Lee Mingwei: Relating to Art and Artists in the Twenty-First Century

Rachel Ng Lee Mingwei: Relating to Art and Artists in the Twenty-First Century

t is progressively more difficult to critique and assess contemporary Lee Mingwei, Trilogy of Sounds, 2010, bronze wind art as it is practiced in the twenty-first century. Globalization, the chimes, installation view, Mount Stuart, Scotland. technology revolution, and capitalist expansion drive the positioning Photo: Keith Hunter. I Courtesy of the artist. of artists and artistic practices on international platforms and disrupt traditional art historical categorization with respect to the local and the particular. Is “contemporary art” commensurable with “contemporary Asian art” or “contemporary Chinese art?” The usefulness of such classifications is increasingly debatable. This is not only the result of the extreme mobility of contemporary artists—a trait deeply entrenched in the global nature of today’s biennials, art fairs, and exhibition programming—but also the concurrent flow of curators, critics, academics, and audiences. At the same time, the desire for visibility and exceptionality amid the homogenizing threat of globalization has resulted in resurgent nationalisms and ethnic consciousness.1 Approaches to art are being differentiated by cultural origin, even as diverse artistic traditions and cultures come into greater contact.2

6 Vol. 16 No. 1 The increased literacy about non-Western cultures, aesthetics, and histories once relegated to the periphery of Western-dominated art discourses has introduced new registers of meaning, bringing with it issues of translation and reception. Artistic content and form have also come under interrogation. Under these circumstances, understanding both the identity of the artist and their artistic practices is often a meditative process. However, while Western contemporary artists have certainly not been untouched by these new developments, cultural bias toward the West remains deep-seated, and the degree of inﬂuence between cultures unequal.3 The necessity of such negotiation falls mainly onto non-Western contemporary artists, such as Taiwanese, US-educated-and-based artist Lee Mingwei.

Born in 1964 in Taiwan, Lee Mingwei immigrated to San Francisco when he was thirteen and later studied textile art and architecture at the California College of Arts before earning an M. F. A. in sculpture from Yale.4 Lee Mingwei is known primarily for works that justiﬁably belong to what, in 1998, French art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud coined as “relational aesthetics”: “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”5 Lee Mingwei’s practice, however, is unique among artists working with relational art in privileging private, intimate exchanges over public ones, and in his sustained referencing of Chan or Zen Buddhist meditation and classical Chinese aesthetics. Before immigrating, Lee Mingwei spent six summers in a Chan Buddhist monastery outside Taipei training in meditation and studying Chinese painting, focusing on the Song dynasty.6 Yet, foregrounded in his practice are universal humanistic concerns of trust, intimacy, and authenticity. Lee Mingwei’s background and the open-ended nature of his practice make him a suitable agent for unpacking several pertinent issues, namely, the presentation and negotiation of identity in contemporary art and the reception of contemporary artistic forms such as relational aesthetics or participatory art. The conﬂuence of both in his work opens up a discursive space in which to debate the impact of globalizing, transcultural conditions on contemporary art.

Lee Mingwei’s practice has rarely been explored in terms of the contemporary politics of identity and of artistic form. To my mind, this is a lost opportunity in engaging more critically with his art, since most of the contemporary artists working prominently in relational art are from the West.7 It should be noted however, that Lee Mingwei has never really discussed his practice in such wider contexts. The line of inquiry I have taken here serves more as an exercise to mine the issues articulated above and interrogate the framework within which contemporary non-Western artists have been perceived.

Lee Mingwei and Identity It is interesting to examine the numerous ways that Lee Mingwei’s identity has been written about, as well as the ways it has not. Identity, as discussed here, refers neither to the artist’s personality nor biography, but to nationality

Vol. 16 No. 1 7 and ethnicity, and, thus, cultural identity. Lee Mingwei has been variously Next page: Lee Mingwei, Luminous Depths, 2013, referred to as “a Taiwanese artist,” “a Taiwanese-American,” “a Taiwan- installation view in atrium of Peranakan Museum, born artist living in New York,” “a New York-based artist,” and an artist of Singapore. Photo: Sean Dungan. Courtesy of the artist. “Taiwanese descent.”8 In other instances, mention of nationality, ethnicity, or country of residence is entirely omitted. In another case, he is labeled as a practicing Buddhist or one whose art has been inﬂuenced by Buddhism.9 Are these geographical and cultural categorizations of contemporary art and artists still useful today, or do they increasingly risk essentialism?

