【评论文章】Luise Guest | 曹雨：路过人间

曹雨个展“路过人间”着眼于人与自然、人与人之间的复杂关系，以及我们探寻生命意义的渴望。它也引发了对于道家天人合一/新儒家思想中的三大宇宙学领域的反思。“天地人合一”的理念代表了一个相互关联的三合体，人努力达到与宇宙和谐，包括与逝去的祖先和谐。曹雨对于如此庞大的观念与命题毫不畏惧——她探讨生而为人的混乱，痛苦以及滑稽之处。在她雄心勃勃的跨学科实践中贯穿着一个概念性线索——她乐于揭示那些常被掩盖的事物，这些掩盖或许出于礼貌，或许因言辞委婉而鲜被提及。而最重要的是，曹雨是勇敢的。

曹雨，《晃瞎你的眼》，2021
Cao Yu, Blind Your Eyes, 2021

曹雨，《逃离人间的尽头》，4K短片，彩色/有声，4'02"，2021

Cao Yu, Escape off the Edge of The Human World,  4K video, colour/sound, 4'02", 2021

在本次展览中，曹雨探讨了性与母性相关的性别体验，今生与来世的关联；物种之间的关联以及跨世代的联系。艺术家获得了来自冰河期(中国东北部黑龙江出土的猛犸象的巨大腿骨)的化石，并将其创作成装置作品，探讨人与后人之间的深层联系。在作品《没有什么能够确保我们再次相遇》（2020）中，曹雨引领我们直面内心深处的恐惧以及最深层的渴望。她将曾经与其长子相连的脐带插 入被挖空并填满透明树脂的骨头中，这根脐带从2014年以来一直因为此目的而被冷冻着。

曹雨，《没有什么能够确保我们再次相遇》 , 冰河期 - 2014
脐带（2014年艺术家诞下儿子时的脐带），猛犸象腿骨化石（冰河期），水晶树脂
130 x 37 x 30 cm

被系成圆环的脐带像史前昆虫般被镶嵌、保存，它将超越曹雨和其儿子的生命周期，存续下去。它是一颗蕴藏着母婴之间强大链接 的时间胶囊，同时也提醒着他们之间不可避免的分离和死亡。她说，选择猛犸象的骨头，是因为它们是陆地上生存过的最大的哺乳 动物。1 对于曹雨来说，“这一已逝去万年的生命见证并预言了另外两个生命体之间的连接与分离。” 2 曹雨将脐带用首尾相接的圆圈方 式封闭了动物和人类的两种生命形态，也封闭了过去与现在，以及死亡与永生之间的轮回。在这里，相遇与离别成为永恒。

曹雨，《没有什么能够确保我们再次相遇》 , 局部

Cao Yu, Nothing Can Ensure that We Will Meet Again, detail

她作品的广度、多元和观念深度是如此令人惊叹，但她对作品材质也同样投入了极大的精力，从更为传统的材料，包括大理石、可伸展的亚麻布、数字媒体、霓虹灯、短片，到外观让人吃惊甚至有点离经叛道的生肉、骨头、艺术家自己的头发、乳汁以及尿液。对物质性的关注是中国当代艺术的显著特点。艺术史学家、策展人巫鸿探讨了“材质艺术”的概念，以分析中国艺术家如何利用非常规材料来创作作品，是材料，而非图像或风格，最能彰显艺术家审美和社会判断。3 巫鸿说，这些材料“超越了既定的艺术形态”。4 自2016年 中央美术学院毕业展以来，曹雨就利用其自身的艺术实践来暴露自己脆弱的一面，并唤醒我们反思自身的弱点。影像作品《泉》令 观众惊讶的同时也感觉被冒犯，该影像以强烈的明暗对比呈现了一座由艺术家向上空喷射而出的乳汁所形成的喷泉。曹雨在其作品中讽刺并延展了艺术史经典作品中那出自雄性的喷射，例如安格尔的《泉》，杜尚臭名昭著的陶瓷小便池《泉》（1917）和美国概念 艺术家布鲁斯·瑙曼的《喷泉自画像》(1966-1967)——该影像展示了瑙曼从嘴里吐出一股弧形水柱。与杜尚一样，曹雨是挑衅者; 与瑙曼一样，她的作品充满了自省：曹雨与艺术史的对话颠覆了既定的性别期待——女性通常被视为是男性凝视和观赏的被动对 象。在《泉》中，曹雨面朝上空平躺着，裸露着胸部，她成功地令我们重新审视女性身体——具有强大生产力的女性身体。在体验了 怀孕、分娩、婴儿新生以及初为人母的肉体性变化之后，曹雨说道：“我第一次感受到作为女性，我的身体甚至可以拥有比男性更加猛烈的喷射力与爆发力。”

