With a playful and irreverent artistic language, the video makes the strained opposite group relationships be ambiguous and bantering makes the film more multivalent and complicated as well. City Manager demonstrates Chen Qiulin’s attention to the changes of individuals and city in daily life from a micro level to a macro level in the comparison of geographical relationship between China and Russia.
By means of video and performance, the artist reproduces the real situations of certain identities. In most cases, via performance, her artworks reflect the changes of modern city and society, as well as the changes of identities and express clearly the living situation of individuals paying attention to realistic conflicts. Artist insists on not getting involved in the concrete changes. Her natural expression of the reality and conflicts make her works have some concepts of history and be more close to difficulties of nostalgia. Firstly exhibited at 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Ekaterinburg, Russia in 2015, City Manager has also been presented at artist’s first Australian solo exhibition Chen Qiulin: One Hundred Names in 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney in January, 2016.