Curator Jie Xia Captures the Essence of Summer

Description

Curated by Jie Xia, Wish You Were Here makes use of various international contemporary and postwar artists to recreate that intoxicating pull of summer while asking viewers to ponder the relationships between travel, tourism, identity and memory. Together, the works in Wish You Were Here probes the fantasies we construct around travel and paradise and asks us what it means to travel to another place.

Works vary across a range of nationalities, mediums and time. For example, Spanish painter Miquel Barceló’s “Bot and Bot Buit,” with its dense, meditative dark blue evoking the welcoming Mediterranean Sea, yet contrasting with the complete lack of swimmers, boats and tourists, reflecting a paradoxical moment of stillness and rejuvenation. Meanwhile, Brazilian mixed media artist Vik Muniz’s “Hula Dance (Postcards from Nowhere),” uses of hundreds of torn postcards to reconstruct a hula dancer, highlighting the loss of identity in travel destinations and the flattening into caricatures for souvenirs.