With thorough discussion between jury members during the voting session, the exhibition Tan Chui Mui with herexhibition "Just Because You Pressed the Shutter?" (nominated by curator Wang Yiquan), comes to be the winner of"Jimei x Arles Discovery Award" in 2022. As the jury mentioned,The Malaysian artist Tan Chui Mui draws on her own Chinese descent and family stories.
As the jury mentioned, The Malaysian artist Tan Chui Mui draws on her own Chinese descent and family stories to explore the profound but undefined issues of land, inheritance, ownership, and photography. By creating a multi-dimensional experience, her exhibition showcases the confusion, pursuit and questioning of identity among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, she keeps a distance from such attachment to the motherland, and connects landownership to photography copyright, discussing the two and expressing herself with openness and tenderness. For her, thesearch of roots is like opening a black box filled with unknown secrets. As a female artist, Tan Chui Mui provides a 360°perspective on the boundary of rights and possessions, revealing the hidden links between artworks and reality. Theshutter is just a metaphor, unfolding our status of drifting back and forth between day-to-day life and the art world.
Tan Chui Mui
At the age of 5, Tan Chui Mui made a small wooden stool. At 8, she drove a pick up truck onto a column. At 9, she printed a children's magazine. At 12, she finished reading an Encyclopedia. At 17, she had a column in a student weekly paper. At 21, she received a computer animation degree. At 27, she made her first film LOVE CONQUERS ALL. At 38, she gave birth to a child. At 41, she decided to learn martial arts.