曹雨，《泉》, 2015

Original work is not covered with mosaics

曹雨在之前的展览中展出的她在同一时期创作的其他作品，也揭示了同样的颠覆过程。曹雨将她体内的产物——乳汁和尿液——变成了艺术品。在《艺术家制造》(2016)中，她将挤出来的18升母乳烘干浓缩成粘土般的可塑材料，在其温热的状态下用双手用力攥成一个个形态不一的抽象形态，上面留下的是手指的形态和痕迹。在《劳动者》（2017）中，我们看到艺术家踩在一堆雪白的面粉上，面团被从她白皙的双腿流淌而下的金黄色液体——尿液所浸润，并用双脚将其塑造成一个由面团堆砌而成的留有脚印的抽象形态。而站着排尿是雄性的有力象征。这些作品从各方面而言都是原生的，辛辣，粗俗而又平淡。《不死》（2017）由两块大理石和中 间被挤压的生肉块组成。曹雨用最原初的状态对肉体加以渲染和呈现。曹雨作品中的肉体远远不是理想中的西方经典女性身体，也 不是中国古典绘画中的典范女人（“烈女”）和“美女”（仕女）的形象，6 而是直击现实与人心——我们都是骨肉之躯。

Cao Yu, The Labourer, 2017
Single channel HD video (colour, silent), 8'33"
edition of 6 + 2 AP

在《胸中之物》（2020）中，曹雨的方法被延伸到了内向化和肉体化。这件摄影作品展现了一个苗条、白皙、雌雄同体（性别特征并不 明显）的人物（艺术家本人）在自己裸露的左胸前托举着一颗牛心脏。那颗献血欲滴、肥硕的巨大心脏上被纹着老虎头的图案。在中国民间传说中，老虎是保护者、守护者，代表着力量、勇敢和凶猛。像其它皮毛动物一样，老虎与女性的“阴”的能量以及大地相关。7 曹雨的作品玩转着男与女、内与外、阴与阳之间的二元关系。她仿佛展示出将自己的内心从体内拽拉出来并托举着的——勇气与无畏的象征，或者，也可以说是可承受的负担。曹雨说：“有人将凶悍纹在身上，而我将强悍铭刻于心里。” 8

曹雨，《胸中之物》 , 2020
c-print （公牛心脏，纹身虎头，艺术家本人）
160 x 179 cm

《龙头》（2020）延续了曹雨对既定的性别期待的颠覆。曹雨身着黑色西服套装，坐在一个旧混凝土水槽上一个锈迹斑斑的坏水龙头上。水花从她岔开的双腿之间直接喷溅向观者。乍一看，这张摄影似乎是对性别认同的彻底颠覆（如果是挑衅的话），这种颠覆 是如此直截了当，但是当你更仔细去观察，会辨别出细微的意图与情感。水槽本身会使人联想起艺术家在辽宁省一个污染严重的工业小镇的童年，她的父母在凌源市最大的钢铁厂工作至今。她记得钢厂里排放的黑色浓烟让天空漫布雾霾有如阴天，以及校园水龙头喷出的锈水。这一作品仿佛是对日趋没落的重工业——曾经被数百万张宣传图高光渲染——的挽歌。曹雨把自己装扮成一个雄 心勃勃的人物——一座人类“喷泉”，而且是正在排尿的姿态，再次对男性的优越感予以回应和讽刺。乍看之下强有力的标题实则取自水龙头的后两个字——龙头。龙，在中国象征帝王之尊、智慧与繁荣，而在这里，却被艺术家所驾驭，并对这些象征属性进行了再演绎。

曹雨，《龙头》 , 2020
c-print，金属外框
照片尺寸: 220 x 147 cm; 外框尺寸: 232.4 x 159 x 7 cm
3 版 + 2 AP

Cao Yu, Dragon Head, 2020
c-print, aluminum frame
220 x 147 cm (photo); 232.4 x 159 x 7 cm (frame)
edition of 3 + 2 AP

系列摄影《尤物》同样是故意为之，这些作品被认为不合乎礼节并触犯了行为规范。大尺幅的摄影作品展示了一系列在公共场合撒尿的不同身份与地位的男人。这些作品如同那些被加以华丽装裱的巴洛克风格的肖像，让我们直面社会禁忌。艺术家在一位身穿制 服的保安的陪同下，秘密地拍摄了这些人以为未被他人观察到的行为。(当然，我们最终所能看到的图像均是其谈判成功的结果)他们的这一并不光彩的隐私行为，被女性艺术家记录下来并打破了男性凝视。她拍摄的对象有的看着荒唐可笑，有的伤感。她说，“这些‘尤物’并非是让男人大饱眼福的性感妖艳的‘尤物’。在这里，这些来自社会不同阶层的男性成为被人欣赏的‘尤物’。观众从步入展厅伊始便面对那迎面袭来的冒犯，甚至被迫转移视线。” 9 这种扑面而来的不适感也是对2016年曹雨在中央美术学院毕业展展出的影像作品《泉》所产生的不适的延伸，而在此过程中同样被暴露的还有艺术家作品中那些人物的傲慢。

