Beijing Project n.18 Yaowei 姚薇

Yaowei 姚薇 is a young independent artist who studied installation at CAFA, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Her practice soon moved from galleries to public space and social intervention. She is one of the founders of the @party collective, whose provocative and controversial street actions became well known in Beijing in 2012 and 2013.

For the Social Sensibility programme she mixed sharp humour and sensory experience to lead the staff of Bernard Controls into an unusual situation of unplanned intimacy and complicity. A spinning wheel randomly draws two names; the two people give each other a massage, at 10 am and at 4 pm, swapping the roles of patient and therapist.

This constructed situation bypasses working hierarchies and structures as well as social etiquette, allowing people linked only by their workplace to share a moment suspended between subtle irony and awkward shyness. Presence, cultural identity and social bonds are tested through an odd physical interaction that suspends the reality of working life and reconnects with human nature in a demanding, challenging way.