We are excited to announce the coming of the 3rd printing of Bees & The Bearable by artist Chen Zhe, along with Pick Your Poison, her first collection of interviews. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the completion of Bees & The Bearable, Pick Your Poison highlights 8 in-depth dialogues between Chen Zhe and her peers spanning from 2011 to 2022, with a special feature of the artist’s latest correspondence with her long-time friend, writer and filmmaker, Ag. The one-on-one conversation has been crucial throughout the 15 years of Chen Zhe’s practice. By presenting these two books that echo her persistent method of creating, we invite you to revisit both the artwork and the back stage, and to discover the artist’s labor and process that is at the same time painstaking and fulfilling.
Bees & The Bearable, Chen Zhe
Format: 1+19 saddle-stitched booklets, 280 pages
includes 75 color plates, 40 grayscale journals & letters
Dimensions: 260 × 210 × 25 mm
Presented as a layered notebook weaving in and out of images and texts, Bees & The Bearable restores Chen Zhe’s practice as an ongoing process of exploration, discovery and research. What happens when actions that can jeopardize one's existence, such as hurting one's own body, in return serve the purpose of understanding the existence itself? Should we see it as a fluky escape, or a relief from the weight of modern life? While the individual response may differ, the book illustrates that there still lies psychological connectedness that undoubtedly link each of us together. Everything else follows from there.
Bees & The Bearable was awarded the Best Photobook of the Year by Kassel Fotobookfestival in 2016.
