Throughout the centuries, jade has always held a very special meaning for the Chinese people. On a literary level, jade represents junzi, the gentleman, and all the ideal qualities: intellectual, scholarly, calm, sensitive. On a political level, jade is a symbol of power, as the Emperor's official seal and those of the nobility were always made of jade. I love YU, a video by Chinese artist Zhang Xihan, explores the juxtaposition of these two opposite attributes - power vs. sensitivity, as well as the cultural and physical qualities of jade through the collective research of four artists. The haunting resonances of a selection of archaic jades, played and composed by Ivan Macera, evoke the ancestral songs of an unknown past, while the camera enters the textural richness of an extraordinary visual world, created by Sara Bernabucci, and the striking images and nuanced auras of Fabrizio Crisafulli's lighting.
Throughout the centuries, jade has always held a very special meaning for the Chinese people. On a literary level, jade represents junzi, the gentleman, and all the ideal qualities: intellectual, scholarly, calm, sensitive. On a political level, jade is a symbol of power, as the Emperor's official seal and those of the nobility were always made of jade. I love YU, a video by Chinese artist Zhang Xihan, explores the juxtaposition of these two opposite attributes - power vs. sensitivity, as well as the cultural and physical qualities of jade through the collective research of four artists. The haunting resonances of a selection of archaic jades, played and composed by Ivan Macera, evoke the ancestral songs of an unknown past, while the camera enters the textural richness of an extraordinary visual world, created by Sara Bernabucci, and the striking images and nuanced auras of Fabrizio Crisafulli's lighting.