Magician Space is very pleased to present the debut solo exhibition in Beijing with Paris-based artist Yao Qingmei. Yao’s practice traverses the boundary between performed action and its mode of display, frequently enacting interventions in public spaces to perturb the parameters of reality and its surroundings. Her art is deep rooted in a critical reflection into the formulation of political and social questions, often employing methods of appropriation and displacement, with particular attention made to how symbolic gestures gain or lose traction in different contexts. Offering nuanced methods of resistance, her theatrical performances and interventions frequently find form in areas overlapping burlesque techniques of satire and parody, which combine with framing devices influenced by theatre sets and costume, pedagogical lectures, and choreography inspired by modern dance.  

Her first solo exhibition features an immersive installation of recent work comprising sculpture, digital photographs, video projections, and a publication text. Layering absurdist gestures with poetic action, Yao intervenes with scenarios drawn from our everyday to question authoritative power structures and accepted notions of reality. With this exhibition, Yao further elaborates on past performances in an installation series of "performance records". The artist seeks to recreate qualities of immediacy, unpredictability, and the ephemerality of performance art, emphasizing these performance records as autonomous new forms in themselves. Carefully sustaining a level of ambiguity, Yao conveys an independent and fragmentary approach to the act of recording. She combines dramaturgical elements drawn from the language of fiction to further heighten the difference and interchange with her original performances. 

Yao Qingmei was awarded winner of the Prix special de jury du 59eme Salon de Montrouge. She recently presented newly commissioned work in her first solo exhibition as part of 'Les Modules- Fondation Pierre Berge - Yves Saint Laurent' curated by Bernard Marcadé at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France, on display from 12th December 2014 until 11th January 2015.