Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆
Cici Wu: Lanterns from the Unreturned (working title) 武雨濛：来自未归者的灵灯（暂定名）
2025年 5月 2日 – 2025年 9月 28日
This exhibition marks the first institutional solo exhibition of Cici Wu (1989, Beijing). It includes new and existing works and surveys Wu’s use of paper lanterns as a form of “proto-cinema”, invoking pre- and early-cinematic ways of seeing that foreground light and shadow as elemental to visual storytelling. Through her sculptures, films and installation, Wu explores migration through themes of movement, dwelling, and return. She emphasizes fluid networks of belonging, delineating their ebbs and flows across discontinuous timeframes. Drawing from local micro-histories and archives, Wu’s works examine how cultural and historical narratives shape individual and collective memory.
At the heart of the exhibition is a site-specific commission for RAM’s East Staircase, a space that embodies the building’s layered history. Originally constructed for the Royal Asiatic Society (1933-1952) and later repurposed as a repository for confiscated books during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in Shanghai, the museum’s staircase becomes a vessel for Wu’s storytelling, which visitors encounter as they move through the building. Through this project, alternative histories of the Cultural Revolution emerge – a story of erasure and survival – where enforced silence becomes a catalyst for unforeseen possibilities and new forms of remembrance and transmission.
Cici Wu: Lanterns from the Unreturned is organized by X Zhu-Nowell, Executive Director and Chief Curator and Karen Wang, Curatorial Assistant and Researcher.
本展览是艺术家武雨濛（1989年生于北京）的首个机构个展，汇集新作与过往作品，并回顾艺术家对纸灯笼这一“原始电影”形式的研究与运用，唤起前电影和早期电影时期的观看之道，以光与影作为视觉叙事的基本元素。武雨濛的雕塑、电影和装置作品通过运动、栖居和回归的主题探索迁徙的处境，强调“归属”的流动网络，并在非连续的时间框架中勾勒其潮起潮落。艺术家的创作取材自本地微观史和档案，审阅文化和历史叙事怎样塑造个体和集体记忆。
展览的核心是一组为上海外滩美术馆东侧楼梯间委约创作的特定场域作品。该空间承载着美术馆建筑层叠的历史：初为皇家亚洲文会（1933—1952）而建，后在上世纪七十年代成为上海图书馆的书库之一。楼梯间于是承载了武雨濛的叙事，由观者在建筑空间内探索。
“武雨濛：来自未归者的灵灯”（暂定名）由上海外滩美术馆馆长和首席策展人朱筱蕤与策展助理和研究员王馨茹共同策划。