曹雨，《尤物 II》, 2019，c-print, 画框，137 x 86 x 7 cm （作品局部被遮挡，原作无）

Cao Yu, Femme Fatale, 2019, c-print, frame, 137 x 86 x 7 cm (The original works are not covered)

2019年《尤物》在麦勒画廊瑞士卢森展览现场
Exhibition view at Galerie Urs Meile Lucerne, 2019

与曹雨前两个个展——在麦勒画廊北京举办的“我有水蛇腰”（2017和在瑞士卢森举办的“尤物”(2019)——一样，曹雨将新展“路 过人间”作为一个整体装置，仔细思考观众将如何回应每件作品。它们就像是一本书的多个章节徐徐展开，或像是电影中的连续截 帧。在这次展览中，曹雨在作品《你，去哪儿了》（2020）中尝试了空中全息投影。观众将邂逅一位穿着黄袍的僧人，他放弃尘世，毕生潜心于人间的修行。他似乎像神奇的海市蜃楼般漂浮着。很快，他收回了慈祥的微笑，伤心痛哭起来。作品标题像是一种指责，但是指责的对象模棱两可。是针对抛弃了尘世而寻求自我救赎和开化的圣人，还是针对如此轻易迷失于贪婪和自私的人类?

曹雨，《你，去哪了》, 2020

Cao Yu, Where Have You Been, 2020
aerial holographic projection
120 x 120 cm (size of video); 135 x 135 x 20 cm (acrylic cover)
edition of 6 + 2 AP

曹雨曾经在影像作品《我有》（2017）中探讨了野心和傲慢，那看起来像是一连串带着讥讽的无耻的炫耀。传统价值观中认为，女性本应该将成功的欲望藏于谦卑之下，而非大肆吹嘘自己的美貌、财富与成就。在曹雨看来，野心与物质上的成功是一把双刃剑。那些 成功的人往往会遭受到来自他人的恶意嫉妒。因此，在此次个展她用一件新作品以类似编码信息的方式探讨了这一话题。艳俗的霓虹灯招牌五颜六色地闪烁着，让人们想起老上海或者香港。霓虹灯招牌上闪烁着的中英双语是：“我就是想你过得没我好”。(这句话中的前五个字本如亲密地诉说，却在继读完后五个字之后发觉意义完全反转)。艺术家说，这句话就像看不见的针一样射入我们的心。10 在招牌的顶部被嵌有一面不起眼的小镜子，如瞳孔般盯着每一个观众，营造出令人不悦的真实——观众被邀请在这样一个并不愉悦的当下考虑他们自身与作品的关联性：在市场机制下，所有人都被嫉妒所驱动。在竞争激烈、消费主义盛行、快速致富的二十一世纪的中国，这件作品也是对社会转型——从集体主义到个人诉求至上——这一过程中我们所失去的东西的回应。

曹雨，《我有》，2017

单频高清录像，彩色/有声，4'22"

6 版 + 2 AP

曹雨，《我就是想你过得没我好》， 2021，镜面幻彩灯箱，直径100cm，厚度10cm
Cao Yu, I Just Don't Want You to Live Better Than I Do, 2021, Φ 100 cm, thickness: 10 cm

在自传体式系列作品《一切皆被抛向脑后》(2019-2021)中，愤怒、悲伤与无奈渐渐浮现。它公开探讨了在仍然以父权制社会规范为基础的社会对于女孩或女性的评价。曹雨用自己随时间脱落的黑色长发在白色画布上一笔一画地缝出同样随时间流逝的记忆，这些汉字如刀刻般缝制得略显笨拙，那些刻薄的价值观，透露出对女性的深层贬低。艺术家对于自己头发的使用是一个有力的象征：女性的头发 ( 通常被认为是女性美的理想的一面) 充满性的象征。它还与能追溯至中国唐朝的古代刺绣传统有关——妇女用自己的头发缝制佛像或观音像。11但是，头发，尤其是被剪掉或脱落的头发，也令人生厌甚至恐惧。今天，我们也很难理解19世纪流行的哀悼珠宝——人们将死者的发束制成戒指和手镯。曹雨的作品《一切皆被抛向脑后》中，那些她粗略缝制的语句就像是缝合伤口一般 。

