Jun Yang's Identity Explorations at Galerie Ilka Bree

Jun Yang, a Chinese-born artist (1975) who has lived in Austria since childhood, presented a solo exhibition at Galerie Ilka Bree in Bordeaux from October 21 to December 15, 2006. The show delved into themes of identity, assimilation, and cultural collision through a variety of media including video, photography, installation, and participatory works. Yang's practice treats his own name as a generative concept, echoing Gertrude Stein's 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose' to suggest that identity shifts with repetition and multiplication. One work involved a public invitation for all people named Jun Yang to meet. Another collected envelopes addressed to him but with misspelled names, conferring alternate identities, sometimes female. The video 'Jun Yang et Soldat DuBois' traced the transformation of his name from Chinese characters to Latin alphabet, mixed with personal reflections on life in Austria. A series of large-format ID photos showed him first in Western attire, then as Superman. In another series, he responded to the instruction 'Please leave this room in the state you would like to find it' by rearranging a train toilet to his liking. The exhibition was curated by Didier Arnaudet and reviewed in artpress.