Overlapping Images of the Borderlands: Liu Yujia’s “Border Hotel”
By Chen Xu Translated by Bridget Noetzel
On June 8, 2021, Liu Yujia’s solo show “Border Hotel” opened at DRC No. 12 in Beijing. This is a wholistic presentation of the spectacle of the borderlands as the artist sees them; the show attempts to weave together northwestern landscapes and borderland histories to present a personalized experience of the northwest. Historically, the borderlands have suggested narrative positions outside of mainstream discourses; as spatial indicators, the borderlands present a marginal perspective located far from the center. These two versions of the borderlands have offered some basic coordinates for Chinese contemporary artistic practices since 2010. Within this context, “Border Hotel” presents two timelines against the backdrop of landscapes, landforms, and archeological excavations: the expeditions made to northwestern China by European explorers in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and the shaping and spectacularization of the borderlands by the mass enrichment that has taken place since the late twentieth century.[①]
In the history of Chinese modern and contemporary art, borderland experiences have been one of the transformative forces in artistic practice. Three waves of westward travel took place in the 1940s, 1980s, and 1990s. While the issues the artists confronted may have been different and the depth of the artistic ideas that it inspired did vary, the practices of these artists contrasted sharply with mainstream artistic practice and inspired shifts in artistic trends. In the 1980s, artists approached the borderlands with a reflective mindset, attempting to discover powerful natural spectacles within western landscapes. Through the Mogao Caves and other historical landmarks, they hoped to revive the context of the Han and Tang dynasties, perpetuating the ways in which artists from the 1940s envisioned national territories and historical spaces. With the advance of globalization since the 1990s, artists have examined the borderlands in more personal ways and attempted to find a distinctive sense of cultural identity in the western part of the country. However, these explorations were inherently an extension of the recognition, identification, and absorption of the borderlands by a nation-state. Around the year 2010, the borderlands once again became a subject with which many contemporary artists engaged. During this time, western geographical landscapes, the area’s historical and cultural sources, and their personal experiences of borders were the primary lenses through which artists learned about the borderlands. In 2011, Zhuang Hui launched his Qilian Range project. He spent ten years traveling the Qilian Mountains in search of a resonance between the individual and nature. Liu Xiaodong in Hotan (2012) focused on the lived realities of borderland groups and examined the complex social and cultural map of the borderlands. In China Northwest Airlines (2016-2020), Zheng Yuan began with his personal memories and then engaged in a deeper “archeology” of other people’s travel experiences in the northwest. The borderlands provided artists with the chance to re-examine their own experience and comprehend borderland spaces through their own contexts. As Mia Yu wrote, they use “hinterland nomadism, intellectual archeology, online drifting, and other methods to depict more elastic and uncertain personal geographies.” [②]
Liu Yujia’s experiences of borders unfold in DRC No. 12 and respond to the distinct place that this region occupies in Chinese contemporary art history. The Diplomatic Residence Compounds (DRC) were the first international communities established after the founding of the People’s Republic. In the 1970s and 1980s, because of the international information disseminated there, the complex became an early place for discussions and events related to Chinese contemporary art. Having served as a site for non-mainstream and more challenging artistic practices, this venue has potential value as a marginal place outside the mainstream. For Liu and other artists who have engaged with the borderlands since 2010, Lu Mingjun writes, “the borderlands contain a desire for dialogue, the power of difference, and the potentiality of mobility, as well as resistance to the homogeneous and monotonous.” [③]An artistic practice that lies outside of the mainstream and is rooted in reflections on borderland experience has a deep connection to the DRC’s past potentiality.
I. Interlocking Historical Narratives
One thread that runs through “Border Hotel” is the series of expeditions to northwestern China undertaken by European explorers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Liu chose to examine the archeological excavations and exploratory expeditions conducted by Hungarian-born British archeologist Aurel Stein in China’s border regions, as a way of reflecting on the orientalist and anthropological facets to his exploits and the ways in which European explorers shaped a vision of northwestern China within a colonialist context.
