Research into cultural use of stilts by Shiyu Duan

Research on cultural use of stilts by Shiyu Duan

Young artist Shiyu Duan was the 2021 winner of the Reisma van den Burg Stipendium. This incentive prize is awarded biannually to a promising newly graduated artist from Academy Minerva (Hanze University Groningen) and is made available by the Reisma van den Burg Culture Fund.

Shiyu Duan is from Hangzhou, China, and studied at Academy Minerva from 2015 to 2019. She works in various media and especially in her photographic and video works she often portrays herself. These works are characterized by a still and poetic registration of body, gesture, posture or activity. Her work plan for the stipend involves making video and photography in which she focuses on the use of stilts as an extension of the body. Stilts appear in different cultures and forms and often play a role in ritual, play, folklore or theater. Each time different meanings and associations are attached to them. By (r)esearching examples from both China and the Netherlands, her project will lead to a surprising observation of similarities and differences between different cultures and traditions, which Shiyu Duan, as an international artist, also experiences first-hand and in which she must try to hold her own.

Currently, Shiyu Duan is “halfway through” the realization of her project. In several places in China, she has made recordings of the use of stilts. In the spring of 2022, she will continue her work in the Netherlands and make additional recordings here to eventually incorporate them into video and photographic installations. This special final result of the Reisma van den Burg Stipendium will be presented for the first time in the summer of 2022.