SEPTEMBER/OCTO B E R 2 0 1 3 V O LUME 12, NUMBER 5

INSI DE

China, Hong Kong, and at the 55th Curatorial Inquiries 13: Who are the Connoisseurs? Interviews with Alexandra Munroe, Guggenheim and Ted Lipman, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation The Quest for a Regional Culture: Two Trips to Reviews: ON I OFF, Feng Yan

US$12.00 NT$350.00 P RINTED IN TAIWAN

6

VOLUME 12, NUMBER 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013

CONTENTS  Editor’s Note 29  Contributors

6 On Not Being Killed By Some Unfortunate Juxtaposition: The 2013 Venice Biennale Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker

29 On Chinese Art in Global Times: A Conversation with Wang Chunchen Alice Schmatzberger 38 38 To Be or Not to Be a National Pavilion: The Taiwan Pavilion and Hong Kong Pavilion at Venice Lu Pei-Yi

61 Curatorial Inquiries 13: Who are the Connoisseurs? Nikita Yingqian Cai and Carol Yinghua Lu

66 Interview with Alexandra Munroe, Samsung 77 Curator of Asian Art, Guggenheim Museum, New York Yu Hsiao Hwei

72 Interview with Ted Lipman, Chief Executive Officer of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Yu Hsiao Hwei

77 The Quest for a Regional Culture: The Artistic Adventure of Two Bali Trips, 1952 and 2001 88 Wang Ruobing

88 ON | OFF: ’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice Edward Sanderson

98 Feng Yan: Photography Objectified Jonathan Goodman

105 Index 98 Cover: Lee Kit, 'You (you).', installation, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

We thank JNBY Art Projects, Canadian Foundation of Asian Art, Ping, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Li, and Stephanie Holmquist and Mark Allison for their generous contribution to the publication and distribution of Yishu.

Vol. 12 No. 5 1 Editor’s Note YISHU: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art  Katy Hsiu-chih Chien   Infoshare Tech Law Office, Mann C.C. Liu In its 55th edition, the Venice Biennale remains   Ken Lum among the most important large-scale -- Keith Wallace exhibitions in the world, and its reputation   Zheng Shengtian  Julie Grundvig continues to grow as participating nations, Kate Steinmann coupled with collateral group exhibitions, Chunyee Li increase in number. Yishu 58 has three texts  ⁽ ⁾ Carol Yinghua Lu pertaining to this prestigious event. Jo-Anne Chunyee Li Birnie Danzker offers an overview of several Chen Ping Debra Zhou of the exhibitions featuring Chinese artists—in 2013 there were more than ever before—   Larisa Broyde   Michelle Hsieh and Alice Schmatzberger interviews Wang    Chunyee Li Chunchen, curator for the China Pavilion,   who discusses the premise behind this year’s Judy Andrews, Ohio State University exhibition, as well as the role of Chinese Melissa Chiu, Asia Society Museum artists internationally. Lu Pei-Yi excavates John Clark, University of Sydney Lynne Cooke, Museo Reina Sofia the histories of both the Taiwan and Hong Okwui Enwezor, Critic and Curator Kong Pavilions and their struggle to establish Britta Erickson, Independent Scholar and Curator Fan Di’an, National Art Museum of China a “national” identity without having official Fei Dawei, Independent Critic and Curator national status within the Biennale. Gao Minglu, University of Pittsburgh Hou Hanru, Critic and Curator Hu Fang, Vitamin Creative Space and the shop Nikita Yingqian Cai and Carol Yinghua Lu Katie Hill, University of Westminster present another of their ongoing Curatorial Claire Hsu, Asia Art Archive Martina Köppel-Yang, Independent Critic and Historian Inquiries, with Carol proposing a text on Sebastian Lopez, Critic and Curator curatorial practice for Nikita to debate. Lu Jie, Long March Space Curatorial Inquiries 13 challenges traditional Charles Merewether, Director, ICA Ni Tsaichin, Tunghai University notions of connoisseurship and critical thinking Apinan Poshyananda, Ministry of Culture, Thailand by using intuition, independence, and instinct Philip Tinari, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Chia Chi Jason Wang, Independent Critic and Curator to understand contemporary art. Yu Hsiao Hwei Wu Hung, University of Chicago interviews Alexandra Munroe and Ted Lipman Pauline J. Yao, M+, West Kowloon Cultural District about the generous support of ten million  Art & Collection Group Ltd. dollars provided by the Robert N. H. Ho Family 6F. No. 85, Section 1, Foundation towards an Asian art program at Chungshan N. Road, , Taiwan 104 the Guggenheim Museum. The arm's length Phone: (886)2.2560.2220 funding given by the Ho Family Foundation Fax: (886)2.2542.0631 sets a productive example that other E-mail: [email protected] around the world can learn from.    Jenny Liu Alex Kao   Joyce Lin Wang Ruobing has contributed an intriguing   Perry Hsu text on two trips made to Bali, fifty years apart, Betty Hsieh by two different generations of Singaporean-  Chi Wei Colour Printing Ltd. Chinese artists. These trips, the second clearly   http://yishu-online.com referencing the first, are an exploration into   Design Format Singaporean identity relative to the Chinese  1683 - 3082 descent of many of its citizens as well as Yishu is published bi-monthly in Taipei, Taiwan, and edited Singapore's cultural positioning within the in Vancouver, Canada. The publishing dates are January, region. We close Yishu 58 with two reviews March, May, July, September, and November. All subscription, advertising, and submission inquiries may be sent to: from Beijing. One, by Edward Sanderson, examines the ambitious exhibition ON I OFF, Yishu Editorial Office 200–1311 Howe Street which showcased younger artists in an attempt Vancouver, BC, Canada to keep abreast of China’s burgeoning art V6Z 2P3 Phone: 1.604.649.8187 scene. Sanderson points out how difficult it Fax: 1.604.591.6392 is to articulate the diverse art production that E-mail: offi[email protected] the show represents. The other, by Jonathan   Goodman, looks at an exhibition of work by 1 year (6 issues): $84 USD (includes airmail postage) Feng Yan, an artist whose spare photographs 2 years (12 issues): $158 USD (includes airmail postage) 1 Year PDF Download (6 issues): $49.95 USD (http://yishu-online.com) eschew spectacle, are cloaked in the mystery of the everyday, and immersed in their own    Leap Creative Group   Raymond Mah quiet beauty.   Gavin Chow  Philip Wong No part of this journal may be reprinted without the written Keith Wallace permission from the publisher. The views expressed in Yishu are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 200251

2 4

6 Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker 29 (Larisa Broyde) Alice Schmatzberger (Chunyee Li)

38 (Philip Tinari) (Judy Andrews) (Britta Erickson) (Melissa Chiu) (Sebastian Lopez) 61 (Claire Hsu) (John Clark) (Pauline J. Yao) 66 (Martina Köppel-Yang) Lynne Cooke Okwui Enwezor 72 Katie Hill Charles Merewether Apinan Poshyananda 77 856 : (886) 2.2560.2220 (886) 2.2542.0631 88 [email protected] Yishu Office 200-1311 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2P3, Canada : (1) 604.649.8187 98 (1) 604.591.6392 : offi[email protected]

105 Leap Creative Group, Vancouver

6

http://yishu-online.com Design Format

Contributors

Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker is Director of founders of Ping Pong Space (2008–10), in the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, and former , which functioned as a platform director of the Museum Villa Stück, of activities and artistic production for Munich, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. local artists. She is also a critic and writes She has curated numerous exhibitions frequently for various catalogues and on both contemporary and historical art, publications. Her major focuses are context- with a special emphasis on the history responsive curating, educational curating, of the modern. From 2001–02 she was exhibition studies, and institutional critique. Exhibition Director of The Short Century She graduated from the Journalism School (curated by Okwui Enwezor). She was of Fudan University and was a participant curator of Shanghai Modern (with Ken in the de Appel Curatorial Programme, Lum and Zheng Shengtian) in 2004–05 and , 2009–10. of Art of Tomorrow: Hilla von Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim (with Karole Vail Carol Yinghua Lu lives and works in Beijing. and Brigitte Salmen) in 2005–06. In 2012 She is a contributing editor for Frieze. She she participated in the Museum Directors has written frequently for international art Dialogue of the US–China Forum on the journals and magazines including e-flux Arts And Culture in Beijing. journal, The Exhibitionist, Yishu, Tate Etc., and Contemporary. She was on the jury Jonathan Goodman studied literature at for the Golden Lion Award at the 2011 Columbia University and the University of Venice Biennale and was one of the co- Pennsylvania before becoming an art writer curators for the 9th Gwangju Biennale, in specializing in contemporary Chinese art. 2012. Together with Liu Ding, Lu co-curated He teaches at Pratt Institute and the Parsons the 7th Shenzhen Biennale 2012, and they School of Design, both in New York, focusing were also the guest curators for Museion, on art criticism and contemporary culture. Bolzano, in 2013.

Nikita Yingqian Cai currently lives Lu Pei-Yi is a researcher, curator, and art in Guangzhou and is Curator at the critic based in Taipei. She received her Ph.D. Times Museum. She has curated in 2010 in Humanities and Cultural Studies and edited publications for A Museum That ( Consortium) from the University is Not (2011) and Jiang Zhi: If This Is a of London. Her thesis, Off-Site Art Curating: Man (2012, co-curated with Bao Dong) and Cases studies in Taiwan (1987–2007),was organized No Ground Underneath: Curating published in the summer of 2011 by VDM, on the Nexus of Changes (2012, co-curated Germany. As guest editor of Yishu: Journal of with Carol Yinghua Lu). She was one of the

4 Vol. 12 No. 5 Chinese Contemporary Art no. 42 (2010), she promote the art of Singapore and Southeast completed a Special Issue entitled Off-Site Asia. Wang received her D.Phil. with a Art in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. She thesis on contemporary Chinese art at the was also the chief editor of Creating Spaces: University of Oxford (2006–10). Much Post Alternative Spaces in Asia, published in of her work concentrates on the current 2011 in English and Chinese. Recently, she period with research interests in the identity, organized a special issue, A Belated Bomb: hybridity, and transcultural discourses Review of Controversy of 2013 Taiwan Pavilion of contemporary artists from China and at Venice Biennale, for ARTCO. She was a Southeast Asia. Wang is also a practicing full-time assistant professor of M.A. Museum artist. She has held several solo exhibitions Studies at the Taipei National University of in Singapore and the United Kingdom the Arts in 2011–12. In the autumn of 2012, and has taken part in numerous group she served as Visiting Assistant Professor of exhibitions internationally. M.A. Cultural Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yu Hsiao Hwei is an art writer and translator based in . A correspondent Edward Sanderson is an and for several art magazines in Taiwan, she editor based in Beijing. His writing focuses has written extensively on contemporary on contemporary art in China, particularly Chinese art and international art scenes alternative artistic practices. He is a staff over the last fifteen years. She is the editor writer for the international reviews Web site of On the Midground: A Selection of Texts by ArtSlant.com and has written for Flash Art, Hou Hanru and the translator of the texts LEAP, and other print and online media. by Huang Yongping that were included in the catalogue of the artist’s first major Alice Schmatzberger is a natural scientist, retrospective, House of Oracle. art historian, independent writer, researcher, and lecturer, and is author of the blog www. chinaculturedesk.com. She is currently working on an academic project on artists’ selves in contemporary Chinese photography, video, and digital art.

Wang Ruobing, Ph.D., is a curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore, where she helps to build the permanent galleries and

Vol. 12 No. 5 5 Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker On Not Being Killed By Some Unfortunate Juxtaposition The 2013 Venice Biennale

Left to right: Hilma af Kint, The Dove, No. 13, 1915, oil on canvas, 158 x 131 cm; The Dove, No. 12, 1915, oil on canvas, 158 x 131 cm. Courtesy of The Foundation and the Venice Biennale.

n 1909, American woman of letters Anna Seaton-Schmidt1 described the 8th Venice International Biennale as an “ensemble never before attained in a modern salon,”2 one that catapulted it into preeminence I 3 as an international exposition. The insertion of individual exhibitions within and throughout the Palazzo delle Esposizioni had transformed it, and the Biennale, into an exemplary art gallery.

Paintings and statues were . . . grouped psychologically. Those influenced by the same traditions, climate, culture, were placed together in surroundings which enhanced their esthetic value. Architecture, decoration, exhibits, thus blended in one harmonious whole, an immense advantage not only to the visitor but to the artist, who, instead of finding his picture or statue killed by the unfortunate juxtaposition of some fellow artist’s work violently opposed to his own discovered, to his exceeding joy, the value of his creation enhanced by its surroundings.4

More than a century later, at the , the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, or Central Pavilion as it is known in English, has again been transformed into an art gallery whose architecture, “psychologically” grouped objects, and rooms dedicated to individual artists shimmer in a harmonious whole. No objects are “killed” by unfortunate juxtapositions; on the contrary, the 2013 international exhibition is a carefully crafted foray into

6 Vol. 12 No. 5 Left to right: Augustin Lesage, Symbolic Composition on the Spiritual World, 1925, oil on canvas, 205 x 145 cm; Symbolic Composition on the Spiritual World, 1923, oil on canvas, 158 x 117 cm. Courtesy of Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne and the Venice Biennale.

Rudolph Steiner, Blackboard , April 14, 1923, chalk on black paper, approximately 90 x 140 cm. Courtesy of the Rudolph Steiner Archive, Dornach, Switzerland, and the Venice Biennale.

Aleister Crowley and Frieda the present and into a past rich in utopian Harris, Atu XII—The Hanged Man, 1938–40, watercolour on dreams of non-objective and spiritual paper, 61 x 45 cm. Courtesy of Ordo Templi Orientis and the worlds. Here, for example, occult paintings Venice Biennale. by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint from 1915, the Tarot cards of Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris, the healing divinations of Emma Kunz, the fantastic architecture of Augustin Lesage, the pan-language cards of Xul Solar, and the trance of Anna Zemánková hold company with a stunning array of contemporary art from around the world. Adjacent to the Emma Kunz, installation view at Palazzo delle Esposizioni. large-scale, cosmological, blackboard Courtesy of the Emma 5 Kunz Centre and the Venice drawings of Rudolf Steiner from 1923, Biennale. for example, are densely rendered, large- scale “cosmographies” by Chinese artist Guo Fengyi in ink, pen, and on long paper scrolls dating from 1989 to shortly before her death in 2010. “I draw in order to know,” Guo Fengyi once said.6

Vol. 12 No. 5 7 The Italian-born, New York-based artistic Marino Auriti, Encyclopedic Palace of the World, c. 1950s, director of the 2013 Venice Biennale, wood, plastic, glass, metal, haircombs, model kit parts, Massimiliano Gioni, has named his ensemble in 335 x 213 x 213 cm. Courtesy of the American Folk Art the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and the Arsenale Museum, Gift of Collette Auriti Firmani in memory of Marino The Encyclopedic Palace in honour of the self- Auriti and the Venice Biennale. taught Italian-American artist Marino Auriti, Left: Guo Fengyi, Huangdi Mausoleum, 1996, coloured who filed a design for an imaginary museum ink on rice paper, 259 x 71 cm. Courtesy of Long March with the U.S. Patent Office in the 1950s. Auriti’s Space, Beijing. museum “was meant to house all worldly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human race, from the wheel to the satellite.”7 His model, The Encyclopedic Palace of the World, is a 335-centimetre-high spectacle of wood, plastic, glass, metal, hair combs, and model kit parts. Gioni has assigned it place of honour at the entrance to the Arsenale, while pride of place in the Palazzo is awarded to a manuscript rich in paintings and calligraphy that was illuminated by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between 1914 and 1930. Commonly known as The Red Book, the manuscript was only made public by Jung’s heirs in 2001.