From the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, many European explorers traveled deep into northwestern China. Their expeditions had many different objectives. Some were scholarly endeavors and others were intended simply to explore the “East,” while still others were espionage missions. Of course, some of these explorers, including Stein, had several goals at once. Their activities were essentially the result of the modern expansion of a global vision. While European scholars were traveling east into Central Asia, late-Qing intellectuals were making journeys west to expand their knowledge of the northwest. As Yu Yingshi has perceptively observed, “The context for Chinese studies of the history and geography of the northwest and European Orientalism was the same: the expansion of Western imperialist power in Asia.” [④] As global, expansionist powers converged in and rebuilt the northwest, the borderlands gradually became a modern site for the writing of and competition between different kinds of knowledge, disciplines, and ethnicities.
“Border Hotel” also offers a personal moment in the interlocking historical narratives around Stein’s archeology. In the living room near the balcony, Liu has placed a replica tent (Figure 1) based on the pictures Stein took during his expeditions. This is the first layer of archeology, a return to the “base layer” of recent history and a revisiting of the site of Stein’s visit to westernmost China. The worktable, maps, photographs, magnifying glass, and other objects placed outside the tent give the living room an added openness, transforming it into a fictional fragment of history. The tent was his temporary home during the expedition, and on the wall that can be seen from this temporary space hangs an image of the Kunlun Mountains that Stein photographed from the perspective of his tent. In this way, the artist reproduces Stein’s visual experience of looking at snowy mountains from his tent and brings the viewer into the recent historical memory of the borderlands being “discovered” by Europeans.
Figure 1, Border Hotel, living room
In the bedroom on the south side, Liu Yujia attempts to revisit Stein’s archeological world in Archaeological Journal - Topographic Exploration of the Riverbed (Figure 2), offering a vision of the historic “westernmost China” that Stein discovered. The work represents Stein’s distinctive dualist understanding of the borderlands. In his scholarly research, he saw the region as the historic bridge between China and the Eurasian world, but it was also a fixed concept in history. In his role as a spy, he saw the area west of Gansu as an independent geographic unit based on a conception of “Central Asia”[⑤], studiously ignoring the region’s historical connections to China’s Central Plains and the four frontiers. The exhibition visualizes Stein’s archeological endeavors, while also laying a foundation for comparing the past and present of the borderlands based on his grasp of the history of the northwest. Stein’s personal story is also situated within the interlocking narratives of borderland histories, somewhere between interior and exterior, past and present.
Figure 2, Archaeological Journal - Topographic Exploration of the Riverbed, carpet
Figure 3, The Pale View of Hills
Using the life of the Princess Consort of Kucha as a foundation, Liu Yujia presents a unique side to the interactions and entanglements of an individual with China’s recent history. The Pale View of Hills (Figure 3), a 2018 video work based on the everyday life of the Princess Consort[⑦], widow of the Prince of Kucha[⑥], plays in the kitchen of DRC No. 12. The status of the Princess Consort—a remnant of a particular historical period—has been consumed or reshaped in the new context of a burgeoning tourist economy, but also retreats into everyday experience. The kitchen space returns the Princess Consort, a person bearing a title that evokes an immense historical distance, to the life experience of an ordinary woman. The history of the Princess Consort of Kucha is unlike the records of Stein’s archeological expeditions to western China, which were shared with many as an understanding of modern Chinese history. The Pale View of Hills suggests a hidden historical narrative outside of latent and mainstream discourses. The story of the Princess Consort or this ordinary woman presents the layering in borderland histories and the ways in which past and present are inscribed upon an ordinary individual.
The other part of the exhibition centers on the changes that have emerged in the borderlands since the 1990s mass enrichment drive. Liu discusses the relationship between jade mining, jade trading, and Han consumers, reflecting on how the borderlands have been shaped and spectacularized in the tourism industry. Riverbed records the people who find jade in the dry bed of the Yurungkash River and engage in the jade trade, as well as the negotiations and interactions between Han buyers and Uyghur sellers. The piece implies the trade between China and the rest of the world that took place in this region and extends the historical memory of the production and consumption of jade between the Central Plains and Xinjiang.
II. Spatial Metaphors for the Borderlands
Figure 4
The historical narratives in “Border Hotel” and the space of DRC No. 12 constitute an intertextual structure. The historical backdrop of the Diplomatic Residence Compound in contemporary art practice, the former living space of DRC No. 12 (Figure 4), and the overlapping energy fields of the borderlands and the center in Liu Yujia’s work offer a powerful spatial narrative.
