Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

Shubigi Rao is renowned for her distinctive ability to interweave complex and ever-expanding narratives, research, and materials into multifaceted installations, films, and drawings. Her work delves into the gaps and multiplicities of ideas and histories, frequently employing marginalized or erased narratives and useful fictions to question the supremacy and dominance of knowledge and power.

Shubigi Rao: These Petrified Paths is the first survey in China encompassing the artist’s work from the past decade. The exhibition's title is derived from a newly commissioned feature-length film, which intertwines tales and recollections of Armenian local communities into an enthralling narrative. It layers memory, written and spoken word, dialogue, terrain, and everyday existence to pose the questions: Can storytelling from the margins serve as a conduit for recalling a nation’s shared identity? Who determines the worthiness of knowledge for preservation? What is the connection between fossil-fuel extractivism, energy supplies, and lost archives and books?

Viewing the museum’s exhibition spaces as strata, this exhibition offers a layered experience emphasizing vertical connections. The 4th, 5th, and 6th floors are transformed into “the sacred space,” “the margins,” and “the action,” respectively, interconnected by the installation Of That Colossal Wreck (2023) and the vertically suspended Watermarks (2023) scrolls. The third floor, “the subterranean,” symbolizes the necessary tunneling actions to undermine the foundations of oppressive structures. By illuminating fragmented experiences, memories, and oten overlooked infrastructures of transmission, of knowledge and energy, These Petrified Paths invites viewers to celebrate diverse forms of knowledge and to learn from the margins how to evolve beyond destruction, loss, death, and entropy.

舒比吉·拉奥闻名于其能够将复杂且不断扩展的叙述、研究和材料交织成多面向的装置、电影和绘画的独特能力。她的作品深入探讨了思想和历史的空白和多样性，常常利用被边缘化或被抹灭的叙事和“有用的虚构”来质疑知识和权力的至高无上和主导地位。

“舒比吉·拉奥：这些石化的小径”是中国国内首次对这位艺术家过去十年作品进行的考察。展览标题源于一部全新委托创作的长篇电影；该作品将来自亚美尼亚本地的故事和回忆编织成一段扣人心弦的叙事，在交织着记忆、书面和口头记述、对话、地势和日常生活的同时提出以下问题：来自边缘的故事讲述是否能成为回想国家身份性的渠道？知识传播的过程中，谁来决定其保存价值？化石燃料开采主义、能源供应与遗失的档案和书籍有何关联？

该展览将上海外滩美术馆的空间视为地层，提供了一种强调垂直联系的分层体验。第四、五、六层分别转变为“神圣之地”、“边缘”和“行动”，由装置《那巨大的残骸》（2023）和垂直悬挂的《水印》（2023）卷轴相互连接。第三层，“地下”，象征着必要的挖掘行动，以破坏压迫结构的基础。通过照亮碎片化的经验、记忆，以及经常被忽视的传播、知识和能源的基础设施，“这些石化的小径”邀请观众拥抱不同的知识形式，并从边缘之地学习如何从损毁、迷失、死亡和熵之中不断进化演变。