Jacky Tsai Transforms Moscow’s GUM for Chinese New Year
Seven installations on Red Square · Moscow, 2018
21st Feb 2018
Moscow
For Chinese New Year in February 2018, Jacky Tsai transformed GUM on Moscow’s Red Square into an expansive public art environment. Seven bespoke installations brought Chinese imagery into dialogue with Russian architecture, childhood memories, ballet and the circus, extending from the central fountain through the store’s historic passageways.
Presented as part of GUM’s Chinese New Year festival, held from 8 to 28 February, the project took contemporary art beyond the gallery and into a landmark visited by residents and travellers alike. Sculptures at ground level and monumental suspended forms invited visitors to encounter the works from different floors and viewpoints.
Seven installations across GUM
No.1 — Ice Cream Dome
GUM’s celebrated ice cream meets the onion dome of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Suspended above the central fountain, the enlarged forms turn two familiar Moscow landmarks into a playful sculptural encounter, surrounded by decorated eggs and dolls.
No.2 — Tetris
Red and gold Tetris blocks rise into the glass-roofed arcade. The game, known in Chinese as ‘Russian blocks’, draws on Tsai’s childhood memories and becomes a shared visual language between China and Russia.
No.3 — Matryoshka Doll
The Russian nesting doll is reimagined through Chinese decorative motifs and festive children. Its rounded silhouette brings together ideas of family, continuity and good fortune familiar to both cultures.
No.4 — Worker
A golden worker introduces the language of labour into a setting of shopping and leisure. The figure forms part of Tsai’s playful dialogue between everyday life, heroic imagery and the public space of GUM.
No.5 — Acrobat Girl
A golden acrobatic figure celebrates the discipline and imagination of performance. Seen among the suspended forms and the historic arcades, it carries the energy of the circus into the everyday movement of the store.
No.6 — Ballet Dancer
The ballet dancer recalls the cultural resonance of Russian ballet and Swan Lake for generations of Chinese audiences. Tsai brings this memory into a larger conversation between classical performance and contemporary public art.
No.7 — Balance Acrobat
An acrobat holds an improbable balance beneath the oversized hanging forms. The poised figure makes balance both a physical feat and a recurring idea within the project’s exchange of cultural symbols.
Behind the scenes
The scale of the installation required a different approach from working on a canvas. These photographs document the team positioning the suspended works high above the passages, assembling the red and gold blocks and bringing the installation into the architecture of GUM.
Jacky Tsai with the completed installation in GUM.
A meeting of cultures on Red Square
The installations formed the visual centre of a wider festival combining contemporary art with photography, Chinese embroidery, film, food and live performance. GUM’s programme included an exhibition by the Chinese Cultural Centre in Moscow alongside the art project, placing the work within a broader exchange between China and Russia.
The festival opening beneath the central installation.
The opening day also included a gala dinner and Sotheby’s charity auction at GUM’s Demonstration Hall, where guests were welcomed by Li Hui, then Chinese Ambassador to Russia, and Olga Golodets, then Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. The occasion brought together cultural institutions, diplomatic representatives, collectors and the public around the festival.
Alongside the GUM project, Tsai’s solo exhibition Fly Me to the Moon was presented at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, linking the public installations on Red Square with a museum presentation of his wider practice.
Explore Fly Me to the Moon at MMOMA · Read about the Sotheby’s charity auction