the first personal exhibition in italy of the female chinese
artist, amongst the most celebrated and esteemed working
on an international stage.
the exhibition, curated by paola nicita, consists of
approximately twenty large-format pictures that document,
and belong to a project that xiong wen yun designed and
realized in china between 1998 and 2001.
the 'rainbow' project is organized as an articulated ensemble
of outdoor performances, environmental installations,
and production of photographs.

'marking' several lorries with gigantic cloths painted in the
seven colours of the rainbow, the artist leads a long and
colorful caravan along the desolate and impassable route
that connects bejing with the tibetan plateau, passing through
town and cities inhabited by and peoples for whom art and
color remain alien concepts.
thus, the artist has created metaphorically a living rainbow
with the dual intent of sharing and, at the same time,
investigating the revelatory and magical power of colour.

the idea of the artistic experience as a moment of sharing
together with the use of codes of land art conceived of
as a collective performance constitute the historico-critical
coordinates against which we must read a work which
presents itself as a bridge (the very structure of the rainbow).
in presenting itself thusly, the work of art seeks to act as
a bridge between the universalistic aspirations of an
‘art of the people and amongst the people’, and a profound
and lyrical reassessment of the value of colour and the
rainbow in chinese culture, and, in particular, in the buddhist
interpretation of tibetan tradition (for the tibetan monks,
the rainbow symbolises the ladder that unites the earthly
sphere with the celestial).