Open LABitat An Ye Zhi de Jong
December 17 | 17.00 – 20.00 hrs.
With drinks&bites
Since the end of November, four artists have joined the LABitat trajectory: Aisha Hachem, Ra’fat Ali, An Ye Zhi de Jong, and Jurjen Galema. The upcoming months they will work at NP3 | RE:Search:Gallery, experimenting and creating new works. They regularly show their process in Open LABitats, the first one will be on December 17th.
An Ye Zhi de Jong is a Chinese born artist who grew up and lives in the Netherlands. In her work she explores the topic of identity from the perspective of a transracial adoptee. She questions the ethics of intercountry adoption and challenges its colonial narrative that still frames the perspective on adoption and adoptees today. With her work she also urgently addresses the normalised racism against Asians in the Netherlands. And from a more personal perspective she delves into the complex relation to her roots and the loss of her origin and heritage. With installations, sculpture and writing, An Ye Zhi aims to create space for the Chinese-Dutch/adoptee identity.
The LABitat period of An Ye Zhi at NP3 | RE:Search:Gallery is part of her Noordenaars Artist in Space project and as winner of the Groninger Visual Arts Stipends. For her project she traveled to China this past spring, diving further into what makes a home and an identity, in relation to her birth country, and its relation to her. She went both looking for a more accurate representation of this country and questioned the possibility of reconnection. In the upcoming months An Ye Zhi will further research these questions.
LABitat is NP3’s development programme that aims at fostering artistic research and experimentation. The name LABitat merges “LAB” (laboratory) and “habitat” (living environment), reflecting what NP3 offers: an environment where artists can experiment, research and present, to develop their practice in a supportive artistic environment.