Against the late Lee Mingwei, Luminous Depths, 2013, installation twentieth century’s view in atrium of Peranakan Museum, Singapore. Photo: anxiety over identity Sean Dungan. Courtesy of the artist. politics—the subject’s ability, or lack thereof, to determine its own identity and the meaning of its own experiences— and a postmodern reality informed by disorder, ambivalence, and hybridization, identity occupies an uneasy position.10 The tendency to place less emphasis on fixed labels competes with the impulse to assert individual agency in a time when increasing disruption and fluidity in a globalizing society can threaten to diminish the visibility of minority groups and sub-cultures. On the surface, contemporary art seems to thrive on the former. It continues to push the boundaries of what art is, thereby rendering the notion of an artist unstable and almost superfluous at the extreme.11 The identity of the artist is ostensibly less relevant from this perspective, if it is primarily the form of the artwork that imparts its meaning. Moreover, much has been made of embracing cultural plurality and global perspectives in contemporary art; the titles of the last three editions of the Venice Biennale are axiomatic alone.12 The Guggenheim Museum’s recent UBS MAP Global Art Initiative into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America further underpin this.13

Below the surface, however, it has been argued that the growing commitment to presenting non-Western artists—tellingly termed by a Korean art critic“minority artists”—derives primarily from their “exotic otherness.”14 Cultural marginality risks being equated with artistic originality and value, particularly when this marginality is heightened in an international setting, and threatens to colour aesthetic judgment.15 Often,

8 Vol. 16 No. 1 Vol. 16 No. 1 9 the result is a glamourized pseudo or superﬁcial understanding of the Lee Mingwei, The Sleeping Project, 2000/03, wood, artistic and/or sociocultural context whence the artwork is shaped. In an bedding, installation view, Taiwan Pavilion, 49th Venice age when cultural, economic, even aesthetic currencies are largely appraised Biennale. Photo: Kevin Ho. Courtesy of the artist. by the extent of their global reach, it has been suggested that curatorial strategies and vested capitalist agendas are responsible for such shallow translation.16 While warranting a separate discussion, it bears noting, for instance, that the Guggenheim Museum’s aggressive expansion beyond Western art is seen by its Swiss bank sponsor, UBS, as an opportunity to tap into both emerging markets and the art asset class.17

Lee Mingwei is certainly cognizant of the delicate maneuvering of identity and self-presentation that non-Western artists face upon entering the global contemporary art scene. “In reviews, Western journalists mainly focus on my proximity with Zen Buddhism,” he says, “while the Asian media talks more about the conceptual, aesthetic dimensions of my practice. I guess both groups exoticize me in a way that makes me understandable for their audience.”18 He is fond of wearing Chinese silk changpao gowns to events, and speaks regularly about the inﬂuence of Chan Buddhism and Song dynasty Chinese aesthetics.19 Lee Mingwei’s work at the Taiwan Pavilion for the 2003 Venice Biennale, The Sleeping Project, featured furniture he designed after ta couch-beds of the Song dynasty.20 The Letter Writing Project (1998–present) consists of pale wooden booths reminiscent of Buddhist temples or shrines, while the table set of The Dining Project (1997–present) bears a distinct Chan-like minimalism.21 Many of the meals documented in The Dining Project (1997–present) are also Chinese- style, eaten with chopsticks and bowls. At the same time, Lee Mingwei is a naturalized US citizen, speaks ﬂuent English with a strong American accent, and is equally conversant with both Chinese and Western culture.

10 Vol. 16 No. 1 Lee Mingwei, The Dining Lee Mingwei is not alone in crafting such a syncretic self-image or being Project, 1997/2007, wood, tatami mats, tableware, beans, conscious of its growing ambiguity. Cai Guo-Qiang, a China-born, Chinese projection, installation view, Museum of Contemporary artist now based in New York, is widely regarded as one of the world’s Art, Taipei. Photo: Lee Studio. Courtesy of the artist. leading contemporary artists. When asked how he perceived himself as a border-crossing artist, Cai Guo-Qiang replied that he qualified for the categories of “international,” “Chinese,” and “Asian” artist, but the most meaningful category for him was that of “New York artist” because there he could be “a normal person.”22 It is possible to read in Lee Mingwei and Cai Guo-Qiang’s responses a fairly relaxed (or conversely, evasive) proprietary attitude toward their identity and, indirectly, the interpretation of their works. From a cynical perspective, artists gain an advantage projecting a more fluid identity because it widens their appeal to a global audience and art market. This is especially so for non-Western artists, who face greater pressure to assimilate into the Western-oriented scene. Aihwa Ong’s anthropological analysis of contemporary Chinese art, for instance, formulates “Chineseness” as a fluid and abstract concept. It has a “divergent valuation,” possessing lucrative market value worldwide but a problematic sociopolitical valence depending on global current affairs.23 It is likely no coincidence that the most commercially driven or successful contemporary Chinese artists like Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu Bing, and Gu Wenda, are particularly deft and sensitive discussants of Chinese identity.24