The borderlands that Liu portrays are exhibited in Beijing, and the physical distance between the site of the work’s production and its exhibition creates a tense dialogue. The borderlands are a specific geographical space, part of a modern nation-state. The nature of the borderlands is constituted in relation to some other space. In the exhibition, the Xinjiang expeditions made by “outside” colonialists in the early twentieth century are inlaid into the context of an international community such as Beijing’s Diplomatic Residence Compound. The relationship between the borderlands and the center can be grasped in a fluid interior-exterior structure, inspiring multiple switches between interior and exterior on a spatial level. In the history of Chinese contemporary art, this dialogue has another layer: the deep inter-referentiality between the DRC space and the borderlands. In the 1980s, contemporary art was exhibited secretly in the DRC, offering a place for artists outside of the mainstream or government institutions to show their work. In Chinese contemporary art practice, the borderlands similarly have that exploratory sensibility of being far from the center and diverging from the mainstream. Liu Yujia draws on the symbolic semantics of the diplomatic apartments as a metaphor for the experimental value of the borderlands in Chinese contemporary art practice.
Figure 5, Border Hotel, kitchen
Figure 6, Border Hotel, bathroom
DRC No. 12 was adapted from an everyday space, and the existing structure and logic of an apartment gives “Border Hotel” a distinctive air. “Border Hotel” showed works in a range of mediums, including videos, ready-mades, and photographs, and the works were distributed across the rooms of the apartment, including the meeting room, living room, and corridor on the north side and the bedroom on the south side. The kitchen, bathroom, and balcony were also used as exhibition spaces. Liu presented The Pale View of Hills in the kitchen, and she keenly appreciated that, beneath the title of Princess Consort, an ordinary woman was confronting the trivialities of everyday life alone. In the video, in addition to her duties as Princess Consort, she needs to do the tasks that ordinary people do. Liu chose to present this work in the kitchen, responding to her status as a worker (Figure 5). In addition, Liu has cut out the audio of the Princess Consort scrubbing the bathroom and the video of her cleaning the bathtub (Figure 6) and placed them in the two bathrooms in DRC No. 12, hiding the Princess Consort’s ordinary yet secret world inside the private spaces of the apartment.
In the exhibition, Liu Yujia’s work is immensely dynamic. She cleverly places different objects and media in the apartment space as a way of connecting the distant borderland story with the apartment space. In The Pale View of Hills, the objects that appear on camera are also present in the exhibition site, and conversely, objects and mediums from the borderlands blur the special qualities of this apartment. The utensils and appliances in the kitchen of the DRC No. 12 are covered with cloths in various colors. The fake flowers placed on the counter echo those in the Princess Consort’s living spaces. Everything in the apartment is decorated as a borderland home.
Figure 7
Liu Yujia’s video works slip into the living space of the apartment on televisions, mobile phones, and tablets. The media broadcast in the videos is subordinate to the characteristics of everyday viewing in the apartment. For example, in the living room, scenes of people negotiating over jade appear on mobile phones and tablets. Living rooms are spaces for everyday interactions and conversations, and the borderland world is presented through the arrangement of objects and media in a living space. In the south room, she has placed a side table and chairs, a carpet depicting stories from The Great Tang Records of the Western Regions, and a TV playing videos on the wall, which offers a vision of life (Figure 7). In the video, Stein’s pictures and Liu’s clips engage in dialogue, recalling the important role that this region played in interactions between the Central Plains and elsewhere.
With “Border Hotel,” Liu Yujia recalls the borderland experiences in Chinese modern and contemporary art history, the borderland metaphors that contemporary artists since 2010 have constructed about the northwest to diverge from mainstream narratives, and the resonances between DRC No. 12 and the history of the Diplomatic Residence Compound.
III. Borderland People
“Border Hotel” attempts to understand what constitutes a border landscape and how we should grasp a fluid border world. First, the borderlands are a piece of land or a space with a sense of place, as well as political and cultural significance. As Tim Cresswell wrote, “As well as being located and having a material visual form, places must have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning.” [⑧]The borderlands are understood relative to a cultural center, and this impression of the borderlands is achieved through a certain material and visual form. For example, Stein learned about Xinjiang through archeological expeditions and geographical explorations.