In his review of the 2013 Venice Biennale, Swiss critic Samuel Herzog describes The Red Book as both the beginning and the centre of Gioni’s encyclopedic ensemble. Devoid of transcription or explanation, it becomes,

8 Vol. 12 No. 5 however, “a mere symbol for Jung’s intellectual world. . . . A narrative tent in whose shadow connections between the objects on display [in The Encyclopedic Palace] and their associated discourses could become visible” is absent.8 Is it not so, Herzog asks, that, “whoever creates an encyclopedia automatically stakes a claim for a certain sovereignty over interpretation— that probably applies even to very personal encyclopedias?”9 Holland Cotter also expresses reservations about Gioni’s encyclopedic strategy in his review for :

Mr. Gioni refers to the model of the “wunderkammer,” or cabinet of curiosities, collections of uncategorizable, often exotic objects first assembled in Renaissance Europe. This concept is not original, and it gets tricky when, as here, some curiosities are works by “outsider artists,” which can simply mean self-taught, but often implies having some form of physical, social or psychiatric disability.

The outsider art concept is tired by now, even ethically suspect, the equivalent of “primitive art” from decades ago. Mr. Gioni finesses the problem without really addressing it by integrating outsider-ish-looking inside art (there’s more and more of this around) so the two designations get blurred.10

Nevertheless, Cotter and Herzog remain united in their praise of Gioni’s curatorial brilliance and the sheer pleasure of moving through his “single itinerary”11 among one hundred and fifty artists from thirty- seven countries: “the show’s curatorial line is so firm, its choice of artists so strong, and its pacing so expert that you are carried along, and ultimately rewarded.”12

In his foreword to the catalogue to the 2013 Biennale, Gioni describes The Encyclopedic Palace as being “about knowledge—and more specifically about the desire to see and know everything.” Presentation of objects in the exhibition is not linear, he writes; instead it reveals “a web of associations through contrasts and affinities, anachronisms and collisions.” At the heart of the exhibition is a meditation on the ways in which images are used to organize knowledge and shape experience. Inspired by Hans Belting’s notion of an anthropology of images, and bringing together works and artifacts from different contexts, Gioni seeks to ignite new sparks from “the coerced coexistence of heterogeneous objects and the friction between art and other forms of figuration:”13 In an interview that took place shortly after the opening of the Biennale, he noted: “We live in the twenty-first century and therefore I wanted to create an exhibition in Venice that is simultaneously historical and contemporary. For we live in an age of synchronicity.”14

An ambitious collateral exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Voice of the Unseen/Chinese Independent Art 1979–Today, also seeks to create an encyclopedic ensemble of art both historical and contemporary. Curated by

Vol. 12 No. 5 9 Wang Lin, Professor at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute; Luo Yiping, Director of the Guangdong Museum of Art; and Gloria Vallese, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, the exhibition was organized by the highly regarded Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou. Situated at the head of the Arsenale,15 separated by a narrow canal from Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace and the official pavilion of the People’s Republic of China, Voice of the Unseen opened to the press and international art community on May 30 with an academic forum.16 The following day, the China Daily reported on the exhibition and noted that nearly twenty Chinese curators, critics, and art historians at the forum had addressed subjects such as the State system, historic veneration, and the quest for value. Wang Lin was quoted as saying that “the fragmented presence [of Chinese contemporary art in the West] cannot reflect the real look [complexity and variety] of Chinese contemporary art. Many excellent Chinese artists and their works deserve a chance to be seen.” It was noted in the article that the exhibition contained a temporary library of more than one thousand Chinese artists’ portfolios and that all the artworks had been recommended by an academic committee composed of twelve renowned art critics.17

Voice of the Unseen, like The Voice of the Unseen, installation view at Venice Encyclopedic Palace, is an exhibition Biennale, 2013. about knowledge. If Massimiliano Gioni addresses the desire to see and know everything, the curators of Voice of the Unseen are swayed by a desire to tell everything. Although they seek to structure their “vast encyclopedia of contemporary Chinese life and culture” by dividing it into nine sections (Family, Village, Ruins, Poverty, Body, , Memory, History, Magic),18 the exhibition remains an overwhelming array of heterogeneous objects by one hundred and eighty-eight artists and artist groups coerced into coexistence and, at times, into unfortunate juxtapositions. Devoid of transcription, explanation, or a “narrative tent” that goes beyond the briefest of surtitles, the objects on display remained mere symbols of vital, diverse, and highly complex intellectual, cultural, political, and artistic discourses in China today, discourses that weigh heavily upon the visitor to Voice of the Unseen in their absence and indiscernibility. An attempt, however, is made to reach out to the exhibition’s international audience with a large sign in English at the entrance to the exhibition that notes: “Art shows the world that China is not a global threat. Please come and listen to the true voice in Chinese artists’ hearts.” Accepting this invitation to listen, however, proves impossible. As H. G. Masters notes on the ArtAsiaPacific blog, the “supersized Voice of the Unseen . . . seemed intended for Chinese audiences, as there was scant information about the works on view and their Web site is in Chinese.”19

It would be performances associated with the opening of Voice of the Unseen that would attract most attention, both at home and abroad. In their unmitigated directness the performances became a “real, original, spontaneous voice to be heard”20—professional “crying actors” (people

10 Vol. 12 No. 5 Top: Yuan Gong, Airstrikes who, wearing long white robes, cry loudly at funerals) wept at a statue of Around the World—Shanghai, 2013, performance. Courtesy Confucius, and a young woman was reputedly engaged in a controversial of the artist. sexual act21—in a manner that the curators had hoped their ensemble

Bottom: Yuan Gong, Airstrikes of objects would become. Artist Zhang Jianhua, dressed in the protective Around the World—Venice, 2013, performance. Courtesy clothing of mineworkers with a safety helmet, gloves, and boots, of the artist. asked visitors on the opening day of Voice of the Unseen to have their photographs taken with him. During the academic forum, and at the opening of the official pavilion of the People’s Republic of China, he lay on the ground as if injured or dead, bringing to the attention of Biennale visitors and the public realm the plight of miners in China.22 Yuan Gong’s performance on May 30, Air Strikes Around the World (2013), in which remote-control units simultaneously flew around the Oriental Pearl Tower

Vol. 12 No. 5 11 in Shanghai and above Venice and its canals, generated the desired sense of danger and anxiety in Italy and resulted in a confrontation with Italian police while in China the performance elicited no response from the authorities.23 For Yuan Gong, the presence of so many Chinese artists at the 2013 Venice Biennale did not build the dialogue that is so passionately desired: “Today there are so many Chinese exhibitions at Venice. This displays a Chinese anxiety, a desire to have dialogue with the world. But they have no opportunity to output values, to contribute to the academic and art worlds.”24

This desire for dialogue with the world, and for an “output” of values distinct to social life and artistic practice in China, was evident in another collateral exhibition that took place in the vicinity of Voice of the Unseen. Curated by Yu Gao, Professor at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, and independent curator Zhang Wei, Mente-Pulsante (translated as Mind- Beating, although “pulsating mind” would be preferable) presented the work of fourteen practitioners, among them artists, a writer and literary critic, a filmmaker, a musician, an architectural critic, a sculptor, an architect, a photographer, a professor and research advisor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, a sociologist, and a Daoist forecaster who casts oracles.25 Although Mind–Beating presented far fewer projects than Voice of the Unseen, its ambitions were no less significant, and its selection of subjects and participating artists was close in spirit to Massimiliano Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace, as was its “single itinerary,” firm curatorial line, and inclusion of artists from disparate disciplines. The intent of the organizers of Mind–Beating was to present “the true condition of China. It was a simultaneous presentation method in the present tense [in which] almost all the participants have undergone a shift in identity.”26

Zhao Shuhong, 520KM/H, 2013, installation, 2200 x 360 x 300 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Left: Yu Jianrong, Seeking, 2013, video installation. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Zhang Xinjun, Family Chronicle, 2013, video installation. Courtesy of the artist.

12 Vol. 12 No. 5 The objects in the exhibition included Zhao Shuhong’s spectacular full- scale, 220-metre-long model of a carriage of the controversial high-speed Chinese train that was involved in a deadly crash in July 2011. Titled 520KM/H (2013), the carriage is a metaphor for rapid transformation, accelerated growth, and the ecstasy and nightmare of speed.27 The artist notes that it reflects “A competitive mindset that drives people to surpass others and themselves. . . . Questions of speed, safety, GDP, government accountability, technology export, or the world economy cannot stop our high speed pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.”28 With monitors along the interior of both sides of the carriage, 520KM/H also served as an interior exhibition space, delivering live feeds from the streets of Beijing and , video art, and soap-opera style broadcasts on missing children by Yu Jianrong, as well as a report on an art village near Caochangdi in Beijing that had been razed. The driver’s cabin of the train was home to a video installation set in old furniture that represented the three-room house common in China in the 1980s, when the artist Zhang Xinjun was born. “In Family Chronicle,” he says,” I used cameras to record my mother and I as we lived in our old home.”29

Shiau Jon-Jen, Gone With the Wind, 2013, stainless steel and aluminum, 463 x 235 x 682 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Vol. 12 No. 5 13 Yu Gao, co-curator of Mind– Li Tianbing, Drying Clothes, 2013, 300 items of clothing. Beating, observes that the physical Courtesy of the artist. location of these visual and Left: Wang Guofeng, Voice from North Korea, 2013, 13 domestic narratives, inside a high- suitcases, audio. Courtesy of the artist. speed train carriage, reflected the intense conditions under which they are occurring, shapes the way we look at them, feeds their logic, and intensifies a feeling of excitement when they are encountered.30 Another artwork adjacent to 520KM/H was a 6.8 metre high aluminum and stainless steel fan titled Gone With the Wind (2013) by sculptor and architect Shiau Jon-Jen. These dramatic, large-scale works were countered by poetic, gestural interventions including Drying Clothes (2013), an installation by Li Tianbing of three hundred pieces of clothing strung above the train carriage, at the highest point in the exhibition, in a tribute to migrant workers across China from whose homes the clothing was collected by the artist. Voice from North Korea (2013) consisted of sound recordings by Wang Guofeng of celebratory parades in North Korea that emanated from thirteen suitcases. Wang Guofeng noted that “the control exerted on the human spirit by politics and power can lead people to lose their conscious awareness, leading them to grow accustomed to living within illusions.”31

If an onslaught of moving images of everyday life in China lined the interior of the high-speed “train” that is depicted in 520KM/H, the interior of the pavilion is lined by A Scene (2013), a still “landscape” of eight painted windows, each with six individual portraits, that gave the appearance of stained glass. This work by one of China’s leading artists, Yu Hong, depicts young women, dressed and naked, among vibrant as well as portraits of men and children. Many of the forty-eight figures recall earlier paintings by the artist such as Natural Selection, Sky Curtain, Questions for Heaven, and Atrium from 2010, while other figures are drawn from the Internet.32 The unusual perspectives that Yu Hong employs, and that give her paintings their distinctive and arresting quality, are drawn from sources

14 Vol. 12 No. 5 Yu Hong, A Scene, 2013, glass, transparent film, 48 images, each 30 x 35 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

as diverse as figures in graphic works by Goya, frescos from the Kizil and Mogao Thousand Buddha caves, and the Ladder of Divine Ascent, a twelfth- century icon in St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai. Yu Hong’s windows in Mind–Beating framed the entire exhibition, which also included Blink of an Eye (2013), video segments on painting excursions of artist Liu Xiaodong; digital cinema by Ma Jun from mathgroup; and a video by Tan Ping titled One Cup (2013), a meditation on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theory that no two leaves in the world are the same.

Zhu Xiaodi, Block Writing, The exhibition ensemble extended 2013, polyethylene foam, 600 x 600 x 350 cm. Courtesy of into the garden surrounding the the artist. pavilion. Here Fang Zhenning laid out a fifty-metre-long installation of mirrors, The Central Axis (2013), that “extracts” the central axis of the ancient city of Beijing. Fang Zhenning believes that the six-hundred-year old core of the city, its psychological and cultural axis, is threatened today by the “expansion of capital and desire in China.”33 An installation of reconstituted Chinese characters in foam, Block Writing (2013), by Zhu Xiaodi was nearby. In a mound or “pile of beautiful collapse,” as curator Yu Gao describes it, the characters remind us that “we have forgotten how to use language.”34 During the opening, Ma Jiqi of mathgroup was seated in the garden, where he forecast the future based on eight divinatory trigrams of the I-Ching, or Book of Change: qiangua (male), kungua (female), kangua (water), ligua (fire), zhengua (thunder), gengua (mountain), xungua (wind) and duigua (marsh).

