From September 28 to December 29, 2024, the solo exhibition "Mo Yi: I am in my landscape" is currently on display at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.This is the first institutional solo exhibition in China to comprehensively review the early works of artist Mo Yi.

As an "outsider" and self-taught photographer, Mo Yi captured the vitality and sentimentality of China's ever-changing social structure in the second half of the 20th century in his works, and his photos taken on the streets of Tianjin have become his iconic works. For Mo Yi, art creation is his way of existing in the world - it is not a job or a hobby, but an addiction, a medicine that can temporarily relieve the pain of human survival in contemporary civilization.

Throughout his prolific career, Mo Yi has challenged the concept of the “photographic gaze”, often not looking through the viewfinder when shooting, but instead holding the camera behind his neck or fixed on a stick, and shooting while walking. These street experiments challenge the tradition of documentary photography, the strict limitations of shooting techniques, and people’s established ideas about the relationship between composition and creator, providing another possibility for image creators and their creative media.

As a long-overdue study of Mo Yi’s artistic practice, this exhibition displays more than 350 black-and-white and color photographs from his representative series of works, such as "One Meter, the Landscape Behind Me" (1988), "Swaying Carriage" (1989), "Landscape Outside the Bus" (1995), "I am a Stray Dog" (1995), "Dancing Street" (1998) and "Red Street" (2003), clearly showing Mo Yi's creation of photographic forms and the conceptuality of his artistic practice in the history of Chinese and global photography and in the field of Chinese experimental art.

In addition to the photographic installations, the exhibition also features a selection of archival materials, such as handmade photo albums and original contact plates, which will be presented to the audience for the first time, allowing the audience to gain a deeper understanding of Mo Yi’s artistic process.

"Mo Yi: I am in my landscape" was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles International Photography Festival in France in the summer of 2024. This international touring exhibition is curated by UCCA curator Rong Siyu and co-organized by the Rencontres d'Arles International Photography Festival. The related monograph will be published by Thames Hudson Publishing in the UK in the spring of 2024.

Mo Yi: I am in my landscape

2024.9.28 – 2024.12.29

Tuesday to Sunday

Open from 10:00 to 19:00

(Last admission at 18:30)

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

West Exhibition Hall, Central Exhibition Hall, New Exhibition Hall

About the Artist

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Mo Yi was born in 1958 and currently lives and works in a remote town in Jiangxi Province. He is widely regarded as one of the most important artists in Chinese contemporary photography since the 1980s. A professional football player turned artist, his works are often inspired by cities, and he often intervenes and appears in the pictures to capture the rapid development and alienation of urban life during China's reform and opening up period.

Mo Yi has held solo exhibitions at Lianzhou Photography Festival and Three Shadows Photography Art Center, and international solo exhibitions at Zen Gallery in Tokyo and Walter Gallery in Chicago, USA. His works have been included in group exhibitions on the history of Chinese photography, such as "Forty Years of Contemporary Chinese Photography" (Three Shadows Photography Art Center, 2017) and "Between Past and Future: New Images from China" (International Center of Photography, New York, USA, 2004-2006), and are collected by the Modern Conflict Archive in London, UK, the Guangdong Museum of Art in China, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, USA, and the Walter Collection in the United States.

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