Philippe Pirotte's 'The Garden of Diversion' Exhibition at Nanjing's Steven Holl-Designed Museum

Philippe Pirotte curated 'The Garden of Diversion', an exhibition at a new museum in Nanjing designed by Steven Holl, which opened in March 2014. The show featured 24 international artists, including Kan Xuan, whose 2002 video 'A Happy Girl' depicts a nude woman dancing in a garden, displayed on a monitor near a window overlooking the museum's landscaped campus. Xu Zhen, presenting as MadeIn Company Production, contributed a recent iteration of his 'Movement Field Series' (2012–), creating a garden of forking paths based on historical political and social movements. He An installed 'Wind Light as a Thief' (2013), a minimalist ritual space using materials from urban construction sites, contrasting with the manicured surroundings. The exhibition's theme drew from Hu Fang's 2009 novel 'Garden of Mirrored Flowers', exploring garden construction amid historical change, and paralleled Olafur Eliasson's 2013 film 'Your Embodied Garden', inspired by Suzhou scholar gardens. Danh Vō's 'We the People' (2010–13), a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty, was among ten pieces by him in the show. Pirotte's scenography integrated the museum's architecture and garden, using optical and spatial illusions to reflect artworks and themes of world-inside-a-world concepts. The exhibition targeted wanderers and those interested in visual tricks, with works arranged to create transparent or reflective connections between indoor and outdoor spaces.