Vol. 12 No. 5 15 As the catalogue to the exhibition notes, the I-Ching reflects ancient Chinese Opposite page: Historical document display at Passage perceptions of the universe but remains into the present day a tool for to History, Venice, 2013. Courtesy of Lü Peng. understanding the world.35

In a moment of perfect symmetry, Installation view of Passage to History, Venice, 2013. Courtesy Yu Hong was participating in of Lü Peng. Mind–Beating on the twentieth anniversary of the first participation of Chinese artists at the Venice Biennale. In 1993, the Italian curator of the , Achille Bonito Oliva, invited her to present her work36 in a section titled Passaggio a Oriente (Passage to the Orient). Fourteen artists from China were awarded this honour: Ding Yi, Fang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Li Shan, Liu Wei, Song Haidong, Sun Liang, Wang Guangyi, Wang Ziwei, Xu Bing, Yu Youhan, Zhang Peili, and Yu Hong.37 Looking back, Yu Hong observed that “there were just a few Chinese artists participating in the Venice Biennale twenty years ago. Now, there are so many that Chinese artists have become the face of the biennial, like a landscape of Venice.” 38 For the 2013 Biennale, one of China’s most committed art historians, Lü Peng, invited Achille Bonito Oliva to co-curate an exhibition titled Passage to History to mark the anniversary of Passage to the Orient as well as twenty years of economic, cultural, and artistic exchange between China and the West.39 One would have expected Lü Peng to have embarked on an ambitious, large-scale exhibition such as Reshaping History: Chinart from 2000 to 2009, which he co-curated in Beijing in 2010.40 Instead, Passage to History was quiet, restrained, and modest, its promised research, perspectives, and discourse on the “historic route”41 of the past twenty years more likely to be found in the forthcoming catalogue than in the exhibition itself. Focused on only a handful of Chinese artists, the exhibition looked at a fundamental question: “How Chinese contemporary artists, each in their own way, have been engaged in the process of negotiating an international identity through cultural exchange with the West.”42 At a time when artists and critics in China, including the artists and curators of Voice of the Unseen and Mind–Beating, are examining the construction of a distinctive national identity in a globalized world, this approach by Lü Peng was almost startling. In the press release to Passage to History, Lü Peng speaks of a “precious period of Chinese contemporary art history” seen through the work of twenty artists including Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, Zhang Peili (Venice 1993), Zhang Xiaogang (Venice 1995), Liu Xiaodong (Venice 1997), and Zhan Wang (Venice 2002).43

Lü Peng’s description of the past twenty years of contemporary Chinese art history as “precious” is reminiscent of an interview he gave in March 2010 as part of the Materials of the Future project organized by the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong.44 In the interview Lü Peng described his determination to leave a rural factory where he had been sent during the Cultural Revolution

16 Vol. 12 No. 5 Vol. 12 No. 5 17 and his desire to learn whether Chinese or Western art history existed. He found one volume, History of Western Aesthetics (1979), by Zhu Guangqian (1897–1986), in a school library and Concise History of Western Art, by Qian Juntao (1906–98), from 1949,45 in the provincial library. Because they were the only copies available, Lü Peng transcribed each by hand, the latter over a period of months. It was not until 1982 or 1983 that books on the history of Western art became readily available in China. And it was not until the June 4th movement of 1989, and the concern of many that the reforms of 1977 to 1989 could be rescinded, that Lü Peng decided to write about contemporary art of that period. “What was the point of living through the past ten years? Thinking back on these ten years I began to realize how precious they were.”46 Only four years later, in 1993, in a period of extraordinarily rapid social, political, and cultural transformation, contemporary Chinese artists stepped onto the international stage. Lü Peng acknowledges that their participation in the Venice Biennale was not as smooth as imagined and was full of hardships:

I read an essay in [1993] entitled “Artists Return from Venice Disappointed.” The essay gave a basic introduction on the situation of the thirteen [ fourteen] Chinese artists who took part in the Venice Biennale for the first time, and as the title suggests, these artists were perhaps less than pleased with their experience there: the installation time was too short, the exhibition space was very subpar, the accommodations were lousy, most of the artists had to pay for their own travel, Chinese representative Li Xianting had no opportunity to introduce Chinese art to the world, et cetera. At first, “Obtaining passports was easy, and there wasn’t any trouble applying for Italian visas, and so these not-so-famous artists withdrew most or all of their savings from bank and set off on a pilgrimage to this world art mecca with excitement in their hearts.” Their experience in Italy, however, did not live up to their rosy expectations.47

The highly competitive Venice Biennale, where intellectuals, art critics, and artists from around the globe jostle for attention during an astonishingly short period of four “professional” days, remains as contentious and disappointing, and as thrilling, for participants from China in 2013 as it did in 1993. But they are not alone in this regard. The complexities of overcoming the fragmented presence of a nation’s contemporary art on the world stage, and the desire to provide as many excellent artists and their works as possible a chance to be seen, are shared by curators and artists of all nations who venture into this magnificent city in search of an appropriate venue, and a form of exhibition ensemble, that will not be missed or ignored. For all the frustrations it thrusts upon participants and viewers alike, the Venice Biennale remains for all nations the venue in which to showcase—however imperfectly—individual, regional, and national artistic discourses in all their complexity.48 In an interview on his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1993, artist Wang Guangyi noted

18 Vol. 12 No. 5 Left to right: Curator Lü Peng that Achille Bonito Oliva’s and artist Wang Guangyi, Venice, May 27, 2013. Courtesy Passage to the Orient of Lü Peng. had “brought Chinese contemporary art to a worldwide audience.” Of particular significance, Wang Guangyi observed, is that “once it is on the global stage the issues discussed are not only examined locally but also globally.”49

The burden to be “successful” in this brutal competition can be especially heavy, especially for the curator of a national pavilion. In 2013, Wang Chunchen, Head of the Department of Curatorial Research of the Central Art Academy of Fine Arts Museum, and Adjunct Curator at The Broad Art Museum of Michigan State University, was charged with the task to “curate China.”50 Increasingly, national curators at the Venice Biennale have rejected the path of broad inclusion adopted in group exhibitions such as Voice of the Unseen. Instead, they prefer to showcase the work of an exceptional individual whose artistic practice speaks to a moment in the life of the people of a nation that may be unique but more likely is shared by all humanity. This transformation of the personal, the discursive, and a wide array of perspectives into “a parliament of global contemporary narratives,” has enriched international biennials, including Venice, as was noted in the last issue of this journal.51 One such narrative at the 2013 Venice Biennale was to be found in the pavilion of Lebanon, where Akram Zaatari’s Letter to a Refusing Pilot (2013) illuminates the refusal of an Israeli fighter pilot, Major (res.) Hagai Tamir,52 to bomb a school in southern Lebanon in 1982. The school, which had been founded by Zaatari’s father, was later bombed by another pilot. Zaatari’s Letter to a Refusing Pilot is constructed around his own childhood experiences in Lebanon, an act of conscientious objection by an enemy pilot, and the darkest days of the Second World War in its citation of both Albert Camus’ Letter to a German Friend and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, The Little Prince. The relevance of Zaatari’s Letter to our day was demonstrated during the opening of the Venice Biennale when Lebanon became a stage for terrorist and military deployment as the Syrian conflict crossed its borders.53

Akram Zaatari, Letter to a Refusing Pilot, film and video installation, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg/ Beirut.

Vol. 12 No. 5 19 Among the fortunate juxtapositions I experienced at the 2013 Venice Left: Kamikaze Loggia, Georgian Pavilion seen from Biennale was viewing Zaatari’s installation in its entirety at the same time Canale di Porta Nova. Photo: Gio Sumbadze. it was being watched by the Iranian American artist Shirin Neshat. It was Middle: Kamikaze Loggia, a reminder of the importance of the Biennale as an opportunity for artists Georgian Pavilion, interior view. Photo: Gio Sumbadze. not only to present their own work but also to reflect on the practice of Bottom: Kamikaze Loggia, Georgian Pavilion, Bouillon fellow artists from around the globe. Leaving the Lebanon Pavilion, on Group relaxing on the balcony. my way to the China Pavilion, I paused at the Kamikaze Loggia, designed Photo: Gio Sumbadze. by Gio Sumbadze, of the sovereign state of Georgia, which abutted, and hovered over, the pavilion of the People’s Republic of China. The curator and commissioner of the Georgian Pavilion, Joanna Warsza and Marine Mizandari, respectively, described their pavilion as a “parasitic extension” to an old building in the Arsenale, one in the spirit of vernacular architecture in Georgia that provides lawless, romantic, and “suicidal” living spaces, terraces, open refrigerators, and even artist studios constructed on top of, and on the sides of, existing buildings. These extensions, prone to collapse, are described by Warsza and Mizandari as constituting self-initiated environments that open discourse on the last twenty years in Georgia, a country that is sometimes described as “Italy gone Marxist.”54 After viewing the work of the Bouillon Group—Thea Djordjadze, Nikoloz Lutidze, Gela Patashuri, Ei Arakawa, and Sergei Tcherepnin—inside the Loggia, I walked cautiously down its steep steps and entered the China Pavilion and a world in a state of transfiguration.

Perhaps if I had not paused at Letter to a Refusing Pilot and the Kamikaze Loggia immediately prior to entering the China Pavilion—I might have regarded Transfiguration as a group exhibition. I might have examined its itinerary, pacing, curatorial line, and choice of artists and ruminated on its meta-themes: transfiguration in English and bianwei or change of position in Mandarin. Instead, I was immediately taken by the work of two of the artists in the exhibition—He Yunchang and Wang Qingsong—whose practices, obsessions, and perspectives, like those of Akram Zaatari, clearly belong in a parliament of contemporary global narratives. Both had long attracted international attention, Wang Qingsong with his Another Battle Series (2001), soldiers on the battlefield under a McDonald’s logo-banner, and He Yunchang with his performances Casting (2004), in which he sealed himself inside a concrete block for twenty-four hours, and One Rib (2008), when one of his ribs was surgically removed. In the 2013 China Pavilion, He

20 Vol. 12 No. 5 Yunchang is represented by The Rock Tours Round Great Britain (2006), which documents his circumambulation of Great Britain from September 24, 2006, to June 14, 2007, carrying a rock from the town of Boulmer that he then returned to its original location after walking 3,500 kilometres. In a new project for Venice, in the garden behind the China Pavilion, He Yunchang installed 2,013 numbered and signed bottles filled with seawater. Here visitors to the Biennale were invited to sign their own water bottle, fill it with seawater, and exchange it for one of He Yunchang’s signed bottles. I was filled with a longing to see a solo exhibition in the China Pavilion that would celebrate the work of an artist like He Yunchang, whose travails and determination and use of the simplest of means are powerful metaphors for human struggle across all national boundaries. As Nataline Colonnello observes:

He Yunchang, The Rock Tours Round Great Britain, 2006–07, documentation of performance, 112 photographs, 35 x 45.5 cm each. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne/ Beijing.

He Yunchang points to the endurance of those innumerable people, who, like the artist himself, keep living, despite all the difficulties that may affect their existence: “The sharp blade of reality can only pierce their limbs; it cannot wound their wills. The persistence and tenacious spirits of these disadvantaged groups inspire me.” 55

Vol. 12 No. 5 21 Similarly, the large-scale, staged photographs of Wang Qingsong, such as Top: Wang Qingsong, Temporary Ward, 2008, Temporary Ward (2008) and ICU (2013), are powerful indictments of global photograph, 180 x 320 cm. Courtesy of the artist. societal conditions. They resonate across borders and confront us with the Bottom: Wang Qingsong, ICU, ethical consequences of our distractions. 2013, photograph, 180 x 300 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Despite its apparent illogic, engagement with the work of exceptional Chinese artists in one-person exhibitions on an international stage is perhaps more likely to bring a deeper understanding of artistic practices and discourses in China than large group exhibitions where engagement is often more symbolic than real. It should be acknowledged that one person exhibitions by leading Chinese artists were present at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Fang Lijun, who celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his first participation in Venice, was celebrated in an impressive solo exhibition titled A Cautionary Vision, a collateral event curated by Danilo Eccher, Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAM, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) in Turin. The exhibition was

22 Vol. 12 No. 5 one of three organized by The Global Art Center Foundation (GACF) from the Netherlands and the Asia Art Center from Beijing and Taipei.56 In an interview with Karen Smith published in the exhibition catalogue, Fang Lijun was asked if the visitor to the exhibition sees his world view or something more personal in the paintings on display. “Specifically, it is the feeling of personal survival,” he answered.

I am concerned with how to deal with our civilization. We were taught as children how mankind evolved from savages to become civilized, from apes to men. Seldom did we discuss the negative aspects of becoming civilized. . . . Basically, painting is all about “revealing,” but we have to use methods of “concealing” in order to present the truth that we want to expose.57

Ai Weiwei, Straight, 2008–12, steel reinforcing bars, 6 x 12 m. Installation view at Zuecca Project Space, Venice. Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery, London.

For Ai Weiwei there is always little separation between his personal life and artistic production; in his exhibitions at the 2013 Venice Biennale any distinction there may have between the two has been conflated. Three exhibitions showcased his work in Venice: two were individual projects titled Straight and S.A.C.R.E.D., curated by Maurizio Bortolotti,58 and in the —temporarily situated in the —Ai Weiwei “represented” Germany together with three other artists. Straight restaged a work presented at in Ai Weiwei’s retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2012. Bent reinforcement bars from the wreckage of schools that collapsed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province were brought to Beijing where they were straightened. In the Sala Zuecca at Le Zitelle in Venice they were installed one on top of the other in a minimalist landscape occupying an entire room. Even the most jaded of Ai Weiwei’s observers will find S.A.C.R.E.D. both moving and disturbing. Six metal containers about 1.5 metres high were placed in the nave of the church of Sant’Antonin. Inside the containers are individual dioramas that depict episodes in Ai Weiwei’s eighty-one-day-long imprisonment in 2011. Each container is assigned a subtitle: Supper (eating); Accusers (interrogation); Cleansing (shower); Ritual (walking), Entropy (sleep), and Doubt (toilet). Each of the containers has viewing holes through which visitors can gain a partial view of the scene, thereby themselves becoming both voyeur and an agent of surveillance.

Ai Weiwei’s participation in the German Pavilion has been seen as political commentary directed at China by the Pavilion’s curator, Susanne Gaensheimer. In fact, her invitation to four artists of whom three are

Vol. 12 No. 5 23 Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D., 2011–13, six-part work composed of (i) Supper, (ii) Accusers, (iii) Cleansing, (iv) Ritual, (v) Entropy, (vi) Doubt, six dioramas in fiberglass and iron, each 377 x 198 x 153 cm. Installation view at Chiesa di Sant'Antonin, Venice. Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery, London.

24 Vol. 12 No. 5 not German nationals to “represent” Germany, is a continuation of her curatorial practice with the late German filmmaker , who represented Germany at the 2011 Venice Biennale posthumously. Gaensheimer notes in her catalogue foreword that:

What Christoph Schlingensief wanted to realize at the German Pavilion [in 2011] was a “Gesamtkunstwerk” that would have defied traditional boundaries in more than one sense. . . . [T]he logical conclusion seemed to me to pursue this transnational approach further and retain Schlingensief’s focus on the question of the significance of national representation today. . . . In doing so, we wanted to articulate on the level of art and with its distinctive means that we, as curators and artists, feel committed to the idea of a shared European culture within the more encompassing referential framework of a global cultural community, and that is the daily basis of our work.59

Ai Weiwei, installation view For the German Pavilion, Ai Weiwei assembled at German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo: Zheng 886 three-legged wooden stools. Today antique, Shengtian. Courtesy of the artist and Venice Biennale. the stools were for centuries in common use in homes throughout China. “The single stool as part of an encompassing sculptural structure may be read as a metaphor for the individual and its relation to an overarching and excessive system in a postmodern world developing at lightning speed. [It provides a perspective] on how biographical, cultural, or political identity is related to larger, transnational conditions and circumstances.”60 Indeed, unstable forms of national identity were to be found throughout the entire Venice Biennale, most overtly in This is not a Taiwan Pavilion addressed elsewhere in this volume. Similarly unstable but rich in infinite possibilities is the role of the artist in an age of synchronicity, as Massimiliano Gioni observed. In such a period the grand gesture appears increasingly hollow. Instead, it can be the ruminations of an artist like Lee Kit from Hong Kong, living modestly among those he serves, that is of enduring value. “Do the pictures keep you warm?” he asks. His objects, handpicked from the everyday, are morality plays for living.