However, for Cresswell, a place’s connection with people, manmade objects, and consumption is more important, and this connection is built on emotional attachment. The examination of the attachment relationships between places and people had a long history in ancient China. Liu Yujia does not mechanically apply the ancient method of naming places after people; instead, she attempts to discuss the sense of place in the borderlands through the complexity of identity. It is precisely these multiple identities and the openness of people that make the borderlands unique.
The most important figure in the exhibition is Hungarian-British explorer Aurel Stein, a man who wore many hats. He traveled to Xinjiang as an archeologist and explorer and surveyed the military situation in Xinjiang as a British spy. Stein flowed between different identities, and he made use of these identities to shape his temporary relationship with the northwest; this fluidity reflects the openness of the borderlands. The other figure in the exhibition is the Princess Consort, whose status is similarly complex. Her title was transformed by new historical circumstances, and when confronted with this legacy status, different discourses reveal its extremely ambiguous and disputed state. This status is a remnant of the People’s Republic’s attempt to address Xinjiang ethnic issues, but it has also been consumed by the tourism economy and become part of her identity as a worker. Through an ordinary Uyghur woman, Liu Yujia wrote a historical narrative. Of course, another grand historical narrative has shaped and solidified the status of the Princess Consort; the historical narrative of the borderlands remains unfinished and continues to be written.
Figure 8
Figure 9
In her work, Liu Yujia also explores the borderlands in the context of consumption relationships and the economic links between groups. The jade market videos on the mobile phones and tablets in the living room (Figure 8) show how jade circulates, and these consumption relationships involve the historical memory of trade between China and the rest of the world that took place in this region, as well as the economic connections between different groups. In the jade market scenes played on the mobile phones and tablets in the exhibition, jade dealers walk through the market and inquire about prices. The dealers are also running TikTok livestreams on their phones, broadcasting jade market transactions over the internet, and engaging in transactions of their own. New media and the internet have changed previous kinds of circulation, and media open to the outside world incorporates the borderlands into new spaces. The borderlands on the internet both possess and lack a sense of place.
The exhibition attempts to reveal the emotional dimension of people living on the borderlands. Liu Yujia displayed Stein’s ethnographic and anthropological photographs in the meeting room, and in these photographs, the emotions of borderland peoples are not frozen. However, the photographer guides the subjects’ postures and operates the camera. The nervous, hesitant faces of the “collected” people when faced with these limitations are manifestations of restrained and regulated emotion (Figure 9). In contrast, in A Music Lesson, Liu examines the unique emotional attachments of borderland peoples through the lens of the nation-state. On the wall in the corridor to the right of the exhibition entrance, she presents a work in which ethnic minorities sing “Ode to the Motherland” in their own languages (Figure 10). Though the young people in the video are learning to sing “Ode to the Motherland,” a song with a familiar melody, viewers who have taken this music lesson before do not directly empathize, and actually feel unsettled because of the unfamiliar language. The video presents borderland ethnic minorities and the national imagination, as well as the way in which the individual is regulated and imbued with an emotional dimension within the larger conception of the nation-state.
In the discursive structures of the borderlands, historical narratives often reflect the ways in which different centers have written about this region. Marginal spaces are a metaphor for the temporariness and fluidity of borders between cultural forces. In her archeology of borderland historical memory, Liu Yujia reflects on the constructive intervention of grand narrative structure and external culture in this region, and she presents to us the complex historical process in which these various discourses have written, erased, and rewritten this region. With the potential energy of the borderland space, “Border Hotel” activates the interlocking images of past and present, center and periphery. The exhibition attempts to understand the borderlands and resurrect the marginal implications of Chinese contemporary art practices, thereby symbolically connecting the borderlands and Chinese contemporary art. Right now, China’s peripheries are sources of immense uncertainty, and the borderlands are a unique medium through which to understand this uncertainty. Through the coordinate systems of borderland narratives and marginal spaces, we can approach and reconsider border people, rather than simply covering new and diverse stories about a place with abstract discourses about ethnicity, history, and region.
August 21, 2021
1.See “Liu Yujia’s ‘Border Hotel’ | Opening,” DRC No. 12 official WeChat account post, June 8, 2021.