Lee Mingwei’s leaning toward Song dynasty aesthetics is similarly nuanced. This preference is a continuing inﬂuence from his childhood studies on Song painting. More critically, such an aesthetic inclination is a conscious appeal to the modernism and minimalism prized by Western tastes. It conversely may be seen in its simplicity as a relatively “culturally muted” choice. For Lee Mingwei, “That reﬁnement was a conscious decision. If

Vol. 16 No. 1 11 Lee Mingwei, The Letter Writing Project, 1998/2015, wood, glass, paper, installation view, Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

the work isn’t clear and clean, it Lee Mingwei, The Letter Writing Project, 1998/2015, provokes a different reaction from wood, glass, paper, installation view, Taipei Fine Arts Museum. 25 people.” His work has been seen to Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum. perpetuate the serenity of Chinese art, which in itself is a popular and inaccurate assumption. As Lee Mingwei pointed out, “China had fourteen different dynasties. The Tang was almost baroque, with loud colours. The Song dynasty was at the other extreme.”26 Nevertheless, the Song dynasty as an artistic high point in Chinese art history is undisputed. Lee Mingwei’s referencing of its aesthetics gives his work a highly attractive pedigree that in turn bolsters his cultural and ethnic legitimacy. While it is, I think, pointless to determine if his predilection for Song dynasty aesthetics is a natural or strategic choice—it is most likely both—Lee Mingwei has evidently harnessed both Asian and Western traits to considerable international success. His recent mid-career survey exhibition Lee Mingwei and His Relations was shown at the Mori Art Museum (2014), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2015), and the Auckland Art Gallery (2016), and his work is in the collection of world-leading museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Queensland Art Gallery.

To return to the earlier question about the relevance and productivity of geographical and cultural categorizations today, there appears to be no authoritative answer. As artists become highly cosmopolitan creatures, imbibing different cultures, to insist on ﬁxed identities and readings seems to border on conservatism or prejudice. Yet, even while acknowledging that audiences, too, are increasingly cosmopolitan and conversant in global cultures, I concurrently realized during the writing of this piece that the urge to essentialize remains ever-present. I felt this all the more acutely, in fact, because these border crossing non-Western contemporary artists are complicit in blurring boundaries while distilling cultures to selectively employ their key traits. With the international ﬂow of artists being overwhelmingly one-way—from outside the West into the West—this

12 Vol. 16 No. 1 problem presents itself mainly in non-Western artists, whose unfamiliar cultural identities perhaps make essentialism a more convenient approach, even to themselves.27

I would venture to make a connection with Gayatri Spivak’s theory of strategic essentialism, which posits that embracing essentialist formulations in the public arena can be self-serving for minorities.28 In an age where hyper-rationalization and commodification have nurtured an instinct for instant gratification and consumption, leaving both non-Western and Western audiences without a clear frame of reference may be risky. Plausibly, to avoid the sense of being culturally impotent or in limbo, non- Western artists, especially “Westernized” artists like Lee Mingwei and Cai Guo-Qiang, inscribe their work with expected cultural cues even as they resist definition. Western artists tend to stay in and move within the West; their experience of cultural displacement and the need for assimilation is nowhere as huge. Little wonder, then, that “globalization” is often perceived as nothing more than a form of “standardization,” one commonly termed “Americanization” or “Westernization.”29 It exposes the limits of totalizing paradigms associated with globalization or Westernization, with tensions arising between the rediscovery of particularity and the desire for unity. In this sense, globalization produces postmodernism.30 Policing one’s cultural identity consequently becomes a strategy to create signposts as their functions are simultaneously being eroded.

