Tao Aimin 陶艾民
b. 1974 in Hunan, lives and works in Beijing
A Hunan native who maintains an emotional distance towards her adopted home of Beijing, Tao Aimin approaches the lives of rural Chinese women with a combination of empathy and anthropological curiosity. With eloquent inarticulacy, she gives voice to their unexpressed and undocumented experiences, which are increasingly at risk of being forgotten. Incorporating found objects, painting, calligraphy, printmaking, video, and installation, her works move fluently between elite and popular culture and between the languages of traditional and contemporary art. They are bold and sensitive meditations on the issues of artistic authorship and self-representation, labor, embodied knowledge, and collective memory.
Since 2005, Tao Aimin has created a series of works from wooden washboards that she has collected in the hundreds on repeated visits to the countryside. They have been fractured and deformed by repeated and prolonged exposure to the elements. Once household necessities, they have been now largely supplanted with modern technology, a fate shared by the culture of the women who used them. For the artist, these washboards are the only material evidence of the women’s toil: “I am concerned with the circumstances of women in different eras. Washboards—these ‘artifacts’ submerged for years in water—are symbols of the women of a different time, a river of life witnessed by countless women in history.”
These washboards form the installation Women’s River (2005), a multivalent metaphor for resilience, continuity, and transience. Many of the women who owned the washboards are illiterate and possess no visual records of themselves. Tao Aimin paints their portraits on the washboards, which are in a sense their only self-portraits. In Women’s Book (2005), she collects washboards into albums, turning them into wordless storybooks and their physical fractures into the signs of an inarticulate language. In Washed Relics (2006, 2014), she strings the washboards together with fishing lines into wall-size suspended displays that recall archaeological relics and anthropological specimens in museums. Constituted by mundane and personal objects of anonymous women, these installations are counterpoints to the monumental and universalizing estrangements of language and culture by contemporary male artists, most notably Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky series.
More recently, Tao Aimin has used washboards not directly as found objects, but rather as printing blocks to create rubbing impressions on xuan paper. She thus engages the traditions of calligraphy, woodblock prints, and epigraphic studies. In Women’s Book (2005), she collects such rubbings into classical string-bound volumes and inscribes them in Nüshu, a syllabic script invented by women of Jiangyong County in Hunan to transcribe their local dialect. With these counterfactual artifacts, Tao Aimin posits an alternative literate tradition—unfamiliar to us not because it is fictive or imaginary, but because it has been suppressed and confined to the margins.
Tao Aimin graduated from the Fine Arts Department of National Huaqiao University, Fujian in 1999 and an Assistant Lecturer training course in the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. She has previously exhibited in World Art Museum of China Millennium Monument (2005, 2006, 2011), National Art Museum of China (2009), Today Art Museum (2008, 2010), Sakshi Gallery (2009), and Ink Studio (2014). She has received a Newcomer Award 2006 Chinese Contemporary Art Document Exhibition, a nomination for the Xiao Shufen Award from the Wu Zuoren International Art Foundation, and a nomination as Art China Artist of the Year in the Installation and Multimedia category (2009). Her works can be found in the collections of Yanhuang Art Museum and Chengdu Modern Art Museum, among others.