2.Mia Yu, “Xixingzhe: Xiesheng, Ziwo Piaobo yu Fudi Youmu Zhijian de Dili Xiangxiang (Shang)” (Traveling West: Geographic Visions of Sketching, Roaming, and Hinterland Nomadism (Part 1)), Yishu Shijie (Art World), no. 3, 2018.
3.Lu Mingjun, Yishu Biange yu Xiandai Zhongguo (Revolution of Art and Modern China: Radical Origins of Chinese Contemporary Art), (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2020), 190.
4.Yu Yingshi, Xiandai Weiji yu Sixiang Renwu (Modern Crises and Thinking People) (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2005), 462.
5.“All of the water on some map surveys in the northwestern part of Gansu flow toward a basin without an outlet. Topographically speaking, the area could be considered part of Central Asia, rather than China.” See Xiang Da’s Xiyu Kaoguji (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2013), 253, a Chinese translation of Aurel Stein, Serindia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China, London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
6. Reyanam Dawut (b. 1966) is the widowed fifth wife of the twelfth Hereditary Hui Prince of Kucha in Xinjiang.
7. Dawut Mahsut (1927-2014) was the twelfth Prince of Kucha. His formal title was the Hereditary Hui Prince of Kucha in Xinjiang, first bestowed during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing dynasty. The line ended with Dawut Mahsut.
8. Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 7.
陈旭：边疆重影——刘雨佳的《边疆宾馆》
文 | 陈旭
2021年6月8日，刘雨佳的个人展览《边疆宾馆》在北京外交公寓12号空间开幕，这是艺术家眼中“边疆景观”的一次整体性呈现，展览也尝试在西北地景与边疆历史的交织线索中，呈现个人化的西北经验。作为历史对象的边疆提示了主流话语之外的叙事立场，作为空间表征的边疆展现了远离中心的边缘视角，两者构成了“边疆”议题在2010年以来中国当代艺术实践的基本坐标。《边疆宾馆》在这一坐标中，以风景地貌、考古发掘为背景呈现了两条时间线索：一是19世纪末到20世纪初，欧洲探险家在中国西北的考察活动，二是20世纪末到当下，边疆在“全面致富”的经济浪潮中被塑造并景观化的过程[①]。