Lee Mingwei and Relational Aesthetics If globalization or Westernization has transformed the identities of artists working internationally, it has also affected the way they practice and how these forms are received. While Lee Mingwei’s practice justly falls under the rubric of relational aesthetics, and curators and critics have designated it so, it should be noted that he has never speciﬁcally referred to his work as such.31

Lee Mingwei describes his work as:

. . . consist[ing] largely of participatory installations where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy and self-awareness on their own; and one-on-one events in which visitors explore these issues with the artist himself through eating, sleeping, walking and conversation. My projects are usually open-ended scenarios based on everyday interactions, taking different forms depending on the participants. Time is central to this process, as the installations often change during the course of an exhibition.32

When Bourriaud wrote of relational aesthetics, he referred frequently to a group of artists better thought of as international rather than European, where most of them were from. These artists include Liam Gillick, Phillippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Carsten Höller, Vanessa Beecroft, and Maurizio Cattelan, all omnipresent names on the international art circuit.33 In

Vol. 16 No. 1 13 Bourriaud’s conception, the art of relational aesthetics is “the place that produces a speciﬁc sociability,” whose purpose is “no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.”34

For Bourriaud and other art theorists, Rirkrit Tiravanija is seen to be paradigmatic of relational aesthetics.35 Strikingly, Tiravanija’s background and works most closely parallel that of Lee Mingwei’s. Exploring the relational dialectic between them not only illuminates Lee Mingwei’s practice; methodologically, it enables a more thorough evaluation of how relational art is translated and received across cultures. Whereas Tiravanija’s practice of relational aesthetics has been extensively critiqued, critical discussion of Lee Mingwei’s work and its form is hard to ﬁnd, giving impetus to this dialectical approach.36

Lee Mingwei, The Dining Project, 1997/2014. Installation view, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Photo: Yoshitsugu Fuminari. Courtesy of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

Like Lee Mingwei, Tiravanija is based in New York and had a multicultural upbringing. Born in Buenos Aires to Thai parents, he grew up in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada, and went to art colleges in Toronto, Chicago, and New York.37 His work pad thai (1990) is a continuing series that involves Tiravanija cooking and serving the ubiquitous Thai noodles to visitors in a casual setting. In Untitled (Still) (1992), he cooked curry. In another work, Untitled (Tomorrow Is Another Day) (1996), a wooden replica of his apartment was open to the public twenty-four hours a day to use, make food, sleep, bathe, hang out, etc. Respectively, these works resonate strongly with iconic works by Lee Mingwei such as The Dining Project (ﬁrst shown 1997), where he cooked for and dined one-on-one after hours in the gallery, with a participant chosen by lottery and The Sleeping Project (ﬁrst shown 2000), in which the artist spent a night in the gallery with a participant, again chosen by lottery.

For both of these artists, German artist Joseph Beuys’s (1921–1986) theory of social sculpture is cited as an inﬂuence.38 This is unsurprising in any case, since Beuys’ theory is a historical model for the kind of social catalyst works espoused by relational aesthetics.39 Developed by Beuys in the politically charged era of the 1970s, his theory posited that life was a social sculpture

14 Vol. 16 No. 1 40 Next page: Lee Mingwei, The everyone helped to create. For Beuys, social sculpture was an activist form Sleeping Project, 2000/2015, wood, bedding. Installation whose rhetoric of democracy and participation would bring about positive view, Taipei Fine Arts Museum. 41 Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts social transformation. Museum.

An overt political impetus is absent in Lee Mingwei and Tiravanija’s art, which is more light-hearted and concerned primarily with equality between art, artist, audience, and everyday life. As a result, most critiques of Tiravanjia’s work, and Bourriaud’s theory, have centred on Bourriaud’s implicit claim that relational aesthetics opposes capitalism and commodity fetishism, since it is deﬁned by the production of positive social relations between persons and not objects.42 In a leading critique of Tiravanija’s work, Janet Kraynak has argued against Bourriaud’s simplistic view in that the art institutions’ enthusiastic co-opting of Tiravanija’s work (same goes for Bourriaud’s other star mentions) has made the artist key to the work’s functioning, rather than the social situation created, the artist’s persona has ironically been commodiﬁed.43 Kraynak further highlights that this has reinstated authorial authority, thereby undermining relational aesthetics’ supposed democratization of art.44

