The 16th Curitiba International Biennial, curated by Tereza de Arruda and Adriana Almada, opened June 14 at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum. With the theme “LIMIARES” (THRESHOLDS), the Biennial features Li Qing's Dark Magazines series. These site-specific works, commissioned by the Biennial and developed during a residency at Museu Alfredo Andersen, engage in a dialogue with Brazilian and Latin American cultural periodicals.

 

Dark Magazines derives from Li Qing’s sustained observation of the evolution of everyday aesthetics in China since the modern era, alongside his research on the everyday materiality and secular expressiveness of painting therein. The artist collected silk brocades primarily produced in Hangzhou and systematically archived them. This intangible cultural heritage emerged alongside China’s wave of modern national industrial development a century ago, and later became intertwined with systems of image dissemination, identity formation, and ritual culture in Chinese society. Since 2013, he has integrated these woven textiles into diverse formats, including wallpaper-like installations, paintings, collages, and his signature magazine-wrapping works.

 

At the Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Li Qing’s works, together with the museum’s collection piece “Star Reading Room” by Cuban artists Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez, and works by German artist Barbara Steppe, form a thematic unit centered on books and reading. As curator Tereza Arruda noted: “Both artists use the book not only as an object, but as a symbolic territory of encounter with the other—a threshold between memory and imagination, intimacy and sharing, materiality and narrative… Li Qing investigates the book as a surface for cultural translation. The artist uses traditional Chinese brocades with regional historical motifs to wrap books from different cultural contexts. By wrapping foreign books with fabrics imbued with memory and tradition, Li Qing transforms the book into an intercultural bridge, drifting across distinct geographies, histories, and identities.”

 

The 16th Curitiba International Biennial will be on view until November 15.