When I was about seven years old, I traveled alone in an airplane to Switzerland to join my parents. For two years prior, I stayed with my grandparents in China. I didn’t talk to my parents during this time, and when I saw them again at the airport, they were basically strangers. Once I got to Switzerland, I remember being alone for the first time in my life, since they were both working or attending language classes during the day. I remember hosting my own radio show that my parents titled ‘Langweilig Jiajia alone at home’ after the then-popular film ‘Home Alone’. During my recent trip to China, I realized again how common this model is. The kids stay with the grandparents in their hometown while the parents move to the city for work. Every taxidriver, manicurist, masseuse, server, karaoke operator, baker, construction worker etc. can tell you something about it.
Duty Free is a site-specific exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Jiajia Zhang. Using installation, sculpture, found objects, sound, vinyl window coverings and text the artist stages a strange and temporary storage space. A place for discarded goods and wholesale products, found furniture and altered objects, past memories and future predictions. Fragments of music and voices speaking in different accents can be heard emanating from some of the objects scattered throughout the space. The voices read an incomplete inventory of mundane activities and daily chores. While the listed activities are both banal and specific, both busy and stagnant, the objects – which usually are traded, delivered, exchanged, discarded, or recycled – lie peacefully still, covered, uncovered, withstanding for a moment the erosion of time. Zhang asks questions about abandonment and entertainment, bureaucracy and care.
What worlds are we collectively building by trading these fragments of selves?