曹雨，《一切皆被抛向脑后》, 2021，局部

Cao Yu, Everything is Left Behind, 2021, detail

这个伤口仍未愈合。该系列的第一幅作品中的第一句话始于艺术家初到人间时父亲的第一句话：“哎老曹家没福，生了个丫头。这孩子不好看，鼻子太扁。”再如：“再不听话就不要你了。”该系列后期的几幅中折射出童年时代孩童身上被施加的压力——尤其是“独生子女政策” 下成长的一代——要出人头地，要光宗耀祖，要飞黄腾达: “爸很高兴，没白供你读书。”譬如师长的话：“你一个女孩子家去雕塑系里干什么?好好画画多好啊！到时候当你的双手变成爷们手，你再后悔也来不及了。”而从母亲那里，她得到了来自过来人的告诫：“......一定谨记妈妈一句话，千万不要失身，女孩初夜非常宝贵，第一次一定要给未来可依托的丈夫，否则如果你不是处女身他 便不会对你好......”

曹雨经常谈及置身于与“艺术史的对话”之中。她的许多作品都包含对国际范围内的艺术前辈的明确、刻意的引用，例如超现实主义画家梅勒·奥本海姆(Mere Oppenheim)和马塞尔·杜尚(Marcel Duchamp)的现成物作品，还有贫穷艺术中的“破旧”材料，卢西奥·丰塔纳(Fontana)的“切割画布”以及艾格尼丝·马丁(Agnes Martin)的至上极简主义。所有的苦楚、委屈都蕴藏在粗略缝制的作品《一切皆被抛在脑后》中，也让人回想起特蕾西·艾敏(Tracey Emin)创作的自传式文本刺绣作品，她是另一位试图突破常规和对“女艺术家”的性别假设的人。曹雨的作品广泛指涉着艺术史，在年轻艺术家和先辈艺术家之间展开了一场持续的对话，但同时又扎根于她自身的经历以及在中央美术学院雕塑系所接受的训练。在中央美术学院，她培养了技术层面的自信，也是在这里，她对材料的可能性有了更多的认知，从而能实现其艺术梦想。

作品《开花梨》（2020）对历史的指涉则更为明显。16世纪女性刑具的复制品被连接到一根华丽的权杖头上，权杖被插入一尊旧大理石狮子雕塑中。闭合时，该设备看起来像一个可爱的金属梨，但当手柄转动时，看起来美丽如花瓣般的每一个叶片会被打开，可以想象当其插入体内（女性下体及口腔）会造成难以想象的痛苦。这是制定规则者的产物，就像训斥者的缰绳，或是对有堕落嫌疑 的女性所施加的性惩罚一样，开花梨这一刑具试图使“陷入困境中”的女性保持缄默。权杖本身是王室权力和国家控制的象征，被装饰上了咧着嘴笑的镶钻骷髅头，这让人联想起2007年英国艺术家达米安·赫斯特（Damien Hirst）声名大噪的作品。赫斯特声称他 以5000万英镑的价格将一件名为“For the Love of God”的古董骷髅头作品卖给了一个匿名财团，该骷髅头用铂金铸造，并覆盖有8601颗钻石。在曹雨这里，对头骨的使用当然代表了死亡，但也代表着贪婪和势不可挡的野心。在这场与艺术史的持续对话中，我们 可以将《开花梨》视为对男性主义和专制傲慢的一记警告。

曹雨 ，《开花梨》，2020
开花梨，权杖，石头
权杖：111×11cm；石狮：60×81×45cm，总尺寸：128×81×45cm 2020

Cao Yu, Pear of Anguish Flowering, 2020
copper pestle, sceptre, stone
sceptre: 111 x 11 cm; stone lion base: 60 x 81 x 45 cm; overall: 128 x 81 x 45 cm
edition of 5 + 2 AP

然而，在曹雨的“天地人合一”的三大宇宙学领域中，一切都并不是那么令人沮丧。雕塑作品《是的，我无处不在III》（2019）由两块粗粝的绿色大理石组成，从中不可思议地“生长出”十根金手指。就像是春天里卷曲的嫩芽，在寻找阳光。这件作品像是一个童话——破除了巫师的魔咒——或是一个离奇而令人费解的梦，令人不安的梦。这顽强地“破土而出”的十根金手指基于艺术家自己的双手制作 而成，诉说着艺术家无尽的创造力，坚韧、勇气和韧性。而作品标题有如一道咒语，更如一计有力的宣言：“是的，我无处不在”。