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Nv Shu: Brother and Sister Series - I Was Flying 女书 · 姐弟系列之我飞起来了, 2019
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Nv Shu: Brother and Sister Series - I Was Flying 女书 · 姐弟系列之我飞起来了, 2019
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Nv Shu: Sisterhood Series - The Cruel Trick 女书 · 姐妹系列之恶作剧, 2019
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The Secret Language of Women No. 8 女书 第八卷, 2008
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The Secret Language of Women No. 6 女书 第六卷, 2008
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The Secret Language of Women No. 4 女书 第四卷, 2008
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Woman's Journal No. 11 女书.手记之十一, 2009
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Woman's Journal No. 18 女书.手记之十八, 2009
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Woman's Journal No. 2 女书.手记之二, 2009
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Language of Water No. 14 水语系列14, 2007
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Language of Water No. 4 水语系列4, 2007
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Language of Water No. 2 水语系列2, 2007
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In a Twinkle No. 3 一指间系列之三, 2011
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In a Twinkle No. 2 一指间系列之二, 2011
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High Mountains and Flowing Water, Installation 高山流水,装置, 2007
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Untitled III 无题三, 2015
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Untitled II 无题二, 2015
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Untitled I 无题一, 2015
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Washed Relics No. 2, Installation 出水文物之二,装置, 2014
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Washed Relics, Installation 出水文物,装置, 2006
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The Secret Language of Women 女书, 2008
Currently | Lives and works in Beijing, China | |||||
1974 | Born in Hunan Province, China | |||||
EDUCATION |
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1999 | Graduated from Art Department, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China | |||||
2001
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Graduated from Assistant Lecturer Training class in Mural Painting Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China | |||||
AWARDS& HONORS |
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2009 | Nominated Artist of the Year in installation and multimedia by Art China | |||||
2008 | Xiao Shufang Arts Award nomination, Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts | |||||
2006
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Newcomer Award of 2006 Chinese Contemporary Art Document Exhibition, The China Millennium Monument | |||||
SOLO EXHIBITIONS |
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2010
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Riverbed, One Moon Gallery, Beijing, China Through Woman's Fingers, Cocolan Art Center, Beijing, China |
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2006
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A Woman’s Long March: Device, Video and Photography Exhibition, Long March Space, Beijing, China | |||||
2001 | Solo Exhibition, Corridor Gallery in Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China | |||||
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS |
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2015
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Naturally Women: An All-female Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, KIP International School Pavilion of Milan EXPO, Milan, Italia Innovatively Transformed Folk Art, 2015 Beijing 798 Art Festival,Beijing, China “Promotion Exhibition” Theme Display, Dashanzi Art District, Beijing, China Burst into Bloom, The First Session of Chinese Contemporary Women Artists Exhibition, Chengdu, China |
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2014 | Ink and the Body, Ink Studio, Beijing, China | |||||
2013
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Color Temperature: Exchange Exhibition of 27 of China’s Finest Young Artists, Osman Hamdi Bey Hall, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey The Second Chinese Female Artists Exhibition, The Chinese Museum of Women and Children, Beijing, China |
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2012
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We Are Young, Yunmen Yaji Art Museum, Beijing, China Luan Feng Qi Ming: Female Artists Exhibition, Tree Museum, Beijing, China |
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2011
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Existence without Immortality: Modern Female Artists Exhibition Series, China Millennium Monument Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, China Half the Sky: Women in the New Art of China, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia, U.S.A. |
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2010
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Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao Cotton Mill Factory, Pingyao, China Artistic Impression of Chinese, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China Chinese Women Art Exhibition, The Chinese Museum of Women and Children, Beijing, China The Possibility of Uncertainty — 798 and the Surrounding Community Youth Art Exhibition, Songzhuang Art Museum, Beijing, China |
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2009
