BJ to HK, NY to Paris on a Chinese Tricycle: Artist Niko De La Faye Speaks Ahead of Dec 7 Film Screening at Aotu Space
Three wheels. Three continents.
French-born, Beijing-based self-taught multimedia artist Niko De La Faye began that globe-spanning sanlunche ride in 2011, building a colorful installation akin to a mobile that dangles above a baby's crib, and strapping it to the back of his nifty Chinese motorized tricycles. Calling the piece M2B, he saw it as a beautiful, soothing and slow-moving universe unto itself, contrasting wildly with the frantic gridlock traffic he encountered while driving it in Beijing and Shanghai.
Faye traveled from Beijing to Hong Kong on the M2B in 2012 and 2013, "completing a 3.400-km and 80-day performance," and filming the journey all the while. After showing that footage at various exhibits and festivals he was eventually invited by other artists "to ride the M2B in the streets of Paris in 2014 and New York in 2016."
Below, this freewheeling artist (in every sense of the word) tells us more about the project, ahead of a Dec 7 screening of footage from his travels at Beixinqiao's Aotu Space.
Tell us about your background and how you got started as an artist.
I started making costumes and collaborating with photographers, musicians, and filmmakers when I lived in San Francisco between 2003 and 2005. Then I started making kinetic sculptures and experimenting with all sorts of medium. I am currently focusing on sculpture, photo, performance, and video.
So why people should be excited about this screening?
This Thursday at Aotu, I will show a bunch of footage that I’ve never shown before, things I shot from 2011 in Beijing until the latest M2B trip in New York in the summer of 2016. The first part of the screening will be a sequence of short videos I edited for the last six years. And the second part is a new edit combining various moments in China, France, and the US, where I will invite my friends like Croatian singer Miranda Vukasovic and French opera singer Astryd Cottet to create the soundtrack live. It'll be fun!
How did this project get started in the first place?
In 2008 I came to China for the first time. In Shanghai. I was fascinated by these tricycles carrying all sorts of loads, sometimes becoming an incredibly large accumulation of pieces that go all around the city. I decided to create my own sculpture based on these tricycles, one that is almost empty and would not produce anything but it’s own ballet of colorful shapes, a sculpture that represents the cosmos. And then I started riding it, and I never stopped …"
What are some of your favorite memories from your journeys on the M2B between Beijing and Hong Kong, and in New York and Paris?
My favorite memories are the expressions on people’s faces when they see the M2B: surprised, amused, curious, astonished. I also really liked when people followed us for several kilometers just to enjoy this ‘road-show-sculpture’.
The M2B (2011-2017) screening is slated for Thursday Dec 7 at 8.30pm at Aotu Space. Entry is RMB 50. For more information, click here.
More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
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Photos: Aotu Space, Niko De La Faye, Mathias Magg, Etienne Oliveau, Lauranne Gi Renucci