GUM Chinese New Year Celebration, Moscow GUM State Department Store, Moscow
01st Mar 2018
8–28 February 2018 · GUM, Red Square, Moscow
Jacky Tsai’s Chinese New Year project transformed GUM’s historic arcades into a public art environment. Seven bespoke installations brought together Chinese festive imagery, Russian architecture, ballet, circus performance and childhood memories, inviting visitors to encounter contemporary art within the everyday life of the department store.
The presentation extended from the central fountain to the glass-roofed passageways, with suspended sculptures and figures at ground level creating different viewpoints across the building’s floors. Scale and placement became part of the work: familiar forms could appear playful, monumental or unexpectedly precarious within the architecture.
Seven Installations, Shared Cultural Memories
Ice Cream Dome brought GUM’s celebrated ice cream into conversation with the onion domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Tetris enlarged the blocks of a game shared across cultures, while the Matryoshka Doll connected Russian nesting-doll imagery with Chinese festive motifs.
Worker, Acrobat Girl, Ballet Dancer and Balance Acrobat introduced the human figure through labour, performance and physical poise. Together, the seven installations created a visual exchange between China and Russia, drawing on symbols that visitors could recognise while placing them in unfamiliar combinations.
Art Beyond the Gallery
Presented during GUM’s Chinese New Year festival, the installations formed part of a wider programme of exhibitions, food and performance. Alongside Tsai’s Fly Me to the Moon exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the project connected the focused encounter of a museum with the scale and accessibility of public space.
Matryoshka Doll — Russian and Chinese decorative traditions meet in the GUM installation.
Making at an Architectural Scale
The installation photographs also preserve the work behind the finished presentation: positioning suspended forms, assembling components and adapting the pieces to GUM’s vertical spaces. The passage from studio image to public installation required attention to distance, sightlines and the movement of visitors through the building.
Behind the scenes of the installation at GUM.Jacky Tsai with the completed installation, Moscow, 2018.
