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Nanjing review – a haunting study of bloody atrocities

Royal Exchange, Manchester
Jude Christian’s solo show confronts historical brutality and personal heritage by dwelling in the grey areas

It’s hard to pin down Nanjing, Jude Christian’s elusive new solo show. In part, it’s autobiographical, digging down into Christian’s own experience of mixed heritage. One side of her family has deep roots in the Isle of Man, while the other hails from China via Malaysia. But it also excavates some of the bloodiest episodes of the last century, scraping away at received historical narratives.

The title is a reference to the Chinese city of the same name, which was brutally invaded by the imperial Japanese army in 1937. Brutal, indeed, feels like too mild a word for the atrocities Christian describes. But this is no simple telling of a history that remains relatively unknown in the UK. The narrative of Nanjing is complicated by Christian, revealing the tangled threads that tie it to other human-made horrors.

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