Like Tiravanija, most writings about Lee Mingwei surreptitiously equate his work and self through a focus on biography. Lee Mingwei further encourages this by emphasizing his cultural inspirations, echoing Tiravanija’s thematization of his Thai ethnicity. In effect, this makes any experience of their work conditioned by their speciﬁc cultural attitudes.45 There is nothing wrong with this in itself—biographical readings or impositions apply to any art, especially given the traditional privileging of authorial intent—except that relational aesthetics is premised on a generative principle of equality and democratic co-existence.46

Several questions arise at this juncture: Is it “acceptable” for non-Western artists to draw on their cultural identity if they are working in open-ended forms of art like relational aesthetics? Does that not defeat the purpose of such forms, which supposedly encourage democratic encounters and equality of participation? How then are we to assess these practices? The ﬁrst question is admittedly uncomfortable, but it bears asking since there are very few internationally prominent non-Western artists working with relational aesthetics.47 A quick glance at how the practices of Vanessa Beecroft, Philippe Parreno, or Liam Gillick have been discussed reveals very little in way of speciﬁc cultural or ethnic references.

For Bourriaud, the ultimate criterion for appraising a relational artwork is whether “relations” are produced by it.48 His failure to call into question the quality of these relationships reﬂects an overly harmonistic conception of democratic co-existence and relational art that has come under criticism.49 The idealistic exclusion of conﬂict ultimately denies these relationships legitimacy and agency, since the possibility for self-determination through active negotiation between parties is negated.50 Lee Mingwei and Tiravanija, whom it may be argued have primed the approach of their practices through culturally tinted lenses, provide an opportunity to deepen this

Vol. 16 No. 1 15 16 Vol. 16 No. 1 Vol. 16 No. 1 17 critique. Paradoxically, it may be that cultural “otherness” or distinction allows their work to circumvent or mitigate this ﬂaw.

With Lee Mingwei and Tiravanija, the artist’s persona is internalized in the very relationship-producing structure of their work. Their pronounced cultural references are particularly striking in that both may be considered fully acculturated, “Westernized” artists who lived in the West from a young age. It is worth quoting Kraynak’s view of this in full: “The artist, repositioned as both the source and arbiter of meaning, is embraced as the pure embodiment of his/her sexual, cultural, or ethnic identity, guaranteeing both the authenticity and political efficacy of his/her work.”51 For non- Western artists working on the international scene like Lee Mingwei and Tiravanija, where cultural marginality is intensified, expectations of cultural authenticity and legibility weigh heavy. As Tiravanija recounts, “There were . . . questions concerning the authenticity of my Thainess, and [whether] I was using Thainess (culture) as an exotic flavour, for which [it] became in the Western context a successful work of art.”52 This search for authenticity generates a space for the negotiation and confrontation of difference out of which more realistic and actively engaged relations may be formed.

If we are to solely evaluate the quality of the relations produced, then this is where Lee Mingwei stands out. While comparable to Tiravanija’s practice and Bourriaud’s maxim, Lee Mingwei prioritizes privacy, trust, and intimacy, unlike the generally short-lived public encounters created by other relational artists. His key works involve either one-to-one situations like The Dining Project and The Sleeping Project or contemplative, personal acts like The Letter Writing Project and The Shrine Project, where visitors write letters and leave sacred mementoes, respectively.

This key difference, demanding a much deeper emotional-psychological investment and time commitment from both artist and participant, secures the conditions of possibility for truly empathetic connections to be forged. This empowers the creation of relationships that have the potential to transcend the artwork itself, in turn addressing the criticisms leveled against relational art. Indeed, several of The Dining Project participants have become Lee Mingwei’s good friends, and many participants were surprised at the intimacy of the conversations shared.53 A more extreme equalization of artist and participant takes place in The Sleeping Project, which demanded both individuals to submit to the most vulnerable state of being asleep.54 On this basis, Lee Mingwei’s practice perhaps better ﬁts Grant Kester’s theory of “dialogical aesthetics,” a form of relational art that shifts the emphasis to “a process of communicative exchange” rather than the open-ended site of encounter in “relational aesthetics.”55

Until now, I have used the rather awkward terms of “non-Western contemporary art” and “non-Western artists” as a less problematic alternative to “contemporary Asian art,” “contemporary Chinese art,” or “contemporary Taiwanese art.” To determine which designation is most appropriate for a cosmopolitan artists like Lee Mingwei requires another discussion, for these terms bear their own discursive baggage beyond the

