Yang Jiechang's new work is an exercise in urban acupuncture. Approaching the city as a living body, his work addresses the flow of energy within the city, intervening at points of perceived blockage in an effort to restore and rebalance the city as a whole. His large needle installed on a derelict building in Duke Street makes visible the symbolic application of needles at key points along the city's meridians.


All over the city, communities have been presented with acupuncture needles by the artist and invited to place them in empty locations that hold a particular meaning for them. Yang's unique "archipunctural" map of the city - his equivalent of an acupunturist's map of a body - is displayed at Tate Liverpool.

[LESS]
Yang Jiechang's new work is an exercise in urban acupuncture. Approaching the city as a living body, his work addresses the flow of energy within the city, intervening at points of perceived blockage in an effort to restore and rebalance the city as a whole. His large needle installed on a derelict building in Duke Street makes visible the symbolic application of needles at key points along the city's meridians.


All over the city, communities have been presented with acupuncture needles by the artist and invited to place them in empty locations that hold a particular meaning for them. Yang's unique "archipunctural" map of the city - his equivalent of an acupunturist's map of a body - is displayed at Tate Liverpool.

Yang's new work is an exercise in urban acupuncture. Approaching the city as a living body, his work addresses the flow of energy within the city, intervening at points of perceived blockage in an effort to restore and rebalance the city as a whole.


In contrast to Yang's native China, Liverpool has seen a marked decline in its population over the last fifty years. While a small growth in recent years suggests that this trend is being reversed, the population still remains half what it was fifty years ago, with vacant properties in the city three times the national average. For Yang, these empty neglected areas of the city offer key points for intervention. His work maps these areas within the fabric of the city, and through careful application of needles, attempts to reintegrate redundant limbs with the whole, freeing blockages to channel trapped energy into the present.


In 1997, Britain's 99-year lease of Hong Kong's New Territories (bordering on Yang's birthplace, Guangdong Province) expired. Yang views his work as a reversal of this historic tenancy. Taking up temporary residence in the empty spaces of another former centre for British colonial trade, Yang uses ancient Chinese practices to reanimate British space.

Sorcha Carey

[LESS]
Yang's new work is an exercise in urban acupuncture. Approaching the city as a living body, his work addresses the flow of energy within the city, intervening at points of perceived blockage in an effort to restore and rebalance the city as a whole.


In contrast to Yang's native China, Liverpool has seen a marked decline in its population over the last fifty years. While a small growth in recent years suggests that this trend is being reversed, the population still remains half what it was fifty years ago, with vacant properties in the city three times the national average. For Yang, these empty neglected areas of the city offer key points for intervention. His work maps these areas within the fabric of the city, and through careful application of needles, attempts to reintegrate redundant limbs with the whole, freeing blockages to channel trapped energy into the present.


In 1997, Britain's 99-year lease of Hong Kong's New Territories (bordering on Yang's birthplace, Guangdong Province) expired. Yang views his work as a reversal of this historic tenancy. Taking up temporary residence in the empty spaces of another former centre for British colonial trade, Yang uses ancient Chinese practices to reanimate British space.

Sorcha Carey