More than a century ago, in 1909, Anna Seaton-Schmidt lamented that “we moderns have been too long occupied with the production of individual pictures and statues, which we have huddled together in our annual Exhibitions, to their own undoing and the infinite wearying of all who visited them.”61 At the 2013 Venice Biennale huddles of singular pictures have been replaced by a cacophonous, lawless, romantic, and at times kamikaze assemblage of narratives for living that threaten to collapse under the weight of their own desires. None are more fascinating and contentious than those spun and purled by artists from China whose presence in Venice has unleashed virulent debates at home. Curator and critic Du Xiyun recorded some comments for posterity in an essay titled “Outputting State if

Vol. 12 No. 5 25 Failing to Output Value —— Yuan Gong’s Air Strikes Around the World.” 62 One described Yuan Gong’s performance as troublemaking sensationalism; another saw it as a challenge to the power system. Critic Tong Yujie is quoted as dismissing Yuan Gong’s action (“the political imagination of contemporary art is not merely [a] simple and coarse political gimmick”), while Li Zhenhua, artist, curator, and founder-director of the Beijing Art Lab, reputedly suggested that:

Air Strikes around the World is the most direct challenge and response to Eurocentrism in the global art map. Compared to the exhibition and artistic works officially approved by the Venice Biennale, Yuan Gong’s air strikes completely changed a state of being passive to an active aggression, which is an independent artistic work beyond the Western value evaluation system.63

For Du Xiyun himself, Air Strikes Around the World may not be a profound work of art, but it does symbolically and accurately “coincide with China’s current state: rapid rising but superficial, overwhelming and ferocious in appearance but feeble in essence, seemingly powerful but weak, deliberately mystifying and even deficient.”64 Du Xiyun notes that Yuan Gong regards himself as “a disordered academic-combination person who is ruined in Post-Marxism.”65These ruins provide safe harbour for an absence of sovereignty over interpretation (a sovereignty that Swiss critic Samuel Herzog believed he identified in Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace).66 It is the persistent and tenacious refusal of such sovereignty in the face of “the sharp blade of reality”67 that makes the presence of Chinese artists in Venice, and their narratives for living, so compelling.

Notes 1 Anna Seaton-Schmidt of Cincinnati “was a successful writer and lecturer on art and wrote . . . for international art periodicals and for her newspapers in Cincinnati, Boston, and Washington, D.C. She frequently visited the Nourse sisters [painter Elizabeth and her sister Louise] in and joined them on painting trips to Picardy, Brittany, Italy, and Switzerland,” Mary Alice Heekin Burke, “Elizabeth Nourse: Cincinnati’s Most Famous Woman Artist,” library.cincymuseum.org/journals/art/files/eli-065. pdf. 2 Anna Seaton-Schmidt, “Venice: An Example: The Development of the Art Gallery as Manifested in the International Biennial Exhibition,” Art and Progress 1, no. 1 (November 1909), 12–13. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), Frieda Harris (1877–1962), Emma Kunz (1892–1963), Augustin Lesage (1876–1954), Xul Solar (1887–1963), Anna Zemánková (1908–1986), and Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). 6 Chris Wiley, “Guo Fengzi,” in Massimiliano Gioni, “Is Everything in My Mind?,” Il Palazzo Enciclopedico: The Encyclopedic Palace (Venice: Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, 2013), 394. 7 Massimiliano Gioni, “Is Everything in My Mind?” in Il Palazzo Enciclopedico: The Encyclopedic Palace, 23. 8 "Ohne jede Transkription und ohne Erklärungen allerdings ist das «Red Book» hier lediglich ein Symbol für Jungs Gedankenwelt. . . . Gioni [verzichtet] darauf, irgendein narratives Zelt über seine Ausstellung zu spannen, in dessen Schatten eine Zusammengehörigkeit der Dinge und Diskurse sichtbar werden könnte,” Samuel Herzog, “Biennale von Venedig: Weltumarmung auf die alte Art,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 1, 2013, http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/kunst_architektur/ weltumarmung-auf-die-alte-art-1.18090839/. 9 "Ja ist es nicht auch so, dass im Grunde keine Enzyklopädie ohne ein bestimmtes Mass an autoritärer Gestik auskommt? Wer eine Enzyklopädie schafft, der beansprucht damit automatisch auch eine gewisse Interpretationshoheit—das gilt wahrscheinlich sogar für ganz individuelle Enzyklopädien"; Samuel Herzog, “Biennale von Venedig: Weltumarmung auf die alte Art.”

26 Vol. 12 No. 5 10 Holland Cotter, “Beyond the ‘Palace,’ an International Tour in One City,“ New York Times, June 5, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/arts/design/venice-biennale-in-its-55th-edition. html?ref=venicebiennale/. 11 “The Encyclopedic Palace is laid out in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and in the Arsenale forming a single itinerary, with works spanning over the past century alongside several new commissions, including over 150 artists from 37 countries,” Web site of the 2013 Venice Biennale, http://www. labiennale.org/en/art/. 12 Cotter, “Beyond the ‘Palace'.” 13 Gioni, “Is Everything in My Mind?” 23. 14 Georg Diez, “Wikipedia Kunst,” Der Spiegel, no. 26 (June 2013), 126: "Wir leben im 21. Jahrhundert," sagt er schließlich, "und deshalb wollte ich in Venedig eine Ausstellung entwerfen, die gleichzeitig historisch ist und gegenwärtig. Denn wir leben im Zeitalter der Synchronizität." 15 The exhibition took place at Tesa 91 and Tese di San Cristoforo n. 92–93–94, Arsenale. 16 The academic forum was titled The Interpretation of Chinese Contemporary Art: Global Context, Chinese System, Historical Scheme and Value. 17 Zhang Zixuan, “No longer unseen voices at Venice Biennale,” China Daily, May 31, 2013, http://www. chinadaily.com.cn/life/2013-05/31/content_16550014.htm/. 18 Press release, Voice of the Unseen/Chinese Independent Art 1970–Today, May 2013. 19 H. G. Masters, “Field Trip: Venice, Beyond the Biennale,” ArtAsiaPacific, June 7, 2013, http://www. artasiapacific.com/Blog/FieldTripVeniceBeyondTheBiennale/. 20 Press release, Voice of the Unseen/Chinese Independent Art 1970–Today, May 2013. 21 Liao Danlin, “Things that make you go ‘hmm?’” Global Times, June 17, 2013, http://www.globaltimes. cn/content/789394.shtml/. 22 Ian Volner, “The Neutralization of Chinese Art. The ‘accepted rebels’ at the Venice Biennale,” New Republic, June 24, 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113583/chinese-art-neutralized-venice- biennale#/. 23 “Yuan Gong and his assistants implemented Yuan Gong’s art project Air Strikes Around the World across time and space, at the same time, both in Venice [Piazza San Marco] and Shanghai. While implementing the art project in Venice, it received quite big attention from the local police, so his assistants got arrested and they were brought to the local police office for the investigation. On the contrary, when the project was carried out in Shanghai, the local police and the residents didn’t pay any attention at all. Yuan Gong himself was in Shanghai” Correspondence between the artist’s assistant and the author, July 17, 2013. 24 Yuan Gong Web site, http://www.yuangong-art.com/news/air-strikes-around-the-world-in-venice/. The complete artist’s statement, provided by his assistant to the author, is dated May 25, 2013: “In Venice and Shanghai, the implementation of the project Air Strikes Around the World may lead to many questions, but I want to say that it represents my true feelings about China and the world. On the one hand, I think that people may consider themselves as the creators of human civilization. But on the other hand humans cannot eradicate the barbarian side to their existence, such as the threat to the world of rogue states such as North Korea, the territorial disputes in East Asia, and terrorism in the Middle East. The world is violent and turbulent! In China economic and social growth presents a false prosperity for society. There is a lot of corruption. Law exists in name only, not real law, just the presence of law. Powerful interests are controlled by the interpersonal relations of a few people. This is on China’s conscience! Today there are so many Chinese exhibitions at Venice. This displays a Chinese anxiety, a desire to have dialogue with the world. But they have no opportunity to output values, to contribute to the academic and art worlds. The art project Air Strikes Around the World is a new experimental work that exists across time and space and is combined in a network.” 25 The exhibition, which took place at Spazio Thetis, Castello 925, included the artists Chen Danqing, Fang Zhenning, Li Tianbing, Liu Xiaodong, Mar Jiqqi and Ma Jun (mathgroup), Shiau Jon-Jen, Tan Ping, Wang Guofeng, Yu Hong, Yu Jianrong, Zhang Xinjun, Zhao Shuhong, and Zhu Xiaodi. 26 Mind-Beating, video, https://www.facebook.com/Mind.Beating/. 27 “The central focus of the exhibition is the high-speed train which is a metaphor for many aspects of Chinese reality. Although there have been train derailments elsewhere, such as the recent one in Spain, speed in China still represents a most terrible power. As is the case with many other disasters in China, it is speed which sacrifices the well-being of the Chinese people. High speed is both ecstasy and nightmare,” correspondence between Yu Gao and the author, July 26, 2013. 28 Fang Zhenning, ed., Mente-Pulsante/Mind-Beating (Beijing: Authentic Vision [HK] Ltd., 2013), 163. 29 Ibid., 151. 30 Conversation with the author, May 30, 2013. 31 Fang Zhenning, ed., Mente-Pulsante/Mind-Beating, 115. 32 Conversation with the author, May 30, 2013. 33 Ibid., 31. 34 Conversation with the author, May 30, 2013. 35 Ibid., 67. 36 The title of Yu Hong’s work in 1993 was also Landscape. 37 See Meiqin Wang, Confrontation and Complicity: Rethinking Official Art in Contemporary China, Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 2007, 124, http://books.google.com/ books?id=r1SEtvf7st8C/. In 1997, both Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong were included in the , this time at the invitation of the Chinese Commisioner (and participating artist), Sun Weimin who was then Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Other artists were Chao Ge, Hong Ling, Hu Jiancheng, Liu Gang, Shen Ling, Wan Jiyuan, Wang Yuping, Xie Dongming, and Yuan Yunsheng, Chen Yifei was also awarded a solo exhibition: Meiqin Wang, Confrontation and Complicity, 129. 38 Correspondence with the author, July 19, 2013.

Vol. 12 No. 5 27 39 “Through this time period there is a recorded change in accepted attitudes toward Chinese culture and its international identity in the Western world, as well as toward China’s contribution to contemporary art, particularly in painting. The theme of exhibition, passage to history, derives from these,” press release, Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art, http://www.artecommunications.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti cle&id=2519%3Apassage-to-history-20-years-of-la-biennale-di-venezia-and-chinese-contemporary- art-biennale-arte&catid=132%3Aesposizioni-e-mostre-2013&lang=en/. 40 Lü Peng (), Zhu Zhu (), and Kao Chienhui (), Reshaping History: Chinart from 2000 to 2009 (Beijing: China National Convention Center Beijing, May 2010). 41 Press release, Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art, http://www.artecommunications.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2519% 3Apassage-to-history-20-years-of-la-biennale-di-venezia-and-chinese-contemporary-art-biennale- arte&catid=132%3Aesposizioni-e-mostre-2013&lang=en/. 42 Ibid. 43 The twenty artists in Passage to History are Chen Xi, Cui Xiuwen, Fang Lijun, Li Qing, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Mao Xuhui, Sui Jianguo, Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Xu Bing, Yan Peiming, Ye Yongqing, Yin Zhaoyang, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhan Wang, Zhang Peili, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zhou Chunya. 44 Videotaped interview with Lü Peng at his home in Chengdu on March 1, 2010, Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980 to 1990, Asia Art Archive, http://www.china1980s. org/en/interview_detail.aspx?interview_id=75/. 45 This volume was possibly a later edition of A History of Western Art, by Japanese artist Kimura Sohachi (1893–1958), which was translated by Qian Juntao and originally published in 1932. 46 Videotaped interview with Lü Peng at his home in Chengdu on March 1, 2010, http://www.china1980s. org/en/interview_detail.aspx?interview_id=75/. 47 Lü Peng, Foreword, Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art (September 2013), http://www.chengdumoca.org/en/exhibition/ column/3214/01/393/. 48 As Rene Block observed, the external financing of the Venice Biennale through autonomous national and regional pavilions (as well as its Collateral events) “is simply ingenious”; Rene Block, “We Hop On, We Hop Off: The Ever-faster Spinning Carousel of Biennials,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 12, no. 3 (May–June 2013), 32. This has opened the Venice Biennale to an exceptional range of cultural discourses that are not accessible elsewhere. 49 Venice: Wang Guangyi on Chinese Contemporary Artists, videotaped interview, http://www. blouinartinfo.com/news/story/923297/venice-report-video-wang-guangyi-on-chinese-contemporary/. 50 Wang Chunchen, Transfiguration: The Presence of Chinese Artistic Methods in Venice (San Marino: Maretti Editore, 2013), 7. 51 Nikos Papastergiadis, “The Cosmos in Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 12, no. 3 (May/June 2013), 11–12. 52 Avihai Becker, “Why We Refuse,” 2003, http://www.seruv.org.il/english/article.asp?msgid=60/. 53 See Nina Siegal, “Lebanese Artist Explores ‘Human Face’ of Conflict: ‘Letter to a Refusing Pilot’ by Akram Zaatari,” New York Times, June 19, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/movies/letters- to-a-refusing-pilot-by-akram-zaatari.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0/. 54 Kamikaze Loggia (Tbilisi: Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, 2013), 2. 55 Nataline Colonnello, On He Yunchang’s project “One Rib,” Galerie Urs Meile, http://www. galerieursmeile.com/fileadmin/images/Artists/HE_YUNCHANG/HE_YUNCHANG_TEXTS/ He-Yunchang_On-He-Yunchangs-Project-One-Rib_Nataline-Colonnello_2009_E.pdf/. 56 Two other group exhibitions were presented at the Palazzo Mora: Rediscover, curated by Karlyn De Jongh from the Netherlands, and Ingrandimento, curated by Huang Du and Yang Shinyi. The series of exhibitions were titled Culture Mind Becoming. Another solo exhibition, of the work of Qui Zhijie, titled The Unicorn and the Dragon, was presented at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice and the Aurora Museum in Shanghai. 57 Fang Lijun, A Cautionary Vision (Beijing: Art of Two Centuries, 2013), unpaginated. 58 Maurizio Bortolotti, Foreword, Disposition: Ai Weiwei, Straight S.A.C.R.E.D. (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2013), unpaginated. 59 Susanne Gaensheimer, Foreword, Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng, Dayanita Singh (Berlin: Gestalten, 2013), 52–53. 60 Ibid., 53. 61 Anna Seaton-Schmidt, "Venice: An example: The Development of the Art Gallery as Manifested in the International Biennial Exhibition, Art and Progress 1, no. 1 (November 1909), 12–13. 62 Du Xiyun, Give a Little Time for the Ideal, IV (Beijing: New Star Press, 2013. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Samuel Herzog, “Biennale von Venedig: Weltumarmung auf die alte Art,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 1, 2013, http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/kunst_architektur/weltumarmung-auf-die-alte- art-1.18090839/. 67 Nataline Colonnello, On He Yunchang’s project “One Rib.”