18 Vol. 16 No. 1 present focus.56 They are all terms that could apply to Lee Mingwei, but the dilemma is whether such classiﬁcations should be assigned according to culture, ethnicity, or nationality. The troubled historical relations between Taiwan and mainland China further complicate this.57

I have also not cited other contemporary artists from Taiwan and instead have referred primarily to contemporary artists from China. Given that contemporary artists from China dominate the international discourse on non-Western contemporary art, this was a methodological choice. From Taiwan, Tsai Charwei and Yao Jui-Chung are other notable contemporary artists who similarly have gained international recognition. Like Lee Mingwei, both engage with multiple mediums and participatory forms to examine the human condition. A separate study of how these Taiwanese artists individually, and collectively, position their identities in the wider art world would be enlightening.

In seeking to resolve certain tensions between Lee Mingwei’s identity, the form of his practice, and his place in an international art context, more questions have emerged, to which there are no easy answers. From a critically reﬂexive standpoint, any reader should also call into question my own background as a non-Westerner of Chinese ethnicity in evaluating the assessments I have made here. When it comes to evaluating matters related to cultural identity, its presentation, and reception, this self-perpetuating conundrum will likely always present itself. If there is any solution, perhaps it is to reﬂexively turn that impulse to draw on essentialist assumptions into a tool that recognizes the inadequacies of our individual viewpoints. Once the possibilities for newer, deeper knowledge are broadened, a more inclusive notion of art and its reception can be framed.

To quote Guggenheim Museum Associate Curator, Weng Xiaoyu, but replacing the word “Chinese” with “non-Western”: “What is crucial to note here is that such ‘geographic-specificity’ does not intend to single out ‘a particular kind of’ practice that is ‘[non-Western],’ or to showcase that contemporary [non-Western] art ‘can be global;’ instead it examines how contemporary [non-Western] art practice and discourse are not only globally relevant in nature, but that they also play a radical role in critically reflecting on our global and contemporary reality.”58 For those seeking to navigate the globe of contemporary art, a sense of mobility, not just in terms of thinking but also of unmooring fixed perceptions, provides the best way forward.

Notes

1. Monica Amor, “Whose World? A Note on the Paradoxes of Global Aesthetics,” Art Journal 57, no. 4 (1998), 30; Aihwa Ong, “’What Marco Polo Forgot’: Contemporary Chinese Art Reconﬁgures the Global,” Current Anthropology 53, no. 4 (2012), 472. 2. For example, the 2000 Gwangju Biennale sought to revive Asian discourse as distinct from the West, while the theme of the 2006 edition was the formation of a new Asian identity. See Birgit Mersmann, “Global Dawning: The Gwangju Biennale Factor in the Making and Marketing of Contemporary Asian Art,” Third Text 27, no. 4 (2013), 529–31. 3. Steven Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 22. 4. See Lee Mingwei. “Artist Statement,” http://www.leemingwei.com/artist.php/.

