Furnishing Shangri-La

Dates: 16 October – 15 November
Public opening event: Thursday 15 October, 6-9pm 
Gallery hours: Thursday – Sunday, 1-6pm
Admission: Free

SET 91 presents Furnishing Shangri-La, a solo exhibition by Meitao Qu. Drawing on the building’s connection to East London’s 19th-century furniture trade, Qu explores how decorative forms and fantasies of the ‘good life’ are reproduced and transformed as they move between cultures through mass production.

About the exhibition

Taking inspiration from the site’s historical connection to East London’s furniture trade in the 19th century, Qu presents new sculptural works exploring the politics of decoration and the home as a site of aspiration, status and spectacle. The exhibition traces the circulation of taste and style between East and West, focusing particularly on the reproduction of European historicism in contemporary China through the idea of ‘synthetic occidenterie.’

Architectural and decorative motifs are mimicked, stretched and distorted, becoming at once familiar and uncanny. Entering the gallery, visitors encounter an oversized toy box containing a dollhouse model mounted on a flatbed trolley. Adapting the aesthetic of the European mansion into a repeated high-rise apartment block, the work draws parallels between the world of children’s toys and the standardised repertoire of buildings that populate idealised visions of urban development. Beyond the entryway, a circular sculpture takes the form of a Victorian ‘borne’ settee, with a central octagonal fluted column clad in Chinoiserie wallpaper panels reproduced from a 19th-century hand-painted wallpaper from Guangzhou, China, held in the V&A collection.

Through these reinterpretations, Qu considers how ideas of taste and the ‘good life’ shift as they move between cultures, and how mass production both democratises and transforms the hallmarks of luxury.

Read the full exhibition text, Synthetic Occidenterie, here.