Superfluity (Superfluité)

A form of transformation is at work at several levels in this intimate object imbued with unsettling strangeness.
Since the 1980s, Shen Yuan has developed a conceptual art between two cultures. Not without irony, the artist distorts everyday objects by adding oddity to the familiar. Superfluité [Superfluity] was made four years after she moved to France. A slipper, out of its box, is scattered with cut nails. ln pre-revolutionary China, educated people and noble women had long nails, sign of their exemption from manual labour. The work expresses an ambivalent sense of cultural belonging and the discomfort of the exercise of integration.