5 Shows to See During West Bund Art & Design

Shuang Li | Prada Rong Zhai | 6 November – 12 January 2025

Challenging mother-child relationships are a cross-cultural phenomenon, often underpinned by failures of communication. In ‘Distance of the Moon’ at Prada Rong Zhai, Shuang Li – a young Chinese multimedia artist based in Berlin and Geneva, and an only child – contends with the challenges of the relationship, as communication technologies make it easier than ever to make contact, but often more difficult to find true connection. Her frustration at speaking without being heard is evident in works such as With a Trunk of Ammunition too (2024) and Distance of the Moon (2024), two large-scale sound and light installations involving windchimes, chandeliers and light. Producing clanging noises inspired by an unspecified letter as well as recorded conversations between the artist and her mother on WeChat, these lo-fi sculptures exemplify Li’s yearning for in-person exchanges – while urging spectators to examine the dilemma of communication in the highly mediated present.

Cai Zebin | Capsule Shanghai | 2 November – 25 January 2025

Cai Zebin is one of the most sought-after young Chinese painters today. His idiosyncratic, surreal lexicon finds expression in ‘12 Tales of the 23rd Parallel North’ at Capsule Shanghai, which features a dozen new works on canvas. Capturing Cai’s nocturnal journeys in his native city, Shantou, the works depict dramatically illuminated scenes rendered in meticulous detail – as if the night allows for enhanced visibility compared to broad daylight. A standout among the dozen, The Song of the Big Shot (2024) tells the story of an absurd, self-aggrandizing figure with sycophantic underlings, possibly as a parable about narcissism. The exhibition also includes Cai’s drawings and an artist’s book documenting the thought process behind his iconic figures.

Feng Zhixuan | MadeIn Gallery | 4 November – 4 January 2025

Feng Zhixuan is part of a new generation of Chinese artists whose sculptures and installations are concerned with the open-ended meeting of the organic and the inorganic. Often combining found objects with sculptures made using industrial casting techniques, Feng composes evocative scenes that suggest nature dioramas or specimen displays, to probe the tension between what is natural and unnatural in an age of imitations, fakes and hybrids. Arguably the centrepiece of his solo show ‘Trek’ at MadeIn Gallery, With the death of each narwhal, a coconut tree and a palm tree are born (2024) is a large, relief-like depiction of a palm tree, made from aluminium parts including cast narwhal tusks, set in resin so it resembles a marvellous, strange fossil.

Yin Xiuzhen | Power Station of Art | 9 November – 16 February 2025

Yin Xiuzhen is perhaps best known for her contribution to the 2008 Shanghai Biennale: Flying Machine (2008), a monumental installation that merged part of a Boeing 747, a farm tractor and a Volkswagen sedan with fabrics taken from second-hand clothing to underscore the human cost of globalization in China. ‘Piercing the Sky’ at Power Station of Art sees the artist turning to the cosmos. The show, which takes over the ground floor of the former Shanghai Power Station, opens with an impressive trilogy: Flying Machine; Piercing the Sky (2024), a 15-metre metal needle in the atrium that suggests a cosmic framework; and Mending the Sky (2024), a textile work that pays homage to the celestial in the story of Nüwa, a goddess from Chinese mythology. In nearly all of the artworks, acting as a second skin, pieces of used fabric allude to individual and collective memories amid globalization.

‘Another Avant-Garde: Photography 1970 – 2000’ | Westbund Art Museum | 8 November – 16 February 2025

Since the Shanghai Center of Photography closed permanently last year, photography became the absentee medium along the Westbund. ‘Another Avant-Garde: Photography 1970-2000’, the last major exhibition in a five-year partnership between Westbund Art Museum and Centre Pompidou, fills this void with work by internationally renowned artists such as Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sherrie Levine and local contemporaries including Hong Hao, Rong Rong, Zhang Haier and Aaajiao. This historic survey emphasizes the role that photography’s seriality and reproducibility played in the context of burgeoning conceptual art practices, and traces the medium’s influences on the fields of painting, video art, installation, performance art and more, focusing on the pre-digital age of image-making.

^{Main image: Shuang Li, All the Letters I’ve Ever Written (Geneve) (detail), 2024. Courtesy: the artist, Peres Projects and Antenna Space; photograph: Alessandro Wang}