28 Vol. 12 No. 5 Alice Schmatzberger On Chinese Art in Global Times: A Conversation with Wang Chunchen

Wang Chunchen, Curator of ang Chunchen, the China Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo: Hu curator of the Chinese Zhiheng. Courtesy of the China Pavilion. WPavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013, studied English Literature at Hebei University and modern art history at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. He is now the head of the Department of Curatorial Research of CAFA Art Museum and deputy professor of modern art theory at CAFA. Currently, he is also adjunct curator at The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum of Michigan State University, responsible for a five-year exhibition series, The History of the Mind in Contemporary Chinese Art, which opens on October 4, 2013. He has published extensively on modern art history and its theories and has translated eleven books on these topics.

Alice Schmatzberger: To begin with, let us talk about the history of the Chinese pavilion at the Venice Biennale. When and how did the participation of China begin?

Wang Chunchen: China officially set up a national pavilion in 2003, but that year an epidemic disease (SARS) broke out in China. Therefore, the selected works were not exhibited in Venice but instead shown at the Guangdong Art Museum. Thus, the first China Pavilion in Venice was inaugurated in 2005 and was curated by Cai Guo-qiang with six participating artists—Yung Ho Chang, Liu Wei, Peng Yu and Sun Yuan, Wang Qiheng, and Xu Zhen.

Alice Schmatzberger: What were the reasons or the motivation behind the decision to establish a Chinese pavilion?

Wang Chunchen: From 1993 onward, the first year that Chinese artists were invited to participate at the Venice Biennale, artists, critics, curators, and other art professionals often asked why China did not have its own national pavilion. It was regarded as a very important opportunity to showcase contemporary Chinese art. But back then China’s government didn’t understand the significance of it. After 2000, following regular suggestions by art specialists as well as the influence of globalization on art, China’s

Vol. 12 No. 5 29 Entrance to the China Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo: Alice Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the China Pavilion.

government regarded the Venice Biennale as a good platform for exhibiting Chinese art, so, from then on, China joined in on many similar events as part of its efforts at internationalization.

Alice Schmatzberger: Who decides upon each respective curator?

Wang Chunchen: From the beginning until now, the Chinese pavilion has been organized by the China Art and Entertainment Group (CAEG), which is supported by the Ministry of Culture. The Ministry of Culture set up CAEG back in 1949, and it is responsible for organizing Chinese cultural activities and art exhibitions abroad. So when the government decided to join the Venice Biennale, CAEG received the responsibility to organize, select, and coordinate the operation of the Chinese pavilion. At the beginning, they appointed the curator, and then the curator selected and invited the artists. But starting this year, the selection of the curator followed a different approach: There was a public invitation to submit proposals, which then went through an evaluation and selection process by a special committee invited and organized by the Ministry of Culture.

Alice Schmatzberger: Could you please summarize your curatorial approach concerning the Venice Biennale? What is the curatorial concept underlying the title Transfiguration?1

30 Vol. 12 No. 5 Wang Chunchen: When I developed my proposal for this year’s pavilion, I studied carefully the concept of The Encyclopedic Palace, which is the title of the main exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni at the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as the concept of the “anthropology of images” advocated by Hans Belting, the German art historian. I understood from this about the inclusiveness of cultures in the world, from the traditional to the contemporary, and the expressions of the changing development within art—so I naturally thought about how to express changing China and its art. It occurred to me spontaneously that a term such as “transfiguration” was a good choice, since this term is used in art history to refer to the appearance of the images of Jesus Christ in front of his followers, and thus representing the metamorphosis of figures and images. Later, this term was used by Arthur C. Danto in his book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace 2 to denote the phenomena of the delineation of life to art and of non-art to art. I use it to show that China is, or has, transfigured during the past three decades, that art in China has been transfigured, and that even the process of transfiguration or changing is still on-going.

Alice Schmatzberger: Considering the term transfiguration, isn’t there a saying that goes something like: Someone who does not transfigure or change constantly cannot stay the same. You have to stay yourself but transfigure with time; you have to adapt to the changing circumstances so that you can stay true to yourself.

Wang Chunchen: This is a good explanation. This idea is similar to my own considerations. And I also refer to the way art has changed, the relationship of life to art has changed, our attitude to art has changed, so our life in China is constantly transfigured—economically, culturally, politically, with the Internet, Weibo, and so on.

Alice Schmatzberger: What criteria did you draw upon for the selection of the respective artists?

Wang Chunchen: In selecting these artists, I just want to express my idea that in China art is in fact in a state that consists of very diversified phenomena. For example, I chose very different media to symbolize this diversification. Another reason I chose digital videos and light box photography is the space of the Chinese pavilion itself. Initially, when I started to conceptualize this exhibition there were something like forty-two oil tanks placed inside, and now only one is left. It is a former warehouse located in the Arsenale—very dark, very dirty, and smelling very much of oil. That is why I wanted to use bright images to be projected on the dark walls, so when entering the pavilion the public can immediately become impressed. The middle section displays photography and also paintings highlighted with spotlights. And at the other end of that space you will find again an area with dynamic images, video, and digital art. I try to create an atmosphere of letting the public feel the rhythm of these images, but also to metaphorize the changing of art in China.

Vol. 12 No. 5 31 Left: Interior view of China Pavilion with works Tong Hongsheng. Left: Kaimyo, n.d., oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm. Centre left: Karmapa, n.d., oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm. Right: Incense Burner, n. d., oil on canvas, 50 x 120 cm. Photo: Alice Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the artist and China Pavilion.

Right:. Interior view of China Pavilion. Left: Wang Qingsong, Temporary Ward, 2008, light box print, 180 x 320 cm. Right: Miao Xiaochun, Last Judgement in Cyberspace–The Front View, 2005–06, C print, 418 x 360 cm. Photo: Alice Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the artists and China Pavilion.

Interior view of China Pavilion. Left: He Yunchang, The Rock Tours Round Great Britain, 2006–07, documentation of performance, 112 photographs, 35 x 45.5 cm each. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne/ Beijing. Right: Wang Qingsong, Follow You, 2013, 180 x 300 cm, colour photograph. Photo: Alice Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the artists and China Pavilion.

Alice Schmatzberger: I imagine the selection was quite difficult or tricky. China as a country is bigger than the whole European Union, but the EU has almost thirty pavilions and China only one. So how can you choose from this vast diversity of artworks? How could you manage to restrict yourself?

Wang Chunchen: I have been asked these questions many, many times. As I said, my theme, Transfiguration, refers to the process of changing, and the process of changing means that anything can be possible. One thing can be transformed into something else. We perhaps have more contemporaneity, but, also, we can have more future—development is uncertain at the moment because there is no exact direction, there exists no one single way to evolve. Transfiguration means we can go here or we can go there: it reflects the real situation, the real phenomena of a diversified China. Following these reflections I then thought about what kind of artists I could look for. And of course I had to take into account the specific space of our pavilion. As I mentioned, I thought I would have had to cope with all these oil tanks that had been left in the pavilion, I considered it to be a headache, and I feared that I might not be able to show anything. Later, I heard that the oil tanks

32 Vol. 12 No. 5 were taken away, so I made some adjustments to my concept. I then came up very quickly with those seven artists for my proposal. At that time I knew them; I knew what they were doing at the moment. These works are kind of a symbolic representation. I wouldn’t say they are just representative; I would say they are a symbol for any kind of contemporary Chinese art.

Alice Schmatzberger: The Venice Biennale is considered a site for showcasing contemporary art. Usually, what is considered “contemporary” are artworks that deal with today’s economic, social, or political developments, which reflects upon social distortions or the consequences of globalization, artworks that cross boundaries of media, etc., and sometimes only l’art pour l’art. Under such presumptions, I would like to know your considerations for including oil paintings by Tong Hongsheng with Buddhist backgrounds by Tong Hongsheng and motifs and the wooden installation by Hu Yaolin consisting of elements taken from the slowly disappearing traditional Hui-style architecture and houses, respectively?

Wang Chunchen: I take these oil paintings as a proof of how this artist refers to a common phenomenon of daily life as a practice of his inner mind or as a kind of belief, if we don’t use the term “religious.” China has changed a lot, especially economically, but, other than material changes and developments, we are more concerned with the state of belief. These works are just a method of asking such questions and not providing the answer. The wooden installation is another material testimony to China’s dramatic social changes. As you know, many old houses have been demolished to make way for new buildings, highways, office towers, and development zones; thus the landscape of traditional towns and cities has changed totally, and many such Chinese-styled houses are gone. I use this model of a civilian house installation to ask the question of whether we feel pity or are merciless towards our heritage—if the thing itself is nothing—and how we can prove our own cultural identity with these newly erected buildings? Behind such a wooden installation, a mix of diverse feeling can be found among the audience, be it Chinese or international.

Alice Schmatzberger: Is it necessary from your point of view to take into account the international audience when choosing artworks?

Wang Chunchen: Not exactly. I know such works can be significant in their explanation of the situation with Chinese society and its cultural changes. I want to use these works to express the state of Chinese artistic changes, including the employment of new technologies or conceptual expressions. These works could help to elicit the interest of the international audience in the transformation of China, both culturally and socially.

Alice Schmatzberger: Chinese artists are represented at many sites and occasions in Venice. I did some research: besides the Chinese pavilion, Chinese artists can be found at four other pavilions and in the general exhibition The Encyclopaedic Palace. Furthermore, there are eight collateral events dealing solely with contemporary Chinese art, and there are two

Vol. 12 No. 5 33 further collateral events where Chinese artists are exhibited inter alia. Zhang Xiaotao, The Adventure of Liangliang No. 1, 2013, Moreover, there are at least eight so-called “Not Just Biennial” events animation, 7 mins., 23 secs. Courtesy of the artist and featuring Chinese art. What do you think about this phenomenon? China Pavilion.

Wang Chunchen: In fact, in this Miao Xiaochun, Neocubism, digital video, 2012. Photo: first half year before the opening Alice Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the artist and China Pavilion. of the Venice Biennale, many Chinese art media, magazines, Web sites, or micro blogs discussed this phenomenon. Some comments were very harsh and critical—even cursing—and some were mild, some neutral. My point of view is that no matter what kind of exhibitions or events show these artworks, they are made in China and from China; they are all labelled Chinese art. But the key point is how such exhibitions are curated and displayed. So the themes and topics of such exhibitions and events become most important, and how artworks are chosen is important. This does not mean that every artwork from China can be labelled significant or meaningful. But this applies to other exhibitions as well; it is not only a matter of Chinese art in Venice. Another reason for the presence of so many Chinese artworks in Venice is perhaps that the organizers and artists take the Venice Biennale as an important venue to display their works, making the audience know them better.

The other side of this question is why in China we could not have or create such an international, influential art biennial or exhibition to attract a more international audience. From such a phenomenon we ought to reflect upon how open a cultural policy should be and how a tolerant attitude is important when organizing cultural platforms in a contemporary world.

34 Vol. 12 No. 5 Alice Schmatzberger: During the 1990s, and then at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were a lot of exhibitions with Chinese art in Europe, but all these exhibitions had a label—like Art from China, China Now, China Facing Reality—so all these artworks were somehow labelled “Chinese.”

Wang Chunchen: Ah, I want to get rid of that!

Alice Schmatzberger: But do you think that there is finally a point where artists from non-Western regions are being primarily perceived as contemporary artists and not as “Asian,” “African,” etc.?

Wang Chunchen: For the moment, these artists are still called Asian or African. Subconsciously, we want to know where they are from. But in recent years some critics and theorists propose a concept of “global art,” which may imply that the distinctions between different cultures are becoming indistinguishable. But in China, many artworks have implicit or more explicit Chinese characteristics, especially concerning their content and meaning. How Chinese art is made today has a kind of universal value artistically. How Chinese artists respond to their cultural metamorphosis at this special unique moment of history of China is a special challenge. So the role and function of art become critical and controversial, yet, it seems that there are no serious criteria now on how to judge art. But for an art historian or critic or theorist, these criteria ought to be seriously academic, responsible, and sensitive. I would say this is a global issue for artists to think about.

Alice Schmatzberger: Contemporary art is getting more and more global, so one point is that art from regions like China, India, or Korea is now becoming more and more known to people internationally. If one takes a

Vol. 12 No. 5 35 closer look at the predominant Outdoor view of China Pavilion. Left: He Yunchang, structures of the art market or The Seawater of Venice, 2013, 2,013 glass bottles, table, big exhibitions, still, most of the water. Centre: Hu Yaolin, Thing-in-Itself, installation, international curators appear to wood, 2013. Right: Shu Yong, Guge Brick, 1500 resin and be Westerners. This seems to be rice paper bricks, 39 x 15 x 9 cm each. Photo: Alice relevant when thinking about Schmatzberger. Courtesy of the “curatoriat,” a term coined the artists and China Pavilion. by John Clark, describing the power of curators in selecting contemporary artworks and thus determining access and establishing international canons.

Do you think that an artist from China has to fulfill certain aesthetic criteria in order to take part in that game? Could globalization have an impact upon the aesthetics or the iconography of artworks, like a mainstreaming in art production?

Wang Chunchen: Actually that’s a good point, a good question. In China, we also discuss this, but until now we haven’t had agreement on whether there might be such consequences. Yes, globalization has already had such an impact when it comes to media and methods that artists use. Some people argue that this is a sort of postcolonialism, or they take it as the dominance of Western influence, so they don’t take it as a part of their own real typical cultural identity. Therefore, they suggest that artists should have their own tactics to fight against Western influences, that art should be taken as weaponry to fight against Western culture. These people also regard globalization as Westernization or Americanization. But I don’t hold such a view. Instead, I think that globalization is an inescapable tendency. The key issue is how we responsibly deal in a humanist way with our global issues, even if we live in different cultural areas or countries. The paradoxical knots here are that we have to choose something to rely on. When you stress universal values, you will be labelled as a Western postcolonialist. When you advocate for localized values, you will be coloured as a nationalist. In this field, art becomes more and more a controversial issue.

But globalization also means that Wang Qingsong, Follow You, 2013, 180 x 300 cm, colour people are moving around more photograph. Courtesy of the artist and China Pavilion. and more, and the possibility to get to know each other is greater, so from communication, from talking, we can share different ideas, even conceptions—of course we can understand why somebody is doing something in this or that way. And under such a horizon we cannot say that only one single art criterion is acceptable or possible; we have more choices now. This does not imply that everything is good. I just want to emphasize that some artists still are very significant, some not; some are rather trivial, some just for decoration, some just for commercial purposes. But if we know that an artist commits a lifetime of energy for his or her work, then we want to know: why does he or she do that, why are these images so special, why could that be art? More and more Chinese artists make something particular. If you just look at the artworks you often cannot figure out what

36 Vol. 12 No. 5 it is about—even I myself cannot—so you need background information, you need a conversation to understand. We are becoming more tolerant of different kinds of art.