从中国现当代艺术的历史脉络来看，边疆经验是艺术实践的变革性力量之一。在20世纪40年代、80年代与90年代的三次“西行现象”中，艺术家面临的问题或有不同，引发的艺术思考深浅有别，都与主流艺术实践构成了极具张力的对照，并引发了艺术潮流变动。1980年代艺术家带着反思意识的走向边地世界，尝试在西部风景之中发现蕴含能量的自然景观，希望在莫高窟等历史遗迹中重寻汉唐文脉，这也延续了1940年代艺术家西行时对国族地景与历史空间的想象。1990年代以来在全球化的持续扩张中，艺术家以个人化的方式审视边疆，试图在西部世界寻找一种独特的文化身份感。不过，这些探索仍内在于民族国家意识下对边疆体认、识别与吸纳的延长线上。2010年前后，“边疆”再次成为不少当代艺术家关注的一个议题，西部地理景观、边疆历史文化资源和个人的边地经验是这一阶段艺术家理解边疆主要角度。庄辉在2011年开启“祁连山计划”，持续10年深入祁连山中游历以寻找个人与自然之间的回应。“刘小东在和田”计划（2012年）聚焦边地人群的生活现实，探讨了边疆复杂的社会与文化图景。郑源在“西北航空”项目（2016-2020年）中，以他的个人记忆出发，对一群人的西北旅行经验进行深入的“考古”。“边疆”为艺术家提供了重新检视个体经验的可能，艺术家以自身的“上下文”关系把握边疆空间，“以腹地游牧、知识考古、网络漂流等多种方式绘制更具弹性和不确定性的个人地理。”[②]
刘雨佳的“边地”经验在外交公寓12号空间展开，也回应了这个场域在中国当代艺术历史中的独特质地。外交公寓是新中国最早的国际化社区，在二十世纪七八十年代，借助这里独有的国际资讯传播，成为中国早期当代艺术交流与活动的兴起之地，这一区域以展出非主流的、具有挑战性的艺术实践，具有了一种主流之外的、边缘性的潜在价值。对于刘雨佳以及2010年以来在边疆实践的艺术家而言，“边疆蕴含更多的是对话的欲望、差异的力量和流动的潜能，蕴含着对于同质化和单一性的反抗。”[③]这种基于边疆经验的反思意识与独立于主流之外的艺术家实践，和外交公寓所拥有的历史潜能形成了深刻地互文。
一、交错的历史叙事
《边疆宾馆》的一个线索是，以19世纪末到20世纪初欧洲探险家在中国西北的考察活动为背景，选择匈裔英国考古学家斯坦因在中国边疆地区的考古发掘与探险活动，反思其边疆考察所包含的东方学、人类学知识，检视了欧洲探险者如何在殖民主义背景下塑造出西北形象。
自19世纪末到20世纪30年代，不少欧洲探险家对中国西北进行了深入的考察，这些考察活动性质各异，有出于学术目的，也有旨在探险“东方”，也有不少是间谍活动，当然还有人兼具多种目的，斯坦因即是代表。这些活动本质上是近代以来全球视野扩张的结果，欧洲学者向东抵达中亚之时，晚清知识人也在西行中拓展了西北知识与视域。如余英时充满洞见地指出：“中国西北史地之学和欧洲东方学的历史背景是相同的，即西方帝国主义势力向亚洲的扩张。”[④]全球性扩张力量在西北的汇聚与重构中，“边疆”逐渐成为不同知识、学科、族群书写与竞争的现代场域。
《边疆宾馆》围绕斯坦因的“考古”呈现了一个交错历史叙事中个人显影的瞬间。展览在客厅靠近阳台的位置，根据斯坦因新疆考察时摄影复原了一座帐篷（图1），展现了考古学者斯坦因的西域探险活动，这构成了“考古“的第一个层面，即回到近代历史的“地层”之中，重访斯坦因西域考察“现场”。在帐篷之外的工作台、地图、摄影照片以及放大镜等物品激发出客厅的开放性，将之转化为了一个虚构的历史片段。而帐篷之内是考察时的临时居所，透过这个临时性的空间看向的墙壁，悬挂着斯坦因在相同角度拍摄到的昆仑山风景，展场由此重现了斯坦因从帐篷看向雪山的视觉经验，也将观众带入了一段“边疆”被欧洲人发现的近代记忆中。
图1，《边疆宾馆》展览现场，大客厅
在南侧卧室中，刘雨佳在《考古日志》中尝试重访斯坦因的考古世界（图2），这里呈现的是斯坦因所发现的、历史中的“西域”图景。其显示了斯坦因对“边疆”认识的独特之处，即视野的两重性。在斯坦因的学术研究中，“西域”是认识和把握历史中国与欧亚世界互动交往的津梁，但“西域”同样是一个“凝固”于历史中的对象。在间谍身份之下，他以“中亚”概念将甘肃以西的区域视作一个独立的地理单元[⑤]，刻意忽视中原与四裔的历史纵深关系。展场构想了斯坦因考古活动，同时借助他对西北的历史意向的把握，为“边疆”铺设了一个历史与当下对照的底色。斯坦因的个人考察史也被置于“内外”与“古今”之间交错的边疆历史叙事中。