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Ink Cutting-Edge 2009, The Wenjin International Art Center, Beijing, China Counterparts: Chinese & Germany Contemporary Art Exhibition, Wuhan Art Museum, Wuhan, China First Chongqing Biennale for the Young Artists, CQ International Convention & Exhibition Center, Chongqing, China China Narratives: the Fourth Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu Century City New International Convention and Exhibition Center, Chengdu, China The Tradition of the New: Emerging Artists Group Exhibition, Sakshi Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, China Describe · Speak: 2009 Cross-Strait Contemporary Art, National Art Museum of China, Beijing; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Taichung, Taiwan In the Mood for Paper, F2 Gallery, Beijing, China Nu Yishu — Series IV-Nu Red, Imagine Gallery, Beijing, China |
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2008
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Future Sky — Chinese Young Contemporary Artist works Selection Exhibition, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China Ink Cutting-Edge 2008, 798 Art Bridge Gallery, Beijing, China In Progress Now — 2008 · Let Nanjing Fly, Phoenix Art Museum, Nanjing, China Ink Not Ink: Chinese Contemporary Ink Painting Invitation Exhibition, Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Bossone Research Center, Drexel University, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Multiple Realities, F2 Gallery, Beijing, China Female on the Way, Mozen Art Museum, Beijing, China Long March Capital-Visual Economy, Long March Space, Beijing, China Chinese Contemporary Art Document Exhibition, Wall Art Museum, Beijing, China |
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2007
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Transfigurations, Sepia International Gallery, New York, U.S.A. Ink Cutting-Edge 2007, Yanhuang Art Museum, Beijing, China SHE, 3818 Cool Gallery, Beijing, China China under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People’s Republic, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, U.S.A. Female Artists Show, Yanh Huang Art Museum, Beijing, China Central Railway International Art Exhibition, Central Railway Art Camp, Beijing, China |
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2006
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Chinese Contemporary Art Document Exhibition, China Millennium Monument Museum, Beijing, China | |||||
2005
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Chinese Character Art Exhibition, Beijing World Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China Temperature: International Celebration of Andersen’s 200th Birthday Anniversary — Chinese Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, Beijing World Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China; North Jutland Art Museum, Aalborg, Denmark |
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2002 | Seven Day Landscape, Art Museum of Beijing International Art Center, Beijing, China | |||||
SELECTED COLLECTIONS |
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The Chinese Museum of Women and Children, Beijing, China Chengdu Modern Art Museum, Chengdu, China Long March Space, Beijing, China Yan Huang Art Museum, Beijing, China Fine Arts Literature Magazine, Wuhan, China |
Last Updated: March 2016
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Undersong: Secrets, Dreams, Truths and Power
Chen Haiyan & Tao Aimin 22 Jun - 1 Sep 2019INK Studio is proud to present Undersong: Secrets, Dreams, Truths, and Power, a two-person solo exhibition of artworks by Chen Haiyan (1955 –) and Tao Aimin (1974 –), which explore the power that is constituted by ordinary women when they share their intimate stories, secrets, truths, and dreams.Read more -
INK AND THE BODY
Ink and Phenomenology, Exhibition No. 1 21 Sep - 15 Nov 2014Ink Studio’s premier group show, Ink and the Body, launches a planned series of three exhibitions examining ink painting in terms of the relationship between the subject and both the...Read more
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Art Fair | He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, and Yang Jiechang at Art021
November 19, 2015At Art021 2015 in Shanghai, INK studio will present works by three highly experimental artists: He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, and Yang Jiechang. Each of them...Read more -
EXHIBITION | TAO AIMIN IN "NATURALLY WOMEN," EXPO MILANO 2015
April 29, 2015Tao Aimin will participate in “Naturally Women,” an exhibition of works by five contemporary Chinese artists to take place in October 2015 at the KIP...Read more
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Art Shenzhen 2019
Bingyi, Kim Jongku, Li Huasheng, Peng Kanglong, Tao Aimin, Wang Tiande, Wang Dongling, Wei Ligang 12 - 15 Sep 2019INK studio is proud to participate in Art Shenzhen International Contemporary Art Fair from September 12 to 15. Located at booth D07, INK studio will...Read more -
Beijing Contemporary 2019
Hung Fai & Wai Pongyu, Jiao Yingqi, Tao Aimin, Xu Bing 29 - 31 Aug 2019INK studio is proud to participate in Beijing Contemporary EXPO from August 29 to 31. Located at booth V13, INK studio will present works by...Read more -
Art Chengdu 2019
Chen Haiyan, Li Jin, Tao Aimin, Wei Ligang, Xu Bing 28 Apr - 2 May 2019INK studio is proud to participate in Art Chengdu International Contemporary Art Fair from April 28 to May 2 in Chengdu. Located at booth A02,...Read more -
Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2015
He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, Yang Jiechang 19 - 22 Nov 2015At Art021 2015 in Shanghai, INK studio will present works by three highly experimental artists: He Yunchang, Tao Aimin, and Yang Jiechang. Each of them is deeply engaged with ink as a cultural tradition and an artistic medium, but each is also redefining it in a radically different manner.Read more