Alice Schmatzberger: But artists work in a local context while at the same time longing for international reputation. To be outstanding within the global art world you may need to take recourse to the regional culture, to the local iconography as a space of authenticity. Could the visibility of Chinese (or any non-Western) art depend upon the artist’s ability to speak a visual language that is easily understood in the international art world?

Wang Chunchen: The uniqueness of any artistic expressions is very important. I think that the Western art world, if they want to be universal and show equal respect to the most different forms of art, should increasingly notice, observe, and study the unpopular, non-market-oriented artists, not vice versa. In fact, it is necessary that we develop a new definition for the function and significance of art—this is a common issue for all artists, Western or non-Western. To be universal and independent is a hard choice. To be Chinese artists does not mean that they have to follow the traditional modalities, but when they encounter the globalized world, they have to face the fissure and loss of cultural traditions together with the emergence of an ambiguous uncertainty about a cultural future and social orientation.

And after all the conceptualizing, the preparation, and the opening days in Venice, I have the strong feeling that we have to reflect upon what our exhibition at the pavilion is lacking, what we ought to do more of, and to what extent we still have the room to improve our performance and operation. I have especially more ideas and plans on researching and writing on Chinese art, also vis-à-vis global art. The real critic and curator is not a fixed anchor; he is only singing a lonely song, a real traveller to wander amid seas and winds to experience the real fresh air and sunshine and moon-set and hurricane. The more you observe the art made in China, the more you could discover that there are many hidden dynamics and unspoken secrets inside: an unavoidable tendency that occurs among the real Chinese artists who pursue such spiritual practice in their life, such as He Yunchang, in this pavilion. But there many more such artists, for example, Jizi, who is not known well outside of China, or even inside China. He is a real and pure artist spending all his life for one thing, that is, to make his own art a testimony of his life existence. Such an attitude is pervasive among many unfashionable artists in China—why do they have such attitudes? It is due to their surviving struggles in a special environment, and it is only such obstacles that make them unique and distinctive and historically significant.

Notes 1 The exhibition at the China pavilion is entitled Transfiguration. A comprehensive catalogue accompanies it: Transfiguration—The Presence of Chinese Artistic Methods in Venice (San Marino: Maretti Editore, 2013). The following artists are exhibited in the China pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale: He Yunchang, Hu Yaolin, Miao Xiaochun, Shu Yong, Tong Hongsheng, Wang Qingsong, Zhang Xiaotao. 2 Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Vol. 12 No. 5 37 Lu Pei-Yi To Be or Not to Be a National Pavilion: Taiwan Pavilion and Hong Kong Pavilion at Venice

stablished in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the world’s oldest and most prestigious art exposition. Its unique structure consists mainly of Ea thematic pavilion organized by Biennale directors and national pavilions featuring artists chosen by the represented nation. The idea of a national pavilion can be traced back to the nineteenth-century world exposition model that emphasizes international competition through peaceful means. This model echoed the mentality of imperialist colonial expansion and represented the desire of nation-state construction. However, in the twenty-first century, the concept of nation-state is experiencing the increasing phenomenon of deterritorialization via the Internet, immigration, and the operations of global capital. If this is the case, how should we reconsider the mechanism of the national pavilion in the Venice Biennale?

Many debates have risen in the past few years that question this problematic notion of the national pavilion. For example, the at Venice in 2005 showed Santiago Sierra who allowed only visitors with a Spanish passport to enter the pavilion. In 2009, British artist was invited to show in the German Pavilion, in 2011the Poland Pavilion was represented by Israel artist Yael Bartana, and in 2013 Germany and France exchanged their pavilion venues. However, could such approaches toward national pavilions be generated in some of the more politically marginalized regions such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, both of which have experienced political complications with mainland China?

The first Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was in 1995, when Taiwan was added to the official list of national pavilions under the name of R.O.C Taiwan–Taipei, which is how it participated in the two Biennales that followed. But, after 2001, as a result of China’s obstruction,1 the Taiwan Pavilion was forced to abandon its national pavilion status and thereafter was listed as a collateral event. The year 2001 also marked Hong Kong’s first participation under the name of Hong Kong, China.

In 2013, both the Taiwan and Hong Kong Pavilions encountered great concerns within their respective art communities because of their selection process. The chosen proposal for the Taiwan Pavilion, by curator Esther Lu, called for three projects, but included only one Taiwanese artist. This decision raised considerable criticism, in particular doubt about what a Taiwan Pavilion now actually means. And unlike the previous open call for curatorial projects for the Hong Kong Pavilion, M+ (a new museum

38 Vol. 12 No. 5 for visual culture to open in Hong Kong in 2017, but currently producing projects) was directly invited by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) to organize the presentation at the 2013 Pavilion, curated by M+ director Lars Nittve, and this particular process prompted the concern that the organizers were working “within a black box (),” in other words, lacking in transparency.

Although Taiwan and Hong Kong are listed as collateral events at Venice, they actually act like national pavilions. I would argue that we should understand them as the “Taiwan Pavilion,” and the Hong Kong (China) Pavilion—the quotation marks and the deletion mark suggesting ambiguity in light of their efforts to distinguish themselves from China. This struggle of “to be or not to be a national pavilion,” one based on complex anxieties, might aggravate rather than alter, or even reverse, the problematic status of national pavilions at the Venice Biennale.

Hou Chun-ming, prints on Taiwan is a National Pavilion (1995–2001) paper, 153.5 x 107.5 cm each, 1995 Venice Biennale. Courtesy The initial participation of the Taiwan Pavilion in 1995 was under the title of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. of ARTTAIWAN. This exhibition presented five selected artists’ works in the Palazzo delle Prigioni, near the tourist destination of Palazzo San Marco, and this site has served as Taiwan’s participation ever since. Attendance at the Venice Biennale was seen as a crucial breakthrough for Taiwan after such a long period of diplomatic exclusion—since 1971—the year when Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations and China replaced its seat. In addition, the emergence of the Taiwan Pavilion not only echoed the quest for Taiwanese identity after the lifting of martial law in 1987, but also embodied a specific concept of the “new Taiwanese,”2 a term coined

Vol. 12 No. 5 39 by President Lee Teng-Hui that Foreground: Huang Chih- yang, The Afforestation Plan same year, as a means to bridge B: Mountains and Water, mixed media, 400 x 400 cm. internally the ethnic divide and Background: Maternity Room, 1992, ink on rice paper, 60 to promote Taiwan externally as a x 240 cm each, 1995 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei unified country. Many Taiwanese Museum of Fine Arts. media, therefore, reported on the first Taiwan Pavilion at Venice in a victorious tone, using lines such as “flexible diplomacy got a rare achievement,” “look forward to speaking out for Taiwan,” “it is a successful attack,” and also describing the artists as a “national delegation” or “representative of Taiwan.” In this vein, the first Taiwan Pavilion at Venice was a symbol of nationalism and associated particularly with the political progress of Taiwanization in the 1990s.3

With exhibition titles such as View of the Taiwan Pavilion, Palazzo delle Prigioni, 1997 ARTTAIWAN (1995), Taiwan Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. Taiwan: Facing Faces (1997), and Close to Open: Taiwan Artists Exposed (1999), it is clear there was the intention to highlight the word “Taiwan” in order to strengthen the acknowledgement of Taiwan. Whether in the curatorial statements or the poster design, the effort of promoting Taiwan was obvious; for example, the curatorial statement for ARTTAIWAN, entitled “Rising from the Sea—Contemporary Taiwanese Art” emphasized Taiwan’s geographical location as“on the eastern fringe of the Pacific Ocean and the western reaches of the Asian continent.”4 Following this statement was a brief history beginning from the economic perspective of one of Asia’s phenomenal Four Little Dragons.5 This idea of promoting Taiwan also can be seen on the cover of the catalogue in its use of an old map—possibly made during the period when the Dutch occupied Taiwan (1624–62)—as a base to present an image of an island in the sea and the artists’ names listed on the top of a compass as a metaphor for the navigation of Taiwan. The idea of viewing Taiwan as a country representing a sea culture6 introduced a new perspective toward Taiwan that was adapted later by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to distinguish Taiwan from China in its history and culture.

In a previous essay of mine, “Who is Constructing the Image of Taiwan? The Strategy of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (1995/1997/1999),”7 I analyzed artworks presented in the Taiwan Pavilion that were selected by juries or curators,8 and I indicated that a sense of “Taiwaneseness,” especially in reference to its hybrid culture caused by a multi-colonization experience, could be observed in them. I further argued that these exhibitions “tried to take fragment pieces of presence on site to prove an overall absent Taiwan art.”9 The statement made by juror Francoise Chatel in 1995, “Five artists, five approaches, five trends, but a shared testimony: that of the creativity and the involvement of Taiwan’s contemporary artists with their society and with the world of art”10 supports my argument. Juror

40 Vol. 12 No. 5 Wu Tien-chang, Wounded Funeral I–IV, 1994, mixed media, 192 x 130 cm each, 1997 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

Wang Jun-jieh, Neon Urlaub—Expo Version, 1997, installation, 1997 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

Chen Chieh-jen, installation view at Taiwan Pavilion, 1999, laser printed photographs, 1999 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

Huang Hai-Ming explained in 1997 that“the works on exhibit in the Taiwan Pavilion manifest several cultural phenomena in contemporary Taiwan as a virtual image connecting art of political and social criticism and a returning to inner concerns and Eastern traditions.”11 This also can be seen in the 1999 curatorial statement in which the curator J. J. Shih described the three artists he selected as “three segments of a mirrored image of Taiwan.”12

Vol. 12 No. 5 41 Hun Tung-lu, installation view at Taiwan Pavilion, 1999, Duratran prints, 1999 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

Hwang Buh-ching, Feast in the Wild, 1999, installation, dimensions variable, 1999 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

According to the above, the Taiwan Pavilion used artworks to illustrate the characteristics of Taiwanese culture and to further demonstrate what Taiwan is. The Taiwan Pavilion, therefore, shouldered a double task: on the one hand to function as an external showcase of Taiwan through artworks, as well as to introduce Taiwanese artists to the international stage both in terms of politics and economics. On the other hand, internally it was meant to contribute to recalling the consciousness of Taiwan and to construct the imagined community of the “New Taiwanese.” In short, the Taiwan Pavilion in its initial stage as a national pavilion at Venice could be viewed as the effort, as well as the result, of Taiwanization in the1990s.

The Taiwan Pavilion as Ambiguity (2001 to Now) Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, and Macau in 1999; therefore, only Taiwan remains out of China’s control. Under China’s ideology of “One China,” the issue of Taiwan became increasingly serious. Before the 2000 Taiwanese presidential election, China’s military deployed missiles aimed at Taiwan, but this gesture of force did not work. The DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election, and this marked a significant political turning point in Taiwan. Between 2000 and 2008, the DPP government held its ground against China by introducing the policies of “Four No and One Without,” “One Country on Each Side,”13 and

42 Vol. 12 No. 5 Chang Chien-chi, The Chain (detail), 1998, silver gelatin print, each print 157.5 x 106 cm, 2001 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

Michael Lin, Palazzo delle Prigioni, 6.10–11.4, 2001, 2001, Pentalite, wall painting, 1345 x 735 x 40 cm, 2001 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

“Confrontation Diplomacy” (or Guerrilla-Warfare Diplomacy). As a result of political confrontation across two sides of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan suffered its hardest international exclusion ever. Under this circumstance, the Taiwan Pavilion at Venice was forced to relinquish its national pavilion status after 2001, but this was merely one of several cases of their exclusion.14

Daniel Lee, 108 Windows, If the Taiwan Pavilion was definitely 2003, video installation, 2003 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of a national pavilion between 1995 Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. and 1999, the situation after that should be understood, as I suggested earlier, as the “Taiwan Pavilion,” identified ironically within double quotes. The Taiwan Pavilion shifted its attention from promoting Taiwan Foreground: Shu Lea Cheang, Garlic=Rich Air, 2003, via the idea of “Taiwaneseness” installation. Background: Yuan Goang-ming, City Disqualified– to displaying its uncertain Ximen District at Night and City Disqualified–Ximen international status. For example, District in Daytime, 2002, Limbo Zone at the 2003 Venice digital photographs, 240 x 300 cm each, 2003 Venice Biennale. Biennale explored the Taiwanese Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. state of flux as a reflection of the frantic transformation taking

Vol. 12 No. 5 43 15 place through the world. The title The Spectre of Freedom for Taiwan’s Opposite page: Huang Shih-chieh, EVX–07, 2007, 2005 Venice exhibition came from the sentence saying “my liberty is only installation, 2007 Venice 16 Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei a phantom ” and the show responded to the perilous cross-strait tensions Museum of Fine Arts. at that time and the Anti-Secession Law17 made by China. Curator Chia- Chi Jason Wang stated that “The Taiwanese facing the dangers of coercion from China find it hard not to feel the gloomy realization that Taiwan is‘so far from God, and so close to China’.”18 At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Atopia revealed the fact of the vague status of Taiwan. Curator Lin Hong-john stated that, “Taiwan’s status on the international stage is consistently expressed in other terms. Consider the countless appellations under which Taiwan has appeared over the past twenty years: Taiwan (ROC), China (Taiwan), China (Taipei), China/ Taiwan, China/Taipei, Taipei, Chinese Taipei . . .” He refers to Taiwan as a “nation without nationality,” “a place at risk of losing its proper name,” or “in-the-name-of-others.”19

Lin Hsin-I, De-strike, 2005, installation, 2005 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

In 2008, Taiwan’s political climate Viva, Viva, 2007, installation and performance, 2007 Venice changed again. The Kuomintang Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. (KMT) won the presidential election and took back power after eight years under DPP rule. Contrary to DPP’s core value of “independence,” the KMT held a

brief for “unification.” The KMT Kuo I-chen, Invade the Prigioni, 2005, video installation, 2005 government set up policies, such as Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. “Flexible Diplomacy,” “Diplomatic Truce,” and idea of “de facto Reunification” toward China to improve the relationship between Taiwan and China. In the same year, China’s leader Hu Jintao delivered a speech to push forward the peaceful development of the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, the economic relationship between Taiwan and China has been increasingly closer. In this context, the long-term tension between Taiwan and China has improved.