曹雨，《是的，我无处不在 III》, 2019
丹东玉, 铸铜镀24K金
2件，60 x 52 x 38 cm, 28 x 46 x 38 cm

Cao Yu, Yeah, I am Everywhere III, 2019
green marble, cast copper with 24k gold-plating
2 pcs; 60 x 52 x 38 cm, 28 x 46 x 38 cm

曹雨，《是的，我无处不在 III》, 2019，局部

Cao Yu, Yeah, I am Everywhere III, 2019, detail

艺术家短片

表演视频

Cao Yu’s solo exhibition, Passing Through the Human World, focuses on our complicated relationships with the natural world, with each other, and with our desire to find meaning in our lives. It evokes the three cosmological realms of syncretic Daoist/neo-Confucian thought. The concept of ‘tian di ren heyi’ (heaven, earth, human united) represents an interconnected triad in which humans endeavour to live in harmony with the cosmos, including with the ancestors in the underworld of the dead. Cao is unafraid of big ideas like this—she examines the messy, painful, sometimes comical business of being human. A conceptual thread that runs through her ambitious, multidisciplinary work is her willingness to reveal things that are more often hidden from view, politely veiled, or camouflaged by euphemism. Cao Yu is, above all else, courageous.

In this exhibition Cao explores gendered experiences of sexuality and motherhood; connections between life and the afterlife; links between species, and across aeons. Perhaps only in China, for example, could an artist procure a fossil from the Ice Age—a mammoth’s enormous leg bone unearthed in far north-eastern Heilongjiang Province—for an installation that examines profound human and post-human connections. In Nothing Can Ensure that We Will Meet Again (Ice Age - 2014), Cao Yu asks us to confront our deepest fears, and our deepest longings. She inserted the umbilical cord that once attached her to her first-born child, frozen since 2014 for this precise purpose, into a space dug out of the bone and filled with resin.

Inlaid and preserved like a prehistoric insect trapped in amber, the knotted cord will survive long past Cao’s own life span, and her son’s. It is a time capsule illustrating the powerful connection between a mother and her infant, but also a reminder of their inevitable separation and mortality. She chose the mammoth bone, she says, because they too, long ago, suckled their babies. 1 For Cao, “The life that has gone is a witness to the connection and separation of the other two lives.” 2 With the circular bracelet of her umbilical cord, Cao Yu is closing the circle between animal and human life forms, between past and present, and between death and a kind of immortality.

The range, diversity and conceptual depth of her work is astonishing, but she is also deeply in- vested in the nature of her materials, from the more conventional—marble, stretched linen, digital media, neon, video—to the appearance of surprising, even transgressive, materials including raw meat, bones, and the artist’s own hair, breastmilk, and urine. This focus on materiality is a distinctive aspect of contemporary art from China. Art historian and curator Wu Hung explored the concept of ‘material art’ (caizhi yishu) to analyse how Chinese artists make use of unconventional materials in order to produce works in which “material, rather than image or style, is paramount in manifesting the artist’s aesthetic judgement or social critique.” 3 Such materials, says Wu, “transcend codified art forms.” 4 Ever since her Central Academy of Fine Arts graduation exhibition in 2016, Cao Yu has used her practice to expose her own vulnerabilities— and to make us reflect upon ours. To a mixture of astonishment and affront from the audience, she presented her video Fountain, which showed the artist in dramatic chiaroscuro as a human fountain of expressed breastmilk. Cao was satirising the ejaculatory masculinity of canonical art historical works such as Duchamp’s notorious porcelain urinal, Fountain (1917), and American conceptual artist Bruce Nauman’s Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1966–1967), a video which showed the artist in the act of spitting out an arc of water. Like Duchamp, she is a provocateur, and like Nauman her work is self-reflexive: Cao’s dialogue with art history inverted gendered expectations in which women were typically represented as passive objects of the male gaze. She may be reclining, bare-breasted, in Fountain but she forces us to reconsider the female body as powerfully productive. Having experienced pregnancy, labour, birth, and the sheer physicality of new motherhood, she said: “I felt for the first time as a woman that my body could have an even more violent power to release tension than a man’s.” 5

Other works from the same time, shown in previous exhibitions, reveal this same process of inversion, as Cao turned the products of her body—breastmilk and urine—into art materials. For Artist Manufacturing (2016) she condensed litres of expressed breastmilk into a malleable, clay-like material from which she moulded small abstract forms. In The Labourer (2017) we see the artist trampling on a pile of flour, kneading it into a dough that is moistened by trickles of urine that run down her pale legs. Urinating while standing, of course, is a powerful signifier of masculinity. These works are raw in every sense of the word. Pungent. Visceral, even. Undead (2017) consists of pieces of raw meat wedged between two blocks of marble. Cao Yu is rendering the body at its most primal. Far from the idealised female bodies of Western classical antiquity, or the Chinese classical tradition of painting ‘Exemplary Women’ (lienü) and ‘Beauties’ (shinü), 6 Cao Yu cuts to bodily reality—we are flesh and bone.