Vol. 16 No. 1 19 5. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les Presses du Reél, 2002), 113. I use the term “relational aesthetics” interchangeably with “relational art” and “participatory art,” as has been the norm in critical literature. 6. Matthew Carver, “Lee Mingwei and His Relations: The Legacy and Deviation of Relational Aesthetics in the East,” Momus, February 18, 2015, http://momus.ca/lee-mingwei-and-his-relations- the-legacy-and-deviation-of-relational-aesthetics-in-the-east/; Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, eds., Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 229. 7. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 7–8. 8. Veeranganakumari Solanki, “Lee Mingwei and Charwei Tsai: The Art of Ephemeral,” Flash Art (November December 2012), 90; Mori Art Museum, “Artist & Works,” http://www.mori.art.museum/ english/contents/lee_mingwei/artists_works/index.html/; Michelle Yee, “Enabling Cosmopolitanism: Lee Mingwei’s Intimate Moments and Strange Spaces,” Third Text 28, no. 1 (2014), 46; Lee Mingwei, “Presentation by Lee Mingwei,” Presentation at Museum of Chinese in America, New York, February 23, 2012. 9. Baas and Jacob, Buddha-Mind, 229. 10. See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Identity Politics,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ identity-politics/#3; Mike Featherstone, “Localism, Globalism and Cultural Identity,” in Global Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, eds. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 59. 11. Mark Brown, “Urban regenerators Assemble become first ‘non-artists’ to win Turner prize,” The Guardian, December 7, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/07/urban- assemble-win-turner-prize-toxteth/. The 2015 Turner Prize was awarded to Assemble, a collective of architects who were the first non-artists to be nominated and win. 12. The 2015 edition was titled “All the World’s Futures,” the 2013 edition “The Encyclopedic Palace,” and the 2011 edition, “ILLUMInations.” 13. Guggenheim, “Guggenheim UBS Map, Global Art Initiative,” http://www.guggenheim.org/ guggenheim-foundation/collaborations/map#about/. 14. J. P. Park, “Koreans are White?” Third Text 27, no. 4 (2013), 513. Rasheed Araeen, “A New Beginning: Beyond Postcolonial Cultural Theory and Identity Politics,” Third Text 50 (2000), 3–20. 15. Russell Ferguson, “Introduction: Invisible Center,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture, ed. Russell Ferguson et al. (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990), 11; Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 179. 16. Jean Fisher, “Syncretic Turn: Cross-Cultural Practices in the Age of Multiculturalism,” in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, ed. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 235. On the problematic relationship between art institutions and corporate sponsorships, see Mark Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 17. Carol Vogel, “Guggenheim Project Challenges ‘Western-Centric View’,” New York Times, April 11, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/arts/design/guggenheim-and-ubs-project-plan-cross- cultural-program.html/. 18. Jonas Pulver, “Lee Mingwei Makes You Part of His Art,” The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, November 4, 2014, http://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1 shimbun/item/491-lee-mingwei-makes-you-part- of-his-art/491-lee-mingwei-makes-you-part-of-his-art.html/. 19. Other works include Through Masters’ Eyes (2004), a series of imitation works based on a painting by Ming dynasty painter Shi Tao; and Spice Box—Nü Wa (2005), a work inspired by the mythical Chinese goddess. 20. Lee Mingwei, “Presentation,” n. pag. 21. For a detailed description of The Dining Project, see Francis Maravillas, “The Unexpected Guest: Food and Hospitality in Contemporary Asian Art,” in Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-making, eds. Caroline Turner and Michelle Antoinette (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2014), 170–72. 22. Wall Street Journal, “At Lincoln Center: ‘Artists Without Borders’,” http://online.wsj .com/video/art- without-borders/642509E4-957E-4A95-BC0C-CD5BEC7D38D3.html/. 23. The strong market value of contemporary Chinese art may be attributed to the twinning of modern Chinese identity and China’s global capitalist might. See Ong, “Contemporary Chinese Art,” 482. 24. Ibid. When asked whether his translation of Book from the Sky from a Chinese to a Western audience was effective and his use of Chinese elements exoticizing, Xu Bing replied: “All the responses are different. Chinese audiences lose part of the meaning, and Western audiences lose another part, but each side gets the part that the other doesn’t. . . . The real problem is not what materials or cultural elements one uses, but the level of one’s reflection.” On his use of fake Chinese seal script, Gu Wenda commented that “When I used seal script, neither Chinese nor non-Chinese readers would be able to make that determination. So I am playing a double game. Chinese readers could interpret the concept of an unreadable language as the mythos of a lost history, while non- Chinese readers could interpret it as a misunderstanding of an ‘exotic’ culture.” See Simon Leung, Janet A. Kaplan, Wenda Gu, Xu Bing, and Jonathan Hay, “Pseudo-Languages: A Conversation with Wenda Gu, Xu Bing, and Jonathan Hay,” Art Journal 58, no. 3 (1999), 90–91. 25. Christine Temin, “Lee Mingwei; Beyond Labels,” Sculpture 27, no. 7 (2008), 31. 26. Ibid. 27. Take several leading non-Western contemporary artists for example: Xu Bing is based in New York and Beijing; Gu Wenda in New York, Beijing, and Shanghai; Korean artist Suh Do Ho lives in New York, London, and Seoul; Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is based in Berlin; Lebanese-born Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum is in London and Berlin. Conversely, it is much harder to recall any leading Western artists who have moved their practice to non-Western countries.