44 Vol. 12 No. 5 Vol. 12 No. 5 45 The Taiwan Pavilion, as a Hsieh Yun-chun, What is to Be Done, 1999–, installation, 2009 seismometer, quickly responded Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. to this radical political change. The show Foreign Affairs20 in 2009 organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum presented four artists’ works that relate to cross-regional issues within global, political, economic, and social contexts. This time, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum not only played the role of commissioner but also curated the show. This process was also greatly criticized for operating without transparency, a situation similar to the debate over the 2013 Hong Kong Pavilion. Scholar Lin Chi-Ming accused this show of generating a kind of friendly relationship with China and, he argued,“look(ing) at the 2009 Taiwan Pavilion, political considerations were greater than artistic ones.”21 Here I would add that political considerations have a double reference: the politics of cross-strait circumstances and the politics of art institutions. Moreover, I view this show as a reflection of Taiwan’s uncertain status, similar in a way to the exhibitions at the Taiwan Pavilion between 2003 and 2007.

The essay “Taiwan and the Venice Biennale 1995-2009,” written by Jo-Anne Cheng-ta Yu, Ventriloquists: Introduction, 2008, video Birnie Danzker, appropriated a political terminology, “constructive installation, 2009 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei ambiguities,” to articulate the issue of the Taiwan Pavilion, which she Museum of Fine Arts. described “as the deliberate use of ambiguous language as a means to advance a political purpose or to disguise an inability to resolve a contentious issue.” She argued that, “Constructive ambiguities offered the curators of the Taiwan Pavilion an effective and sophisticated means to advance Taiwan’s political purpose while largely sidestepping contentious

46 Vol. 12 No. 5 issues.”22 In this vein, the function of ambiguity can be carefully employed to respond to political reality as expressed in William Empson’s idea: “ . . . it [ambiguity] must in each case arise from, and be justified by, the peculiar requirements of the situation.23 The Taiwan Pavilion, in its ambiguity, therefore perfectly offers a space for people who need and would like to interpret Taiwan.

Left: Liu Kuo-chang, Sound Bar, 2011, installation, 2011 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. Right: Yu-hsien Su, Sound of Nothing, 2011, video installation, 2011 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

However, the ambiguity of the Taiwan Pavilion also raises a paradox: externally Taiwan is not recognized by the international community—the Taiwan Pavilion is not a national pavilion in the Venice Biennale, but, internally, the Taiwan Pavilion is continuously seen as a national pavilion based on the collective consciousness of Taiwan as an independent country. I argue that this paradox is the main reason that caused the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion controversy explained in the following section.

Chia-wei Hsu, Marshal Tie Jia, 2013, installation, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

This is“Not” a Taiwan Pavilion (2013) In June 2012, the commissioner Taipei Fine Arts Museum called for curatorial proposals for the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion. The content of the call emphasized that as the Taiwan Pavilion has a seventeen-year history of attendance at the Venice Biennale, curators who apply should provide a new perspectives in a rethinking and rebranding of the Taiwan Pavilion. At the end of November, the proposal submitted by curator Esther Lu was selected to represent the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion. In the press announcement, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum explained that this proposal would present three projects, one each by Chia-Wei Hsu (Taiwan), Bernd Behr (Taiwan/ Germany), and Kateina Šedá (Czech Republic)24 and claimed “it is a

Vol. 12 No. 5 47 current international trend to break the rule that national pavilions should only be presented by local artists,” citing the German and Poland Pavilions as a reference. In an interview with other art media, juror Manray Hsu stated that “breaking away from the position of nation is a current international trend” and “many biennials in the world have abandoned the structure of national pavilion.”25 The announcement triggered various debates among local artists, curators, and critics.26

In the short essay entitled “Kidnapped by Imaginary International Trend,”27 I responded to the statement in the press announcement. I raised questions such as: What is the international trend? Whose trend is it? In what way is it a trend? If it is true that there is this specific international trend in the art world, why does the Taiwan Pavilion need to follow? Is it a necessity? I also concluded with three points about this controversy: first, foreign artists, as strangers, break down the ideology of nationalism and further question the representation of a de facto or imagined pavilion. Second, the term “Taiwan” here does not refer to Taiwan as Taiwanese, or more precisely the idea of “New Taiwanese,” but, rather, refers to the geographical location of Taiwan, which can be the inspiration for an artists’ creation; as curator Esther Lu said, “Taiwan could be a matrix to output.”28 Furthermore, her proposal revealed an assumption that had existed for a long time; that the Taiwan Pavilion is, in fact, not a national pavilion.

Bernd Behr, Chronotopia, 2013, film and audio installation, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.

A text by scholar Shu-Mei Shih that I read later may provide a better angle for understanding why Taiwanese artists were frustrated by this proposal. Although her essay is about how a Taiwanese mainstream TV travel program in the 1990s, Searching for the Strange on the Mainland, represented the image of China, it is still an important reference in understanding the relationship between Taiwan and China. She states:

Taiwan’s political and national identity acquired unprecedented particularity articulated against China in Taiwan’s social imaginary at the beginning of the twenty- first century after a decade of governance by the DPP, but this particularity as a discourse constructed within Taiwan runs into immediate difficulty in the international context.29

48 Vol. 12 No. 5 Therefore, in the case of the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion controversy, I suggest that as the result of encountering incoherence inside and outside of Taiwan, an identity crisis was produced. Therefore, nationalism was recalled to counter this crisis by reconfirming the legitimacy of Taiwan as“New Taiwanese.”

The 2013 Taiwan Pavilion, having opened in June, assumes the title of This Is Not a Taiwan Pavilion to present its three projects. In the first paragraph of the curatorial statement, Esther Lu illustrates the ambiguous status of Taiwan associated with the above discussion.

That the collective subconsciousness of the Taiwanese people maintains a negotiable identity reflects both the political sensitivity of Taiwan’s international situation and the historical background of this west Pacific island. The officially/unofficial survival strategy of Taiwan is to constantly appropriate its subjectivity in international relations.30

Katerina Šedá + BATEŽO She further poses a question: What can MIKILU, This is not a Czech Pavilion, 2013, public action, we employ to understand one another 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. when our social identities and histories are often invented, fictionalized, and appropriated?31Her main idea concerns the dialectic process of two paradoxes— “stranger” and“us”32—that could explain the necessity of inviting foreign artists to represent the Taiwan Pavilion.

Inspired by the well-known painting This is Not a Pipe (1929), by René Magritte, This Is Not a Taiwan Pavilion also plays with this game by taking negation as a strategy. In my view, on the one hand, the title tries to respond to the previous controversy of a foreigner representing the Taiwan Pavilion while, on the other hand, it continues to perform the ambiguous status of the Taiwan Pavilion through a double negative: foreign artists represent Taiwan, and the Taiwan Pavilion is not a national pavilion. I now suggest that this title could be understood as This Is (Not) a Taiwan Pavilion, positioning “not” within a bracket in order to produce an ambiguous space. In addition, the use of a negative term “not” in this title increases a sense of ambiguity as well. As Shu-Mei Shih’s observed: “ambiguity surrounds Taiwan’s economic, cultural, and political relations with China to the extent that the notion of ‘Taiwan Identity’ as such must be flexible” and flexibility for Taiwan is a means of maintaining the limited degree of stability for economic, cultural, and political survival. Flexibility here is not so much a choice but a necessity.”33 If I take this statement as the reference for the Taiwan Pavilion, the Taiwan Pavilion may be summed up in one phrase: ambiguity that continuously performs until now. The ambiguity of Taiwan provided a perfect background to contextualize the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion, while the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion also revealed this confusing situation. Therefore, although the 2013 Taiwan Pavilion claims This is Not a Taiwan Pavilion, it actually acts like This is a Taiwan Pavilion.

Vol. 12 No. 5 49 The Taiwan Pavilion’s status has been changing since its first participation Katerina Šedá + BATEŽO MIKILU, This is not a Czech in 1995; however, the performance of Taiwan, or more specifically the Pavilion, 2013, installation, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy reflection of Taiwan’s political situation, is always the centre of attention in of Taipei Museum of Fine Arts. the Taiwan Pavilion at Venice. When the designation of Taiwan Pavilion is located inside the double quotes, ambiguity as a feature provides a space for imagination that also helps the survival of the Taiwan Pavilion at Venice.

50 Vol. 12 No. 5 Hong Kong (China) Pavilion: In 1997, Hong Kong experienced radical political change, and its status shifted from British colony to one of the Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China—from city-state to part of China within the “One country, two systems” principle. Many debates during that time tended to view that a return to the“motherland” should be understood as a transition from British colonialism to“ancestorland” colonialism or a process of“recolonization.”34 The same year, Hong Kong suffered from an economic downturn caused by the Asian financial crisis. A few years later, in 2003, the outbreak of SARS also had a great impact on the economy. When the global economic crisis took place in 2008, Hong Kong was one of the hardest-hit areas. Within these circumstances, Hong Kong’s economy has greatly relied on China for support.

However, this kind of intimate political relationship, as well as Hong Kong’s over-reliant economy, already produced various problems that have affected the everyday life of its people, such as the reduction of freedom of speech and demonstrations, the problems caused by an excess of Chinese tourists visiting Hong Kong, financial and real estate purchases, and even criticism about national education. Whether in the political or economic field, a complex anxiety toward China is increasing. This is also reflected in the search for Hong Kong identity in its culture in order to make clear its distinction from China. Based on the political-economic-cultural context of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Pavilion at the Venice Biennale might serve as a mirror to reflect this increasing complexity; that is, China as an intimate enemy. In this sense, the Hong Kong China Pavilion could be considered, as I suggested earlier, the Hong Kong (China) Pavilion in an effort to separate itself from China and make Hong Kong distinctive.

Hong Kong’s first participation in the Venice Biennale was in 2001 and was organized by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council as a strategy to develop the cultural scene in Hong Kong and to raise the visibility of Hong Kong art on the international stage. This idea was proven in the opening speech, in which HKADC expressed the idea that “Hong Kong as the‘Venice of the East’ would not lose its status of international metropolis after 1997,” rather, “Hong Kong is developing into a cultural metropolis in Asia in addition to being a financial one.”35 This statement, as a political promise, emphasized that Hong Kong, China would be in a better situation than it was during the British colonial period, not only in terms of finances but also as a cultural metropolis, replacing Hong Kong’s previous image of a “cultural desert.” However, the question that is revealed is whose culture is represented now and in what way? In analyzing the Hong Kong Pavilion from 2001 to 2013, one can divide it into two stages. In the first stage, 2001 –07, it presented group exhibitions as representations of “HongKongness,” and the second stage, 2009–now, appropriates a strategy of solo shows to promote one single artist as an art star.

Performing HongKongness through Group Shows (2001–07) The first show, Magic at Street Level, in 2001, curated by Johnson Tsong- zung Chang, presented four artists who are insightful observers of the city.

Vol. 12 No. 5 51 Here, artists’ expressed a sense of Entrance to Hong Kong Pavilion, 2001 Venice Biennale. “the experience of the private,” as Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Johnson put it, and revealed features of locality that are distinct to Hong Kong. Through artists’ eyes, images of the skyline, skyscrapers, highways, and street scenes appeared as a diverse assemblage of metropolitan Hong Kong. Navigating the Dot, presented by Para/Site Collective in 2003, interpreted Hong Kong as a small dot on the world map and, with a sense of the geopolitical, as the curator Tsang Tak-ping’s statement “compared to China, Hong Kong is nothing.”36 They installed huge cement buckets for audiences to visit, to rest upon, and to experience the particularities of Hong Kong. The image of a cement bucket, something that is commonly seen in the public space of social housing in Hong Kong, thus recalled a sense of collective memory.

Ho Siu-kee, Golden Proportion, 2000, performance and video installation, 2001 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Leung Chi-wo (in collaboration with Sara Chi Hang Wong), City Cookie, 2001, installation, 2001 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

52 Vol. 12 No. 5 Left: Entrance to Hong Kong Pavilion, 2003 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Right: Navigating the Dot, installation view, 2003 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

The enactment of HongKongness was continuously used as a strategy and was especially evident in the 2005 Hong Kong Pavilion. The title, Investigation of a Journey to the West by Marco + Polo, referred to two events: a famous ancient Chinese mythological tale, “Journey to the West,” and Marco Polo’s visit to China in the thirteenth century. Thus, the two artists were presenting two different directions of cultural exchange. Kurt Chen surveyed the landscape of Venice and presented it as an art installation. Anothermountainman represented a Hong Kong-style teahouse by using the stylized and ubiquitous “red-white-blue” plastic fabric—a low-cost wrapping material—that reflects the transitory and unsettled nature of Hong Kong. This work also served as a place for face-to-face communication among people, something that is becoming a lost art in modern society.

Left: View of the Hong Kong Pavilion, 2005 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Right: Chan Yuk-keung, hollow, inverted, suspended, 2005, installation. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

anothermountainman (Chan Yuk-keung), redwhiteblue: tea and chat, 2005, installation. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

The year of 2007 marked the tenth anniversary of the Hong Kong’s handover to China. At the end of 2006, the demolishing of Star Ferry Clock Tower caused a serious protest and generated new aspirations for the protection of cultural heritage sites, in particular British legacies that

Vol. 12 No. 5 53 remain in Hong Kong. Since then, many actions have been taken, especially Top: Entrance to Hong Kong Pavilion, 2007 Venice Biennale. by the younger generation, against government decisions in politics. In this Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. respect, the collective consciousness of Hong Kong is stronger than ever. Left: Hiram To, I Love You More Than My Own Death, 2007, installation, 2007 Venice The 2007 show in the Hong Kong Pavilion appropriated the title STAR Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development FAIRY, but this show did not relate much to the Star Ferry protest. Council. Right: Map Office (Lauren Instead, it was “interested in how Hong Kong city, both literally and as a Gutierrez and Valérie 37 Portefaix), Concrete Jungle/ ‘representative’ city space, presents itself globally.” The curator, Norman The Parrot’s Tale, 2007, Ford, an American based in Hong Kong, raised a question: How is the way installation, 2007 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the “cities, city-state, semi-states, and nations show themselves to the world Hong Kong Arts Development Council. (and to Venice) . . . relevant beyond our Special Administrative Region’s borders?38” He also stated that “STAR FAIRY sees this ‘representational’ problem as the primary concern for Hong Kong’s participation in Venice,”39 as well as a starting point for artists. In the press release, this show was praised for “the international composition of the exhibition”40 as one of three projects done by French-Hong Kong based artist group Map Office. In this vein, nationality is not an issue, but rather a feature of Hong Kong because of the history of “West meets East.” Inviting foreign artists as a strategy toward understanding the problematic status of the Hong Kong Pavilion was achieved in this show.