The Thing In the Chest (2021) extends Cao Yu’s approach to inversion and fleshy embodiment. A se- ries of photographs depicts a slender, pale, androgynous figure (the artist) holding an ox heart in front of her own naked chest. Grotesquely huge and meaty, dripping blood, the heart is tattooed with the face of a tiger. In Chinese folklore the tiger is a protector and guardian, representing strength, bravery, and ferocity. Like other animals with fur, tigers are associated with feminine yin energy, and with the earth. 7 Cao Yu’s work plays with supposed binaries of masculine and feminine, internal and external, yin and yang. She represents the act of taking her own heart from inside her body, raising it like an emblem of courage—or rather, perhaps, a burden to be endured. Cao says, “Some people tattoo their fierceness on their bodies, but I engraved my ambitions in my heart.” 8

The continuing photographic series, Femme Fatale, is similarly an intentional, considered violation of propriety and behavioural norms. Large photographs depict men caught in the act of public urination. Framed ornately in the manner of Baroque portraits, they confront us with a social taboo. The artist, accompanied by a uniformed security guard, has covertly photographed these men caught in an act they assumed was unobserved. The fact that they feel entitled to urinate wherever they please is problematic, certainly, but that a woman documents them is a kind of voyeurism that overturns the male gaze. Her subjects, rather than being representations of powerful masculinity, appear ridiculous. She says, “These are not the voluptuous ‘Femmes Fatale’ provided for men to feast their eyes on. Here, these men from different rungs of society have become ‘Femmes Fatale’ for the (woman) artist’s enjoyment, toys for the viewer. A sense of violation erupts at the moment the viewer enters the exhibition space, causing them to divert their gaze.” 9 The immediate discomfort experienced by the viewer is an extension of the discomfort felt by viewers of Fountain at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2016—an ostensibly private, unseen moment has inexplicably been made public, in the process exposing the arrogant entitlement of her subjects.

As with Cao’s two previous solo exhibitions, I Have an Hourglass Waist at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing (2017) and Femme Fatale at Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne (2019), she has approached Passing Through the Human World as a holistic installation, carefully considering how visitors will respond to each work. They are like unfolding chapters of a book, or sequential frames in a film. The aim, often, is to unsettle and provoke. In this exhibition Cao Yu has experimented with aerial holographic projection in Where Have You Been (2020). Audiences encounter the levitating figure of a saffron-robed monk, an anagārika who has relinquished all worldly possessions and preoccupations to devote his life to Buddhist practice. He appears to float, hovering in the air like a beatific mirage. But his benevolent, smiling face soon dissolves into bitter weeping. The title is like an accusation, but its target is ambiguous. Is it directed to the figure of a holy man who has abandoned his earthly flock to seek his own enlightenment, or to the human race who so easily choose avarice and selfish ambition?

Cao Yu has explored ambition and arrogance previously, in her video work I Have (2017), a litany of shameless, tongue-in-cheek boasting. Women are supposed to hide their desire to succeed within a cloak of feminine humility, not loudly brag about their beauty, wealth, and achievements. Ambition and material success, for Cao Yu, represent a double-edged sword. Those who do succeed are subjected to the jealousy of others in a destructive spiral of negativity. A new work illustrates this issue with a coded message. A gaudy, flashing neon sign, nostalgically recalling those in old Shanghai or Hong Kong, spells out in Chinese and English, “I just don’t want you to live better than I do.” These words, says the artist, are like invisible needles. 10 At the top of the sign a small mirror reflects the viewer, creating an uncomfortable moment of truth—visitors to the exhibition are invited to consider their own complicity in an uncomfortable reality: in the machinery of the market, humans are all motivated by envy. In the competitive, consumerist, get- rich-quick China of the twenty-first century the work is also a comment about what has been lost in the transformation from collectivism to a society driven by individual aspiration.

