We the singular in multiple ghosts. I the multiple as parts of whole. is an exhibition by artist YU Ji, in collaboration with guests DONG Longyue and WANG Xiaofu. They present an assembly of made and found objects, works on paper, moving images, sound, text, and performance as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork,” that itself performs the fluid, overlapping process of their collaboration. Their experiments with the site, their bodies, materials, and storytelling work to expand the limits of how we know things. 

Is another way of knowing possible?  For the past two years, the ICA has explored alternative epistemes, lived through by other artists, that counter modes of positivism, rationality, and traumatic dualisms in modernity.  But what about meaning altogether?  Is it possible to break from the hegemony of meaning, that spectral world which interprets sensory experience; cognition that is expressed but limited?

Yu Ji and her friends, Dong Longyue and Wang Xiaofu, have been learning and laboring together—doing the “work of art”—to make things for us to see, hear, and feel.  But the “art work” they’ve made is unstable.  They are somewhere between idea and reality, complicated further by light and shadow, superimposed upon multiple times and places. It’s tempting to try to break down the whole into parts; each image, sound, material, and movement organized into a syntax that extracts meaning from their shapes, textures, timbre, weight, and duration.  It’s easy to forget that there are bodies here.  If we do, we might not grasp the sensuous surfaces abound in these invisible layers and infinite sets, refracted between the form and content of things; working to expand the limits of how we know things.  

Can we “understand” the work they’ve done here without interpreting? Maybe, as Joseph Beuys once said, we need to “stand elsewhere”?  So, Yu Ji and her friends have tried to tell us a story…

The exhibition is accompanied by related events, including:

OPENING RECEPTION

• Thu, 12 Oct, 16:00–19:00, Galleries 

A public reception with the artists to celebrate the exhibition’s opening with food and drinks.

TALK
Artists Conversation

• Sat, 21 Oct, 14:00–16:00, Gallery (1F)
• In Chinese and English (simultaneous interpretation)  
• Registration required

In this artists conversation, Yu Ji, Dong Longyue, and Wang Xiaofu will focus on their co-created texts and discuss their collaborative process of making this exhibition happen in a time and space interspersed with incidents from reality and superimposed layers of stories.

PERFORMANCE
Parallax

• Sat, 11 Nov, 14:00–15:00, Galleries (1F & B1)
• Registration required

This performance by Dong Longyue and Wang Xiaofu is an experiment with parallax, a perceptual phenomenon, in which an object appears to shift when it is looked at from different positions.

PERFORMANCE

An Approach to Dancing About Things

• Sat, 25 Nov, 14:00–15:00, Galleries (1F & B1)

Facilitated by NYU Shanghai Assistant Arts Professor of Dance Tao Siye, several NYU Shanghai dance class students and dance lovers embark on an experiment of impromptu and collaborative interaction with visual artworks in the exhibition.

STUDY SESSION

• Sat, 16 Dec, 14:00–15:00, Gallery (B1)
• In English 
• Registration required

Rather than exhibition tours, ICA Study Sessions are guided conversations based on curious exploration, critical reflection, and collective meaning making.  

This exhibition and all related events are FREE and OPEN to the public.

For further details and to register for events, please visit the event pages under Related programs below.

The exhibition and related events are presented as the third season of the ICA’s second artistic research program, Another Knowledge Is Possible (2021-24), exploring neglected and repressed ways of knowing and the complex politics of knowledge decolonization. 

We the singular in multiple ghosts. I the multiple as parts of whole. is organized by Michelle Yeonho Hyun with BAO Yang and ZHU Sicong, and with additional support by SHI Yuying, WANG Yuxin, GU Weiwei, SHEN Jianing, WANG Danni, WANG Yuezhan, CHENG Chen, WANG Muqing, YANG Xian, ZHANG Yuyang, GONG Jing, LI Zhuolin, LIU Yingqi, YUAN Ruoxuan, and ZHANG Yiying. Special thanks to LIANG Zihan and SHEN Jiayou for their support. We are most deeply grateful to the artists, for their endurance and commitment over the years and for challenging us to think, work, and live differently.

Graphic Design by The Exercises.

*The exhibition title is a quote from an essay by artist and curator Jo-ey Tang first in "Yu Ji," Flash Art 307, March/April 2016 and later in "We the singular in multiple ghosts," in Yu Ji: Wasted Mud, ed. Ellen Greig, exh. cat. (London: Chisenhale Gallery, 2021), 79-95.