Ikon Ikon MadeIn: Seeing One's Own Eyes

MadeIn is an artists collective founded by Chinese artist Xu Zhen in Shanghai in 2009. Derived from Made In, two words that refer to manufacturing (with country of origin not specified), the name also phonetically translates into Chinese for without a roof, thereby suggesting an openness to the collective work.

Xu Zhen himself is one of the most renowned conceptual artists to have emerged from China since the 1990s, but now he is playing down his personal identity. For Seeing One's Own Eyes, MadeIn impersonates a fictional group of Middle Eastern artists. The work however is all made in China for a kind of exhibition in disguise – ‘an exhibition of an exhibition’.

Through a range of media including sculpture, video and installation, clichéd images of the Middle East such as oil, religious conflict and war raise issues of cultural perception.

Paperback20 pages