The continuing, almost autobiographical Everything is Left Behind series (2019-2021) brings a simmering anger and sorrow to the surface, with its explicit reference to how girls and women are valued in a society still underpinned by patriarchal social norms. Cao Yu has used her own long black hair to stitch white canvases with spiky, awkward Chinese characters that spell out quotes revealing a deep seated misogyny. The use of the artist’s hair is a potent signifier: women’s hair, so often considered an ideal aspect of female beauty, is imbued with erotic symbolism. It also relates to an ancient Chinese embroidery tradition dating from the Tang Dynasty, in which women stitched images of the Buddha or Guanyin with their own hair. 11 But hair, especially cut or fallen hair, is also a sign of the abject, evoking disgust and even fear; today we find it hard to understand the nineteenth-century fashion for mourning jewellery in which locks of hair belonging to the dead were made into rings and bracelets. In Cao’s Everything is Left Behind works, her roughly stitched phrases resemble the suturing of a wound.

This wound remains unhealed. The very first work in the series began with a quote from the art- ist’s father: “Our family has no luck. We gave birth to a girl, and she’s ugly, with a flat nose.” Another reads, “If you’re not a good girl, I will abandon you.” Later works in the series reflect the pressures placed on children—most particularly children of the One Child Policy generation—to succeed, honouring and en- riching the family: “Daddy’s happy. All that money spent on tuition wasn’t wasted after all,” and “What business does a girl have studying sculpture? What’s wrong with painting? You’ll regret it when your hands turn into grandpa hands.” And from her mother, an admonition familiar to women across time and space: “... there is one thing you must remember from me. Don’t lose your virginity. Girls are very precious on the first night. You have to give your virginity to your husband ... otherwise he will be very sad if you are not a virgin, and he will think that you are not pure.” Each stab of the needle that sutures Cao’s canvases is a painful memory relived.

Cao Yu often speaks of being in a ‘dialogue with art history.’ Many of her works contain unmistakeable and intentional references to art historical antecedents—to the Surrealist Meret Oppenheim and to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, for example, to the ‘poor’ materials of Arte Povera, to the ‘cut paintings’ of Lucio Fontana and to the sublime minimalism of Agnes Martin. The bitter, crudely embroidered grievances of Everything is Left Behind recall the similarly autobiographical, textual appliqué quilts made by Tracey Emin, another artist who attempted to break free of stylistic conventions and gendered assumptions about ‘women artists.’ Cao’s works allude to art historical referents, creating an ongoing dialogue between a young artist and her artistic ancestor figures, yet they are simultaneously completely grounded in her own experiences, and to the rigorous training in the Sculpture Department of the art powerhouse of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts that provided her with the assured technical confidence and knowledge of material possibilities to realise her vision.

A more direct reference to history is found in Pear of Anguish Flowering (2020). A replica of a six- teenth-century instrument of torture is attached to the head of a sceptre, which is inserted into a marble sculpture. The device looks like a metal pear when closed, but its separate leaves open at the turn of a handle, causing unimaginable suffering when inserted into a bodily orifice. Like a scold’s bridle or the sex- ualised punishments meted out to women suspected of being witches, the pear of anguish was intended to silence ‘difficult’ women. The sceptre itself, symbol of royal power and state control, is adorned with a grinning, diamante-encrusted skull, recalling a notorious 2007 work by British artist Damien Hirst. Hirst claimed that he sold For the Love of God, an antique skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds, for £50 million to an anonymous consortium. Cao Yu’s use of the skull represents death, of course, but also greed and overweening ambition. And in her continuing dialogue with art history, we could read Pear of Anguish Flowering as a warning against masculine, authoritarian hubris.

Yet all is not grim in Cao Yu’s three cosmological realms of tian di ren heyi. A sculptural installation,Yeah, I am Everywhere III (2019) consists of two pieces of rough-hewn green marble from which, impossibly, ten gold-plated fingers emerge. They resemble curling spring shoots seeking the sun. The work suggests a fairytale—the undoing of a sorcerer’s enchantment, perhaps—or an unsettling dream of bizarre, inexplicable transformation. The ten golden fingers are cast from the artist’s own; growing out of the hardness of stone they represent her tenacity, courage, and resilience. The title is a mantra, an affirmation: “Yeah, I am Everywhere.”

1. 曹雨，2021年5月1日微信聊天文本

   Cao Yu, in a WeChat message to the author, 1 May 2021.

2. 曹雨，2021年4月27日给作者发的邮件

   Cao Yu, in an email to the author, 27 April 2021.

3. 巫鸿基于其对中国当代艺术家创作中物质性的重要性的理论而策划展览“物之魅力：当代中国‘材质艺术’”，展览于2019年在芝加哥大学斯马特美术馆展出。该展览随后巡展至洛杉矶郡艺术博物馆、西雅图美术馆、皮博迪埃塞克斯博物馆。更多信息，可参阅画册文章：“中国材质艺术：引言”，2019，巫鸿和小欧编：《The Allure of Matter》，芝加哥：斯马特美术馆。

   Wu Hung’s theory of the significance of materiality in the work of Chinese contemporary artists underpinned his curation of “The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China” shown at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, in 2019. The exhibition later travelled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and Peabody Essex Museum. For more, see his catalogue essay: ‘Material Art from China: An Introduction’, 2019, in Wu Hung and Orianna Cacchione, eds., The Allure of Matter, Chicago: Smart Museum of Art.

