French artist opening 'Doors to Memory'

Tucked in a tranquil corner inside the Jing’an Sculpture Park along Xinzha Road stands a bronze sculpture set entitled “Doors to Memory.” Featuring two steel frames and bronze bricks, the artwork was inspired by Zoe Vayssieres’ five years of living in Shanghai.

“Gray-blue bricks involves family stories, Shanghai life and history. To me, it’s the skin of the city,” the French artist told Shanghai Daily. 

Her piece is one of the 57 sets of art, 87 pieces in all, adorning the lawns and walkways of the park in downtown Jing’an District. The ongoing “City Unbounded” project attracted 40 artists from home and abroad to give distinctive interpretations of “unbounded” urban development, and the relationship of city and art amid the expansion. It runs through December 20.

Francois Trezin

In the case of Vayssieres’ artwork, she presents it as a passageway to memory with two large steel frames, as if cutting a doorway to the past in the air. Inside the frames are oversized bronze bricks modeled on the original gray-blue ones commonly found in East Siwen Li. 

The aged shikumen-style lilong residential compound on Xinzha Road sits right opposite the park, posing as a perfect backdrop for the art piece. When preparing for the project, she was given two spots to display her sculptures, and was “more than thrilled” to secure the current spot with the alleys as a reference in the back. 

Vayssieres’ connection with the lilong goes far beyond a single project. This is basically where her art career in Shanghai took off.

In 2015, the Paris-born artist exhibited for the first time two of her sculptures, “The Surrealist Stool” and “Door Lintel,” in a group exhibition in East Siwen Li. Curated by Jeremy Cheval, “The Fireflies Gathering” saw a get-together of 68 artists, actors, musicians and dancers, joined by more than 500 visitors and residents in the alleys.

Three years later, she once again got inspired by the alleys and found the model bricks she used for the installation in the Jing’an Park.

“Transforming an object into sculpture would imply the end of it as an object. Yet, by operating this transformation (with bronze and engraved words), the object back into its primary environment, like a stool in Siwen Li for example, will have transcended its destruction and reach a power of timelessness,” she said. “As a sculpture, it brings with it both the soul of the object and the soul of the place.”

Francois Trezin

In one frame, two bricks are displayed facing each other vertically. One was engraved with the word “(un)balance” while the other with “(r)urban,” both in French.

A mix of old and new architecture, and Eastern and Western culture, Shanghai “is developing rapidly with its very own balance,” Vayssieres said.

She tries to capture the urban development taking place in Shanghai and on a global scale, and question the future — how people find their own space amid the progress. 

Memory is a key word for Vayssieres’ art creation, and she has 25 sculptures on Shanghai memory. In the 1950s, her native city also underwent a tremendous amount of development to embrace modernity. Born to a photographer father, she grew up surrounded with photos that portray the French capital’s transformation. 

“I guess moving to Shanghai (in 2013) brought back this ‘souvenir’ and I decided to be an active witness of Shanghai mutation,” the artist said. 

“Shanghai’s beauty touched me. I want to draw attention to the city’s memory and its forgotten objects; my sculptures will work as memory triggers.”

 Vayssieres is currently working on a project featuring bronze bricks, which will be unveiled along the Yangpu River pedestrian paths. With a height of 4.5 meters, the sculpture will be comprised of one brick standing for yesterday, an oval one in the middle to give the sensation of a new generation, and one on top standing for tomorrow. 

Likewise, she will combine the objects with embedded texts to “question the mutation of cities and life” to search for what will be remembered from the past.