Lisha Nie
Inanimate Reason
2021.07.24 - Next Exhibition
The massive structure denotes a seemingly rational certainty,
an impossible certainty.
Do you remember the sounds of the sea,
and their utter emptiness?
They are neither meaningful,
nor meaningless.
They are acoustic waves with unprecedented movements.
They are timeless, fluid, iterative but non-identical.
Above all,
They cannot be thoroughly described, calculated, and imitated.
Inanimate Reason borrows the name from Karl Gottlieb von Windisch’s Letter
Compilation about Mechanical Turk - a fake chess - playing robot constructed
in the late 18th century. As a spectator, he revealed this mechanical illusion
step by step in the letters. After the exposure of the secret, Mechanical Turk had
been kept in the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia. Due to a big fire in 1854, the
illusion only left us a piece of ashes. Silas Weir Mitchell wrote in The Last of a
Veteran Chess Player “the words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered,
oft-repeated syllables, Échecs! Échecs!" Échecs has another meaning
in French - failure.
Inanimate Reason is the first solo exhibition in China by Nie Lisha. By utilizing
video, sound, computer-based media, and installation, Lisha Nie creates non-linear
and non- linguistic ways of storytelling. Digital production is a recurrent foreground
in Lisha’s work, in which she critically examines its usage and circulation in the
power systems and daily life. Thriving from personal history and contemporary
environments, her recent works explore the relationship between individual and
collective in technologically mediated society from the perspectives of
totalitarianism and late capitalism, as well as their existential impacts.
Lisha Nie was born in Chongqing, China, holds a BFA in Painting from
Rhode Island School of Design. Her recent exhibitions include
Paradise Palase (New York, USA); Times Art Museum (Chengdu, China),
Woods- Gerry Gallery (Providence, RI), Jiade Art Center (Beijing, China),
Wanying Art Museum (Shijiazhuang, China), Red Eye Gallery(Providence, RI),
A4 ARIE Art Center (Chengdu, China), Yuan Contemporary Art Museum
(Chongqing, China), Gelman Gallery(Providence, RI). Her recent awards includes
Presidential Scholarship, Anderson Ranch Arts Center(Colorado, USA);
Florence Leif award(Rhode Island, USA); Partial Residency Fellowship,
Nars Foundation(New York, USA).
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