Li Wan: Rebellious Space
Nuit Blanche • Saskatoon • September 2019
Project Concept
This year, Kyuubi Culture is joined for Nuit Blanche Saskatoon by well-established China-based artist Li Wan, who has received numerous awards in sculpture, installation, and public art, and has her large-scaled, oftentimes highly interactive installations exhibited in China, Canada, Denmark and Poland.
One of the critical aspects of public art is audience engagement. Kyuubi Culture seeks to create a unique space with Li Wan’s artworks for the viewers to interact with. Therefore, they have arranged multiple performances at the installation site, including Chinese Lion Dance, brought to us by CI Lion Dance Club from Confucius Institute of the U of S, and Cheongsam Runway performed by members of Saskatoon Chinese Dance Club. Public art is ephemeral, art events wouldn’t have prolonged duration. Yet the cultural impact caused by public art is eternal and will keep growing and evolving. Under the meticulous organization of Kyuubi Culture, Rebellious Space has successfully transformed a mundane street corner of Saskatoon into a surreal dimension of beauty and jubilation. This event efficiently bought together Saskatoon’s art community and local residents by established engaging dialogues between artists and the general public. In the meantime, introduced contemporary Chinese art to North America.
Nuit Blanche Introduction
Nuit Blanche is an annual all-night art festival that revolves around the two core concepts of “urban innovation” and “public space design”, was established to close the gap between artists and the general public. In 1989, the largest Finnish art festival Helsinki Festival established its Night of the Arts, “when every gallery, museum and bookshop is open until midnight or later and the whole city becomes one giant performance and carnival venue”.
A year later, the mayor of Nantes, Jean-Marc Ayrault's program included renovating the central city and establishing a “contemporary patrimony”, which led arts programmer Jean Blaise to create a late-night cultural festival, “Les Allumées”(Things Alight). His concept was to have an arts festival in Nantes, from 6 pm to 6 am, over six years with artists from six cities.
After this series of festivals, the late-night cultural festival now renamed Nuit Blanche quickly spread in more than 120 cities across Europe. Later on, it came to North America. In 2004 Montreal launched the first Canadian Nuit Blanche, the cultural phenomenon was then immediately spread to Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax and Saskatoon in the following years.