20 Vol. 16 No. 1 28. See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies:. The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 73–75. 29. Frederic Jameson, “Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,” in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 57–59. 30. Featherstone, “Localism,” 60. 31. This is the approach taken by Mami-Kataoka, curator of his mid-career survey. Lee Mingwei’s work has been described as “an Eastern example of ‘relational aesthetics’.” See Matthew Carver, “Lee Mingwei and His Relations: The Legacy and Deviation of Relational Aesthetics in the East,” Momus, February 18, 2015, http://momus.ca/lee-mingwei-and-his-relations-the-legacy-and-deviation-of- relational-aesthetics-in-the-east/. 32. Solanki, “Art of Ephemeral,” 90. 33. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 7–8. 34. Ibid., 16, 13. 35. Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 (2004), 55. 36. This analysis is specific to Tiravanija and should not be applied to the works of the other relational aesthetics artists mentioned by Bourriaud. 37. Guggenheim, “Rikrit Tiravanija,” http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection- online/artists/bios/5339/Rirkrit%20Tiravanija/. 38. Temin, “Beyond-Labels,” 26. Doryun Chong, “Rirkrit Tiravanija,” in Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, ed. Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005), 553. 39. Though scholars such as Doryun Chong and Claire Bishop have traced this relationship, Beuys is little mentioned by Bourriaud, for whom it is the avant-gardist drive behind social sculpture—the realization of universal utopia—that distinguishes it from relational aesthetics, since he argues that contemporary artists are no longer naïve or cynical enough to believe in it. See Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 30, 70. 40. Tate, “Social Sculpture,” http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/social- sculpture/. 41. Laurie Rojas, “Beuys’ Concept of Social Sculpture and Relational Art Practices Today,” Chicago Art Magazine, November 29, 2010, http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2010/11/beuys%E2%80%99-concept- of-social-sculpture-and-relational-art-practices-today/. 42. Stewart Martin, “Critique of Relational Aesthetics,” Third Text 21, no. 4 (2007): 371, 376. For fuller critiques, see Toni Ross, “Aesthetic autonomy and interdisciplinary, a response to Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’,” Journal of Visual Art Practice 5, no. 3 (2006), 167–81. 43. Janet Kraynak, “Tiravanija’s Liability,” Documents 13 (Fall 1998), 28–29. 44. Ibid. 45. For instance, dining on tatami mats is highly specific cultural behaviour. 46. In Bourriaud’s words, there is “no precedence between producer and consumer.” Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 109. 47. There are of course, other non-Western contemporary artists (mainly Southeast Asian) working with relational or socially engaged art, especially using food as a medium of sociality, such as Mella Jaarsma, Amanda Heng, and Roslisham Ismail. These artists, however, have not received as much international attention as Lee Mingwei-and-Tiravanija. See Maravillas, “Food-and-Hospitality,” 159–78. 48. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 109. 49. Bishop, “Antagonism,” 65. 50. Ibid., 66–69. 51. Kraynak, “Liability,” 29. 52. Rirkrit Tiravanija, e-mail correspondence with Walker Art Center curatorial intern Aimee Chang, December 27, 2001. 53. Temin, “Beyond Labels,” 29. Charles Yannopoulo, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Scene Magazine, June 3, 1999, http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner/ Content?oid=1472228/. 54. Yee, “Enabling Cosmopolitanism,” 49. To ensure the sincerity of his invitation, Lee Mingwei refused to have participants sign consent forms. 55. Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 90; for an in-depth discussion, see 82–123. 56. For an overview of the discourse surrounding those terms, see Caroline Turner, “Introduction Part 1—Critical Themes, Geopolitical Change and Global Contexts in Contemporary Asian Art,” in Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-making, ed. Caroline Turner and Michelle Antoinette (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2014), 1–22; Paul Gladston and Katie Hill, “Contemporary Chinese art and criticality: From the general to the particular,” Journal of Visual Art Practice 11, nos. 2 + 3 (2012), 106–13. 57. See for example, Fan Pan, “Post-Colonial and Contemporary Art Trends in Taiwan,” in Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Mary Wiseman and Liu Yuedi (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 321– 32; Sophie McIntyre, “Re-Orienting Taiwan: The China Factor in Contemporary Art from Taiwan,” Asia Art Archive, September, 2010, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Diaaalogue/Details/889/. 58. Sylvia Tsai, “Hou Hanru and Xiaoyu Weng Join Guggenheim as Curators of Contemporary Chinese Art,” ArtAsiaPacific, August 14, 2015, http://artasiapacific.com/News/ HouHanruAndXiaoyuWengJoinGuggenheimAsCuratorsOfContemporaryChineseArt/.

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