图2:刘雨佳《考古日志—地形探索》双屏录像，地毯，2020-2021
刘雨佳还以“库车王妃”的生命史为基点，展现了个体与中国现当代历史之间流转、纠缠的独特面相。12号空间的厨房中播放着刘雨佳2018年创作的视频《远山淡景》（图3），这件作品根据“库车王”[⑥]的遗孀“王妃”[⑦]之日常生活为素材而创作。“王妃”这个特殊历史时期所遗留下的名号或者身份，在发展旅游业的新情境中被消费和重塑，同时也在日常经验中潜隐消退，厨房空间将原本极具历史距离感的“王妃”，还原为生活经验中的一个普通女性。“库车王妃”的历史脉络，并不像斯坦因的西域考古一样，作为一种近代中国的历史“知识”被多数人所共享，《远山淡景》所提示的是一种潜在的、主流话语之外的隐匿历史叙事层次。“王妃”，或者这个普通女性的故事呈现了边疆历史中的错叠感，展现了历史与当下如何在一个普通“个体”之上书写。
展览的另一个线索关注1990年代以来，在“全面致富”的经济浪潮中边疆呈现出的变化。艺术家讨论了包括玉石开采、交易与汉族消费群体之间的关系，反思了在旅游业发展中边疆如何被塑造并景观化。视频《河床》中记录了在干枯的玉龙喀什河河床中寻找玉石，与从事玉石交易的人们，呈现了汉族购买者和维族出售者间的协商与互动。这里隐含着关于这个区域的中外贸易的相关话题，延续着中原与新疆之间围绕玉石的生产与消费的历史记忆。
图3：《远山淡景》, 2018，单频录像，中文对白, 中文/英文字幕
二、边疆的空间喻指
图4
《边疆宾馆》的历史叙事与外交公寓12号空间形成一种充满互文性的构造，外交公寓在当代艺术实践中的历史质感，原本作为居住场所的12号空间（图4）与刘雨佳作品中涉及的“边疆”“中心”间的场域势能相重叠，展现了一个蕴含力量的空间叙事。
刘雨佳所塑造的“边疆”置于北京展出，作品生产与展出地间的物理距离构成极具张力的对话。“边疆”是一个具体的地理空间，是现代国族空间的一部分，边疆的性质是与另一块空间的对照中形成的。展览将20世纪初外部殖民者对新疆的探险活动，嵌套在在位于北京的外交公寓这一国际化社区的情境之中，“边疆与中心”的关系在一种内外流动结构中被把握，带来了空间层面上的“内”与“外”多重切换。从中国当代艺术的历史线索来看，这种对话还包含着另一个层次，即外交公寓空间与边疆的深刻地互指。外交公寓在20世纪80年代，是当代艺术进行秘密展览，实现非主流、体制外艺术表达展出的现场，边疆在中国当代艺术实践中同样展现着这样一种远离中心、偏离主流的探索意识。刘雨佳正是借助了外交公寓的象征性语义，喻指了边疆在中国当代艺术实践理路中的实验性价值。
图5：《边疆宾馆》展览现场，厨房
图6- 《边疆宾馆》展览现场，北侧房间浴室
《边疆宾馆》的展场外交公寓12号空间，由一个日常生活空间改造而来的，公寓既有的结构与逻辑同样也为《边疆宾馆》赋予了独特的气质。《边疆宾馆》展出包括录像、现成品、摄影等在内的不同媒介展品多件，作品布置在外交公寓12号空间的北侧会议室、大客厅、走廊、南侧卧室之中，厨房、卫生间、阳台也均作为展览空间使用。在厨房中，播放着视频《远山淡景》，刘雨佳敏锐觉察到“王妃”身份之下，孤单面对日常琐碎的普通女性，录像中她以“王妃”身份完成工作之外，和普通人一样需要自己劳动。展览选择在厨房之中呈现这个作品，以回应她的劳动者身份（图5）。此外展览将“王妃”刷洗卫生间的音频、刷洗浴缸的视频剪出（图6），分别布置在12号空间的两个卫生间之中，将王妃生活中平凡而私密的世界隐藏在公寓最为私密空间中。
刘雨佳的作品在展览中表现出极大的能动性。艺术家使用不同物品与媒介，巧妙地布置在公寓空间之中，让原本遥远的边地故事与公寓空间产生了关联，在《远山淡景》中出镜物品也出现在展场之中，来自边地的物品、媒介反过来模糊了这个公寓展场原本的特质。12空间厨房中的各种生活器物上也盖着各色的布块，台面上摆放着与王妃生活环境相呼应的假花，这一切将北京的外交公寓装点为一个边疆家庭的居所。
