J’ai une famille

The exhibition J’ai une famille, 10 Chinese avant-garde artists living in France presents the work of contemporary Chinese artists who settled in France in the 1980s and 1990s, when China’s reform and opening-up policy and the end of the Cold War were shaping a new world order.

While their works translate their migratory paths and reactions to a changing world in very diverse ways, these artists forged a network of close-knit friendships in France, sharing similar experiences and encounters of isolation, adversity and sometimes racism. Their individual stories are all unique, but the cultural and artistic convictions that drove them into exile, their shared trajectories and the relationships they built evoke a family.

Brought together by Hou Hanru and Evelyne Jouanno, the exhibition retraces these artists’ paths over more than 30 years: Yan Pei-Ming, Ru Xiao Fan, Chen Zhen, Jiang Dahai, Huang Yong Ping, Yang Jiechang, Shen Yuan, Wang Du, Du Zhenjun and An Xiaotong (names listed in order of arrival in France).

Through their aesthetic path and diaspora living alike, these artists have contributed significantly to the transformation of French and international contemporary art scenes.