Odes

Taca Sui Chinese

Not on view

For a year in his mid-twenties, the photographer Taca Sui dedicated himself to the study of China’s most ancient poetry collection, The Book of Odes (Shijing). Inspired by the poems, which have long been considered a window into early Chinese civilization, Sui took a series of photographs in northern China, in the regions eulogized in the Shijing, which he then arranged into albums. Sui’s photographs follow the suggestive, elliptical nature of the poems: the images seem to hover on a pregnant pause or a strange moment of coincidence. Sui draws in equal measure on modern artists’ books and Chinese albums, creating a new hybrid form of contemporary art.

Odes, Taca Sui (Chinese, born 1984), 108 silver gelatin prints mounted in 9 albums, China

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Album 2, pp. 11-12