图7： 《边疆宾馆》展览现场，南侧房间
刘雨佳的录像作品通过电视、手机、平板等媒介潜入公寓的生活空间，播放视频的媒介从属于公寓中日常观看的特点。比如客厅中的手机、平板电脑播放着玉石交易现场人们讨价还价的场景，客厅正是日常交流、谈话的空间，边疆世界通过物品和媒介在生活空间的秩序之中呈现。在南侧房间中，摆放的茶几座椅、描绘“西域”故事的地毯，和悬挂于墙上播放着录像的电视，模仿了生活化的观看经验（图7），视频中斯坦因的摄影与刘雨佳的视频交织对话，重唤了这个区域在中原与域外交流的重要作用。
刘雨佳以《边疆宾馆》重新回溯了中国现当代艺术史中的边地经验，也与2010年以来当代艺术家以西北作为偏离主流叙事的边地喻指，并且和外交公寓12号空间及“外交公寓”的历史底音形成了共振。
三、边地的人
《边疆宾馆》所理解的是怎么样的一个边疆景观，具有流动性的边疆世界如何去把握。首先边疆是一块土地，是一个具有地方感的空间，有其政治与文化意义上的属性。Tim Cresswell提到，“除了有其定位，并具有物质视觉形式外，地方还必须与人，以及人类制造和消费意义的能力有所主观和情感的依附。”[⑧]边疆是在一个文化中心点的相对位置上被认识的，而且这种边地的观感也通过一定的物质视觉形式所把握，斯坦因正是通过对古物考察、地理的探察来认识新疆的。
然而，在Tim Cresswell看来，更为重要的是地方与人及人造物及消费之间关联，并且这种关联是建立在情感依附之上的。对地方与人之间依附关系的审视，在古代中国有着久远的脉络。刘雨佳的作品并没有套用古代“以人名地”的做法，而是试着从身份的复杂性角度来讨论边疆的地方感，正是这些身份多重，并且具有开放性的人群定义了边疆的独特属性。
展览中涉及的最重要人物，是匈裔英国人奥莱尔·斯坦因，一个拥有多重身份的人，他既作为考古学家、探险家到新疆考察，也以英国间谍的身份在新疆刺探军情。不同身份在斯坦因身上的流动，他借助身份塑造了他与西北这一地方的临时性关系，这种流动性赋予了边疆的开放、流动的特质。展览中的另一个人物“王妃”，同样具有身份的复杂性。“王妃”的身份在历史中形成又在新的历史情境中转化，在面对这种历史的遗留的身份时，不同的话语也显示出了极为暧昧和纠葛的状态，这个身份是新中国解决新疆民族问题的一个遗留物，而其在旅游经济兴起中被消费，更在一种劳动者的身份中被监工。刘雨佳通过一个普通的维族女性书写了一段历史叙事，当然另一个宏大的历史叙事也塑造、凝固了历史洪流中的“王妃”。边疆的历史叙事是未完成的，仍被继续书写。
图8：刘雨佳《边疆宾馆》客厅
图9：刘雨佳《边疆宾馆》北侧房间
刘雨佳在作品中也探讨了处在消费关系之中的边疆与不同人群之间的经济网络，在客厅、手机平板电脑中玉石交易的视频（图8），这些交易活动指涉了围绕玉石的交易流通网络，而这种消费关系所牵涉的，是关于这个区域历史记忆里中外贸易的相关话题，以及处在经济关联中的不同人群。陈列在展场的手机、平板电脑里播放着玉石市场的场景。这里玉石商贩在市场中游走询价，商贩也拿着手机，开着抖音直播，将玉石市场的交易借助互联网传播并进行交易。新的媒介与互联网改变了原本的连通方式，通向外部世界的媒介将边疆也整合到一个新的空间之中，这个处在网络中的边疆是包含着地方感，同样也是无地方感的。
展览还试着揭示在边疆生活人们的情感维度。刘雨佳在北侧会议室陈设了斯坦因的民族学人类学摄影，在这些摄影中，边地的人物并未被规定情感。但拍摄者引导被拍摄者身体的动态、操控相机的镜头，“采集”了人们在这种限定之下的紧张与迟疑的表情，这是一种被抑制的、规训的情感（图9）。与之不同，在《一堂音乐课》中，刘雨佳审视了民族国家视角下，边疆族群独特的情感依附。在展厅进门右边通道墙上，展出了少数民族用自己的民族语言“歌唱祖国”的录像（图10）。视频中的年轻人正在学习演唱歌曲《歌唱祖国》，在熟悉的旋律下，接受过“这堂音乐课”学习展览的参观者并不是直接产生共情，相反会因听到陌生的语言而倍感错愕。视频呈现了边疆少数民族与国家想象之间，个体在宏大民族国家构想中怎样被规定、被赋予情感维度。
图10：刘雨佳《一堂音乐课-歌唱祖国》，单屏录象，2020-2021