Xu Tan: Dictionary of Keywords

Dictionary of Keywords is a conceptual publication by the Chinese artist Xu Tan, it is a high density collection of 125 keywords based on his project “Searching for Keywords”, which consists of a series of interviews of active people in the Chinese society or people in the active Chinese area, and by searching and studying the content of the conversation, Xu Tan aims at finding out the connection between the individual speakers, words and the mental tendencies of Chinese society. The dictionary functions as a kind of teaching book for people to learn Chinese, and to exchange different culture experiences through the learning process.

About Xu Tan (徐坦)

Born in 1957 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, Xu Tan studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and received a bachelor of fine arts in oil painting in 1983 and a master of fine arts in oil painting in 1989. Currently lives in Shenzhen.

In the early 1990s Xu Tan joined the artist collective “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou, the aim of his work is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China. His installation and video works explore issues crucial to the increasingly globalized world like urbanization, the geopolitical relationships between the developed and developing worlds in terms of political, economic, and cultural production and their impacts on personal lives and their expressions. Xu Tan’s works are often site-specific, dealing intimately with everyday experiences to critically demonstrate the tension between globally circulating images, modes of communication, and the impact they have locally. Powerfully and intelligently, Xu Tan’s work calls for contemporary art to engage with social reality in our time. Since 2005, Xu Tan’s Keywords Project has explored linguistic activities, collective research, public space and knowledge production through a variety of working methods in his unique art practice. Searching Keywords, Keywords School and Keywords Lab emerged from this project and reflect Xu’s evolving approach to social investigations, research and aesthetic activities as he studies connections between individual thought and collective consciousness.

Image and Text: the shop, ©Authors, the shop, 2019