A Hundred Years of Shame – Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations

A Hundred Years of Shame – Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations brings together artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China to explore the diverse art scenes of these three regions and their varied concepts of art and society.
The invited artists often employ satirical, subversive, and original takes on history and the contemporary, helping to expose the dangers and clichés mobilized by nationalism’s rise in China, as well as seeking for politics of the everyday that can move past the deadlocks within today’s reality.
The works displayed are often informed by feelings of shame and unease, but of a different nature than the officially mandated standard of honor and disgrace. Instead, the urgency that these artists respond to is related to how artistic creation functions and fulfills its stated values under drastic social transformation.

It also features the recording studio of the fictional label Xi Kang Records, named after the subversive scholar and musician of the Three Kingdoms period. The label represents a wide variety of music of discontent from across the Chinese-speaking world, with selections by sound culture and independent music researchers and curators Jeph Lo and Amy Cheng, and independent musicians Mei Er, Wutiaoren, andLam P.
An Academy of Shame and an Academy of Humiliation displays their collections, archives, and libraries within the exhibition, with a special contribution from abroad by the Department of Mimetic Ignominy (Russia), devised by David Riff and Ekaterina Degot.