an acute sensitivity to materials, Yu Ji’s work explores a tension between physical matter and energy. Recurring materials used in her work, such as cement, wood, metal, plastic and organic matter all have their distinctive characteristics, tactility and “temperatures.” In her installations, these materials oppose, rub and strike against one another; proposing by their proximity how they might merge, combine or absorb one into the other. 

Influenced by research conducted during a residency at our partners Delfina Foundation, in 2019, Yu Ji’s new commission sees London as a site to explore the body in relation to our built and natural environments. Taking her experience of the city’s canals and rivers as a starting point, Yu Ji’s installation acts as a “living sculpture,” where, through the use of water, Yu Ji alters the gallery’s seemingly fixed structure. 

Building on Yu Ji’s ongoing series of fragmented concrete torsos, the exhibition includes two new concrete sculptures depicting bodies bound and moulded together, one contained within plaster and wood. Influenced by the birth of her first child, this new series of sculptures comments on human interdependence, exchange and transformation. 

Hung from the gallery walls and hovering just above the floor is Jaded Ribs (2021), a large handmade net filled with recycled wreckage from local construction sites in Tower Hamlets, alongside objects from the artist’s studio in Shanghai. Ten plastic tubes connected to a self-regulating electronic water pump, slowly leaking plant-infused water throughout the gallery space, alter the exterior of her sculptures and seep liquid into the building’s floor. 

Wasted Mud develops Yu Ji’s ongoing enquiry into a symbiotic relationship between her body and specific terrains and contexts in which she works. By transforming the gallery into a site under construction, where what is considered debris reveals its potential for hidden vitality, Yu Ji’s new body of work exposes our reliance upon one another and renews focus on the spaces that contain and sustain us. 

Accompanying the exhibition is a bilingual publication in English and Mandarin Chinese Wasted Mud, produced by Chisenhale Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Edouard Malingue Gallery and Verlagder Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, which will be distributed in June 2021.

Yu Ji’s commission was originally programmed as part of Chisenhale Gallery’s Commissions Programme for 2020, which comprised four new exhibitions by artists Imran Perretta, Thao Nguyen Phan, Yu Ji and Abbas Akhavan. Postponed due to the pandemic, Yu Ji’s exhibition now opens in May 2021, followed by Abbas Akhavan’s commission in summer 2021. In autumn 2021, Chisenhale Gallery will present a new body of work by artist Rindon Johnson, co- commissioned and produced by SculptureCentre, New York. 

We look forward to welcoming visitors back to the gallery via an online booking system and have new health and safety measures in place for the welfare of staff and visitors. For more information, please click here.

Talks and events:
As part of the commissioning process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Yu Ji and runs throughout the duration of her exhibition.

Walking tour exploring local plant life
Saturday, May 19, 11:30am and 2pm; Saturday, July 3, 11:30am and 2pm BST
Wild food expert Ru Kenyon leads a series of walks exploring local plant life, waterways, and nature reserves in response to Yu Ji’s exhibition.

Workshops in the Chisenhale Learn-Play-Create space
Friday, June 4, 11:30am and 2pm; and Saturday, June 5, 11:30am and 2pm BST
Artist Rose Keyes leads a series of family workshops outside in the Chisenhale Learn-Play-Create space opposite the gallery.

Yu Ji in conversation with Jo-ey Tang
Friday, June 11, 1pm BST / 8pm EST / 8am CST (online)
Yu Ji is joined in conversation by curator, artist and writer Jo-ey Tang to discuss her new exhibition.

Sophie Xiaofei Guo gives a talk in response to Yu Ji’s exhibition 
Saturday, June 26, 3pm BST
Curator and writer Sophie Xiaofei Guo gives a talk on the intersections of visual arts and biomedicine.

Walking tour to Phytology in Bethnal Green Nature Reserve
Saturday, July 10, 11:30am; Saturday, July 17, 11:30am BST
Artist Michael Smythe and ecologist Shumaisa Khan lead a walk from Yu Ji’s exhibition to Phytology, a medicinal garden and cultural institute based in Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.

Artist biography: 
Yu Ji (b. 1985, Shanghai) lives and works in Shanghai, China and Vienna, Austria. Selected exhibitions include: Spontaneous Decision II, Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project, Shanghai; INCORPOREA 03, Basement Roma, Rome (both 2021); Stones in Her Pocket, Project Terrace, Shanghai; For the Children, Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai; Interrupted Meals, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai (all 2020); May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2019); SOON ENOUGH: ART IN ACTION, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2018); ZHONGGUO2185, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2017); Why Not Ask Again?- Maneuvers, Disputations & Stories, 11th Shanghai Biennale; and The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale (all 2016). In 2017 Yu Ji was awarded the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART: Award for Emerging Asian Artists, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. 

Lead Exhibition Supporter: Shane Akeroyd. 

Wasted Mud is produced with support from Joe and Marie Donnelly; the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund and the UK-China Connections through Culture Grants and British Council. With additional support from the Yu Ji Supporters’ Circle. 

Yu Ji’s exhibition and publication is made possible through the generous involvement of Sadie Coles HQ. 

Yu Ji’s commission is produced in collaboration with Delfina Foundation as part of their artist residency programme. With additional exhibition support from Delfina Foundation’s Network of Asia-Pacific Patrons. 

Chisenhale Gallery’s Talks and Events Programme 2021 is supported by Brian Boylan and forms part of Chisenhale Gallery’s Engagement Programme. 

Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity number: 1026175