Exhibition at the Seokjang-Ri Art Museum, Yeonchen-Gun, Republic of Korea

June - July, 2011

2011 Korean DMZ Art Festival

Exhibition at Luxun National Institute of Fine Arts Gallery, Shenyang, China

May 2010

Sensitive View

Exhibition at Zero Field Projects, 798 Art District, Beijing, China

March 2009

12 Hour Time Difference

East/West Through Women Artists’ Eyes
Women Artists from China and the West

Curated by Doris Kloster and Zhangping

This thematic group exhibition will include five women artists from China and five women artists from the West. In Chinese numerology the number five is associated with “me” or “myself” because it is at the central point of the magic square of I Ching, in which all the eight other single-digit numbers refer to comp ass points leading away from oneself. So one could say that the two groups of five women artists symbolically represent the collective world view of the eastern and western identity. The exhibition will focus on the ideas and concerns of women artists who embody these two counterweights of global awareness. The east/west polarization of the world is a complex reality, yet those who inhabit each pole ordinarily see the other only through the viewpoint of their own economic and political perspective.

There are artists from China who are regularly exhibited in the West, but seldom if ever do we get a chance to see multiple Chinese women artists’ conception of the world juxtaposed with those of their counterparts from the west. Some of the questions this exhibition will explore are: What are the artists’ ideas about their personal roles in society? How are women the same and how are they different in two polar opposite places? How do social conventions shape these differences? What are the universal truths and similarities that unite women all over the world? How are they expressed? What is the role of woman in each society? Who determines society's ideals of beauty and conventions of cultural identity? The artists selected for this project are women who have lived through the major changes that have occurred in China and the West in the last decade. In a way these changes have brought the hemispheres closer together, but in other ways they they have grown farther apart.

Doris Kloster's self portraits were exhibited at Beijing Museum of Contemporary art in an exhibit titled Link and Connection Future. The Chinese officials censored one of her works as too political and it was removed from the exhibit before the opening. In place of this work titled China Pink, a drawing of Kloster by artist Qin Feng was put to cover the spot where the original hung.

"Consider Them as They Stand"
Excerpt from the exhibition essay by Qin Feng

For two cups of transparent water, it is impossible to tell which one contains sugar and which one carries salt. However, when two or more cultures are mixed, you can clearly feel the ray of mergence and the delight of interaction. The international art invitatory exhibition, Link and Connection, will realize this scene.

France, famous for its romance and unique in its wits, has a culture glutted with elegant tease. Valiantly focusing her angle of view on herself and using herself as the fundamental embodiment, Doris Kloster interprets nationalism against a multicultural background and humorously cautions the expansion of strong cultures. She integrates and echoes the embarrassing situation of traditional culture in a fast mutating municipal culture with surrealistic instruments. Her works reproduce and amplify post nationalism like a mirror.