Chinese artist takes My Chemical Romance fan art up a notch at New York show with Mandarin riff on I’m Not Okay and more
- Shuang Li’s exhibition I’m Not, at the Swiss Institute, in Manhattan, features sculptures, sounds and videos that reference her favourite American emo band
- The artist, who came across MCR listening to discarded CDs while growing up in Fujian, examines the disconnect between ‘crazy’ fans like herself and their idols
When does fan art become fine art?
That is a question close to the heart of Shuang Li, a Chinese artist whose work is inspired by her favourite band, My Chemical Romance (MCR).
Although Li’s work has little in common with the sketches of idols that define fan art, her new show at the Swiss Institute in New York leaves no doubt she is making reference to MCR, the American emo group who broke through to the mainstream with their second album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, in 2004.
The centrepiece of the major exhibition is an installation called Heart Is A Broken Record. It features a heart-shaped working fountain with images of screaming fans at MCR concerts projected from above.
An audio recording of an excited audience at the start of an MCR concert plays on a loop, stopping abruptly at the point when the band appear on stage, and starting again after a pause.
It is a symbol of fans’ longing for unobtainable objects of desire, Li says. The silence that follows the appearance of the performers in the projection splits the world of the screaming and cheering fans from that of the band.