Chinese Never Die: Yan 宴

Chinese Never Die: Yan 宴 is the title of the exhibition by the collective BEIMA, part of IRA GENERANS, the exhibition season that explores anger as a necessary and natural response to social and personal injustice and oppression. Conceived as a driving force for resistance and transformation, anger becomes the fulcrum of a collective reflection in which artists and collectives legitimize their practice as a political and communal gesture.

In Chinese, yan means “banquet” or “feast”: a moment of encounter between the living and the dead, of celebration and farewell. BEIMA’s installation takes shape through a suspended container and a funerary banquet table surrounded by empty red stools. No one is seated, yet the scene retains traces of a shared presence, an invisible gathering. The project is part of the broader research Chinese Never Die, dedicated to the Chinese community and its representations within Italian and Western contexts. The expression asserts the eternity of a collective body by denying individuality, reducing lives, stories, and griefs to silent, productive presences. BEIMA subverts this notion, transforming it into an act of resistance and remembrance, restoring voice and complexity to those rendered invisible. Yan represents the first chapter of this research, an inquiry into diaspora, absence, and the longing for belonging. 

The temporal structure of the work draws inspiration from Chinese funerary rituals: the soul takes seven cycles of seven days to find its way home. For one month, spazioSERRA becomes a temporary dwelling for souls, a time of waiting, prayer, and transformation. The performative actions unfold over seven consecutive days of activation, followed by a final week devoted to contemplation, during which anonymous figures act as bearers of memory.

For those unfamiliar with Chinese, the title remains indecipherable: this distance is an integral part of the work, a moment of estrangement that compels the viewer to confront their own position, becoming aware of their role within systemic invisibility.

In Chinese Never Die: Yan 宴, anger does not erupt in theatrical gestures; it is silent, persistent, and cumulative, a daily pressure weighing upon invisible lives, constant and unrelenting. It begins as a personal experience (the wound of being watched, questioned, ignored) and becomes collective, revealing how resistance can emerge from shared stories. The absence of bodies, the table without guests, the empty stools, all become testimonies of this force: an act of remembrance, a stubborn presence that transforms the space into a site of resistance and connection, making visible what society strives to overlook.