4. 同上

   Ibid.

5. 作者于2020年5月、6月和10月与曹雨进行了采访，采访内容随后发表于燃点网站，《Art Monthly Australasia》以及《4A Papers》。2021年4月、5月作者和曹雨因为本篇文章的撰写再次进行沟通。曹雨用中英双语进行回复。所有的引用均来自艺术家在这些采访中的回答，并进行了细微调整。

   The author interviewed Cao Yu via WeChat and email in May, June and October 2020 for articles that were subsequently published in Randian Online, Art Monthly Australasia and the 4A Papers. Further conversations took place in April and May of 2021 for this essay. Cao Yu responded in both English and Chinese. All quotes from the artist are excerpted from these interviews. They have been lightly edited.

6. 关于该传统的更多信息，请参考Mary H. Fong的文章“Images ofWomen in Traditional Chinese Painting,” 该文章发表于《Woman's Art Journal》, 1996年春夏刊，第17卷，第一册，22-27页。https://www.jstor.org/stable/1358525 [登录时间：2021年5月1日]. Fong引用了11世纪的绘画史学家郭若虚的话语, 郭写道“女性画作应该 ‘充满爱和女性魅力”，但是详细指出女性身材和容貌必须看起来严肃而正确，从而展现灵魂的古老的纯洁，她们的端庄的美貌才会吸引观者心怀敬畏去端详。（第23页）

   For more on this tradition see, for example, Mary H. Fong, “Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,” Woman’s Art Journal, Spring - Summer, 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 22-27 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1358525 [accessed 1.5.21]. Fong cites the 11th century painting historian Guo Ruoxu, who wrote that “the female image should be ‘richly endowed with blossoming loveliness and feminine charm’ but specified adamantly that the female forms and faces must have the ‘look of severe correctness’ to reveal ‘an antique purity of soul’ so that their ‘stately and dignified beauty’ would inspire the onlooker to look up to them in reverence.” (p.23)

7.  关于老虎的更多象征学信息，请参考Patricia Bjaaland Welch的文章“Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery,” Tuttle出版社，2008年，第145页

   For more on the symbology of tigers, see Patricia Bjaaland Welch, “Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery,” Tuttle, 2008. p.145

8. 曹雨，2021年4月给作者的邮件

   Cao Yu, in an email to the author, April 2021

9. 由艺术家和麦勒画廊于2021年4月给作者提供的信息

   Information provided by the artist and by Galerie Urs Meile, April 2021.

10. 同上

    Ibid.

11. 更多信息请参考Lydia Gershon, “Hair Embroideryas Women’s Buddhist Practice,” JSTOR Daily, 2021年2月25日, https://daily.jstor.org/hair-embroidery-as-womens-buddhist-practice/ [登录时间：2021年5月14日]

    For more see Lydia Gershon, “Hair Embroidery as Women’s Buddhist Practice,” JSTOR Daily, 25 February 2021, available at https://daily.jstor.org/hair-embroidery-as-womens-buddhist-practice/ [accessed 14.5.21]

本次展览将持续至2021年8月15日，期待您的莅临！

The show would continue through August 15, 2021. We are looking forward to your visit.

短片 | 曹雨：路过人间

【媒体报道】艺术主张|讲述·艺术家曹雨

【媒体报道】雅昌艺术头条｜曹雨：艺术是我的武器 用来回应世界

【媒体报道转载】Hi艺术|曹雨的“路过人间”是首铿锵而热烈的歌

【展览现场】曹雨："路过人间"

【展讯】曹雨：“路过人间”|6月5日麦勒画廊北京开幕

这一次，曹雨将“富士山”搬到了银川当代美术馆

【评论文章 | 曹雨】Luise Guest | 吃苦：三位中国艺术家作品中的哀悼、记忆与母性

藏品（野口勇&曹雨）的相遇：存放在M+藏品库的艺术品

曹雨入选2020年度Gen.T亚洲新锐先锋榜

【媒体报道转载】燃点艺术家档案 | 展示与讲述：曹雨的性别化象征

【媒体报道转载】绝对艺术 | 曹雨：“老曹家没福，生了个丫头”

对话曹雨|《困惑的浪漫》：一个展览的分泌物

【展览预告】曹雨：尤物 | CaoYu: Femme Fatale

曹雨：“AAC这个大奖给我继续招人烦的资本”