Vera Young  

how
a tree dies

16
October 2021 – 18 November 2021

EFREMIDIS 

ERNST REUTER PLATZ 2 / 10587  BERLIN 

In the music video of
his seminal song A Piece of Red Cloth, Chinese rock musician Cui Jian is
blindfolded: “You used a piece of red cloth,” he sings, “to blindfold my eyes
and cover up the sky. You asked me what I could see. I said I saw happiness.”
In her new installation, Vera Young uses red silk and other fabrics for an
installation in the [erp] window space and to wrap a dead tree on
Ernst-Reuter-Platz. This way, different parts become one, a unified system.
Since the beginning of her artistic practice, the artist has used sewing to
make works with canvas and paper, as well as immersive installations.

Many of her paintings,
dots, and sculptures, still now, resemble stitches. There’s a paradox here: sewing
damages the material, creates holes, and at the same time, it repairs, fixes.
The stitching is both a repetitive gesture and form. In continuation of
historical abstraction, these compositions negotiate coexisting cells, broad
fields of color, figures and ground. For Vera Young, stitching is a metaphor
for demystification: processing personal loss, unmasking family histories and
raising questions about larger, intangible political systems.

How
does a tree die? Situated between a Deutsche Bank, a police station and a
public arts university, Vera Young’s gesture to cover up an unnoticed, dead
tree stands as a provocative act of love.

Vera
Young (*1986 in Suzhou, China) lives and works in Berlin. She has exhibited at
(selection) Galerie OVO, Taipei, Taiwan; Galerie Pugliese Levi, Migrant Birds
Space, Berlin, Germany and Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing, China.