54 Vol. 12 No. 5 Promoting one Artist as an Art Star (2009–now) The second stage of the Hong Kong Pavilion in its representing a single artist started in 2009, and this approach has continued ever since. The exhibitions are as follows: Pak Sheung Chuen’s Making (Perfect) World: Harbour, Hong Kong, Alienated Cities and Dreams (2009), Frog King’s frogtopia—hongkornucopia (2011), and Lee Kit’s 'You (you)' (2013). The press release for the 2013 Hong Kong Pavilion explained that the model they employed is “successfully used in many other participating countries, where an esteemed local arts body or institution is given the responsibility to select the curator and the artist to represent Hong Kong at the Biennale.”41 The only difference in the case of 2013 Hong Kong Pavilion is that HKADC as the commissioner did not announce an open call for proposals, but, rather, directly appointed M+ to take the responsibility of preparing an exhibition for the pavilion. As mentioned earlier, this caused serious criticism that related mainly to a lack of transparency in the process, and a series of debates42 arose in response to it. Another concern was towards M+. In the fall of 2012, M+ accepted a huge donation of artwork from Swiss collector Uli Sigg that included 1,463 contemporary Chinese artworks, and M+ paid 1.77 hundred million HK dollars to Sigg for another forty-seven works. At that time, some Hong Kong artists, curators, and critics questioned what direction M+ would take and raised the question as to whether M+ might tend to work more with contemporary mainland Chinese art rather than Hong Kong art.

Entrance to Hong Kong Pavilion, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

For me, the question of why the Hong Kong Pavilion shifted its model from presenting a group show to one of promoting an individual artist is more interesting. I roughly conclude as follows: First, the Hong Kong Pavilion already focused four times on presenting Hong Kong itself from different angles—the cityscape, everyday life, collective memory, and the mixing of East-West cultures. The solo show can be seen as a promise of presenting art rather than referring to politics, and it is something that has been employed for a long time by many national pavilions at Venice. This approach has been requested for a long time by those within the Taiwan art scene to apply to the Taiwan Pavilion, but never has been realized.

Vol. 12 No. 5 55 Second, the characteristics of artworks Top: Foreground: Pak Sheung Chuen, The Horizon Placed presented in the Hong Kong Pavilion have at Home (N22° 17’400” Version), 2009, 45 bottles been summarized by Clara Cheung in three with seawater collected from Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. points: the self-reflection of the artists (the Background: Pak Sheung Chuen, Half Soul, Half Body, inside world of artist), the attempt to reveal 2009, installation, 2009 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the the collective memory of Hong Kong people, Hong Kong Arts Development Council. and the lack of a direct relationship to Middle: Pak Sheung Chuen, important current social or political issues in One Eye, Half of the Moon, 2009, installation, 2009 Venice Hong Kong.43 The final characteristic can be Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development understood further by reading the essay “Two Council. 44 Bottom: Pak Sheung Sides of Hong Kong Artists,” by Jeff Leung. Chuen, A Travel Without Visual Experience, 2008, He indicates two trends characteristic of the photographic installation, 2009 changing attitudes of Hong Kong artists: as Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts a critical minority of social change and as Development Council. the“exception” to contemporary Chinese art. The former is Hong Kong artists’ socially engaged art practices or cultural actions that function to fight for citizen rights, especially for freedom of speech and social justice. This type of work has not been presented in the Hong Kong Pavilion.

Frog King, Frog–Fun–Lum Piazza, 2011, site specific installation and improvised performance, 2011 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

The latter is closely associated with the Hong Kong Pavilion between 2009 and 2013. In Leung’s essay, he mentions artists who are living and working in two places such as Pak Sheung Chuen (China and Hong Kong), Frog King (America and Hong Kong), and Lee Kit (Taiwan and Hong Kong). Their work is not bound to a single place and thus is not limited in the issue of identity. The features of “placelessness” and the “nomadic” emphasized by overseas media provide Hong Kong art a new value: an exception to contemporary Chinese art. This observation brings us to understand the shifting mode of the Hong Kong Pavilion from the perspective of the art market. As the Venice Biennale is a sort of global mega-art-fair, the model of the solo show is “believed to be the one that can help Hong Kong art to emerge quickly.”45 In recent years in particular, the Hong Kong art market has been booming. In 2011, Hong Kong became the third largest auction market in the world, and this year, 2013, the newly branded Art Basel—Hong Kong opened. Also, many Western galleries have set up branches in Hong Kong as a base from which to aim at the Asian art market, especially China’s.

56 Vol. 12 No. 5 The solo show, on the one hand, is a way of presenting a single artist to attract more attention in the art market. On the other hand, the function of the curator tends to be that of an assistant, a facilitator, or a conductor who serves the selected artist, and thus there is less curatorial involvement. The Taiwan Pavilion, for example, has used the curatorial premise to address some specific issues associated with its changing political circumstances. In this sense, the Hong Kong Pavilion, by presenting solo shows after 2009, could be seen as a way to avoid the danger of political correctness. With the idea of “the personal is political,” the Hong Kong Pavilion continuously presenting solo shows exhibits HongKongness via an artist’s personal view.

Frog King, Frog’s Nest, 2011, ‘You (you)’, a meaningful and poetic title, was explained by the artist Lee installation, 2011 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Kit: “[T]o me, the title ‘You (you)’ is concrete yet abstract. It’s ambiguous. Hong Kong Arts Development Council. It’s almost like looking into a mirror. You see your reflection in the mirror.”46 The text introducing this exhibition states that “‘You (you)’ takes the universal yet non-existing entity alluded to in its title as a point of departure, gazing at the notion of absence to reflect on the construction of places, memories and time.”47 The ‘you’ could therefore be seen as a kind of recognition of oneself or one’s emotional and/or physical surroundings.48 This title inspires me to interpret Hong Kong’s identity as “Hong Kong, China (Hong Kong),” even “Hong Kong, China (British Hong Kong)”—a sense of gazing at one’s absence. Within the subtle, interweaving, and complicated relationship between China and Hong Kong, therefore, the Hong Kong China Pavilion actually manifests and acts as the Hong Kong (China) Pavilion at Venice.

To Be or Not To Be a National Pavilion? While neither the Taiwan nor the Hong Kong Pavilion is an official national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, from the analysis above it clearly shows that they actually think and act as national pavilions. Due to the hardships caused

Vol. 12 No. 5 57 58 Vol. 12 No. 5 Top to bottom: Lee Kit, ‘You by the One China Policy, the Taiwan Pavilion has encountered difficult times, (you).’, 2013, installation, 2013 Venice Biennale. Courtesy but it has functioned also as a free platform for Taiwan to speak out. In its early of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. stages, presenting a sense of Taiwaneseness through artwork was a mission. After that, the interpretation of Taiwan’s uncertain status and unstable future was the main direction. The 2013 Taiwan Pavilion incorporates foreign artists to make Taiwan’s invisible reality visible. The Hong Kong Pavilion has different concerns, and Shu-Mei Shih, in her essay “The Geopolitics of Desire,” points out that “the option of imagining a national identity (as in Taiwan) has never been available for Hong Kong” and “the more futile the search for a unique cultural identity, however, the greater the urgency and desire.”49 Although the sense of HongKongness still can be felt in the first four group shows of the Hong Kong Pavilion, it might not be so encouraged in the real political world, as one can see the status of Hong Kong promised as “one country, two systems” is declining. The desire to be legitimately recognized through the Taiwan Pavilion and the Hong Kong Pavilion at the Venice Biennale—in other words, the struggle of “to be or not to be a national pavilion”—aggravates an old story that is based on the idea of nationalism.

Notes 1 Originally, China planned to have the China Pavilion in 2003; however, because of SARS, the participation of China was postponed to 2005. But in 2001, the Taiwan Pavilion was forced to change the name to Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, at the very last moment, marking a turning point in its status. All the preparations for the exhibition in 2001 were set up according to the status of a national pavilion. In 2003, the organizer of the Venice Biennale decided to set up a special section called Extra 50 to house exhibitions presented by art institutions in various countries; the Taiwan Pavilion was eased into the Extra 50. Later years, Extra 50 changed its name to ”collateral event.” 2 The term “New Taiwanese” () was coined by former President Lee Teng-hui in 1995. He stated in the speech at the 228 event memory in that year that:“[A]ll of us who grow up and live on this soil today are Taiwanese people, whether we are aborigines, descendants of aborigines or descendants of the immigrants from the mainland who came over centuries or decades ago. We have all made equal contributions to Taiwan’s future. It is possible for each one of us, the ‘new Taiwanese people,’to convert our love and affection for Taiwan into concrete actions in order to open up a grander horizon for its development.” 3 In 1994, President Lee Teng-Hui visited several countries in an effort to encourage international diplomacy. In June 1995, almost at the same time of the opening of Venice Biennale, he delivered a lecture “Taiwan’s Democratization Experience,” during his visit to his alma mater Cornell University, in the United States. 4 Yang Wen-I, “Rising from the Sea-Contemporary Taiwanese Art,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, ed. Chen Shu-Ling (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2009), 136. Yang Wen-I was assistant researcher at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum at that time. 5 Four Little Dragons as a term refers to the highly developed economies of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore. 6 1996 presidential candidate Peng Ming-min’s election manifesto was about the “Sea Culture” of Taiwan, locating Taiwan in the sea rather than at the margins of mainland China. In 1997, Schar Cheng-sheng Tu published an essay, “The Birth of a New Perception of History,” in Contemporary Monthly no. 120 (August 1997), 20–31,in which he explained his theory of concentric circles and suggested locating Taiwan as a country with a colonized history within the area of East Asia, rather than as part of China. 7 Lu Pei-Yi, “Who is Constructing the Image of Taiwan? The Strategy of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (1995, 1997 and 1999),” Journal of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum no. 4 (2001), 125–51. 8 In 1995 and 1997, the selection for the Taiwan Pavilion was made through a jury-decision model, while in 1999 it started to do an open call for curatorial proposals. 9 Lu Pei-Yi, “Who is Constructing the Image of Taiwan? The Strategy of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (1995, 1997 and 1999),” Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, no. 4, (2001), 125–51. 10 Francoise Chatel, “Contemporary Tendencies in Taiwan,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 126. 11 Huang Hai-Ming, Contemporary Art of Taiwan: Virtual Connections, Criticism, Returnings" in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 163. 12 J. J. Shih,“Close to Open: Taiwanese Artists Exposed,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 199. 13 This also translated as “one side, one country.” 14 Another case is that in 2002, at the Sao Paulo Biennial, it was suggested that the Taiwan Pavilion should be under the name of Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan; however, the pressure from China forced the disappearance of the word Taiwan. Taiwanese artist Chang Chien-Chi protested against this unfair event, and in the end, six national pavilions donated a letter from their national name to be combined as the word of “Taiwan.” Because of these donations, the “absent” Taiwan could then be represented.

Vol. 12 No. 5 59 15 Shu-min Lin,“Limbo Zone,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 234. 16 Chia-Chi Jason Wang, “The Spectre of Freedom,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 256. 17 The Anti-Secession Law () was made by the Chinese government in 2005. The law is composed of ten articles towards promoting cross-strait relations. The translation in Chinese is as “Anti-Separation Law.” 18 Chia-Chi Wang,“The Spectre of Freedom,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 258. 19 Hong-john Lin, “Atopia,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995–2007, 282. 20 Another criticism was about the question of the domination of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which directly announced that this show was made by them rather than the result of a fairer mode of an open call that was the process for many years. The method of the Taiwan Pavilion changed from directly selecting artists (1995 and 1997) to recommending a curator (2001), an open call for curatorial proposals (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007), and direct curation by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2009). A two- stage process was taken in 2011: The first stage was to invite selected curators to propose projects, and the second stage was to decide upon one of the curatorial projects. Amy Chang’s “The Heard and the Unheard—Soundscape Taiwan,” presented at the 2011 Taiwan Pavilion, explored Taiwan’s social soundscape with two sound art pieces and a sound library. 21 Lin Chi-Ming, “Reading the ‘Taiwan Pavilion’ at the Venice Biennial,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995 –2007, 83. 22 ‘Jo-Anne BirnieDanzker, “Constructive Ambiguities: Taiwan and the Venice Biennale 1995–2009,” in Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: A Retrospective 1995 –2007, 103. 23 William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York: New Directions, 1966), 235. 24 Bernd Behr did his residence program in the Taipei Artist Village in the summer of 2012, while Katerina Šedá didn’t have any relationship with Taiwan before this proposal. 25 Manray Hsu,“Breaking Away From Nations is a Current International Trend,” interview, Art Emperor, http://artemperor.tw/focus/75/. 26 I organized a special issue for ARTCO, in January 2013. Lu Pei-Yi and Kao Tzu-Chin, (eds.), “Belated Bomb: Review of the Controversy of 2013 Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” special issue of ARTCO (January 2013), 64–99. 27 Pei-Yi Lu, “Kidnapped by Imaginary International Trend,” ARTCO (January 2013), 82–83. 28 Esther Lu, “An Open Letter towards Art People,” ARTCO (January 2013), 79. 29 Shu-Mei Shih, “The Incredible Heaviness of Ambiguity,” in Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 119. 30 Esther Lu, “This is not a Taiwan Pavilion: A Curatorial Concept,” 2013 Taiwan Pavilion Web site, June 21, 2013, http://www.venicebiennaletaiwan.org/index.php/en/k2-tags/text/curatorial-concept/. 31 Ibid. 32 “The Venice Questionaire #10: Esther Lu,” ArtReview.com, May 2013, http://artsy.net/post/artreview- the-venice-questionnaire-number-10-esther-lu/. 33 Shu-Mei Shih, “The Incredible Heaviness of Ambiguity,” in Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific, 123. 34 Shu-Mei Shih, “The Geopolitics of Desire,” in Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific, 107. 35 The Speech for the Grand Opening of China-Hong Kong Exhibition Site at the 49th Venice Biennial by Dr. Patrick Ho, Chairman of Hong Kong Arts Development Council, June 17, 2013, http://www.hkadc. org.hk/en/content/web.do?id=ff80818123dbba560123e14b444d0189/. 36 Au Desiree, ed., “Asian contemporary artists may be gaining growing international recognition, but are Hongkongers among them? Mark Irving examines their impact at the Venice Biennale,” South China Morning Post, June 22, 2003. 37 Norman Ford, “On the Road to Venice, or Who Speaks for Whom When a Parrot Speaks for You?” 2007 Hong Kong Pavilion Web site, http://www.venicebiennale.hk/vb2007/exhibition.php/. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Press release, “Star Ferry in Venice,” June 11, 2007, Hong Kong Pavilion Web site, http://www. venicebiennale.hk/vb2007/latest_press_20070611.php/. 41 Press release: Lee Kit to Represent Hong Kong at the 2013 Venice Biennale, June 22, 2012, http:// www.hkadc.org.hk/en/content/web.do?page=pressrelease20120622/. 42 There is a Facebook community titled We Want the Truth. See https://www.facebook.com/ WeWantTheTruth.HK.VeniceBiennale2013?fref=ts/. 43 The online conversation with Clara Cheung was conducted between May 9 and July 6, 2013. This comment was written by her on May 13, 2013. 44 Jeff Leung, “Two Sides of Hong Kong Artists,” ARTCO no. 247 (April 2013), 93–95. 45 Ibid. 46 Interview video, 2013 Hong Kong Pavilion, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ embedded&v=uxBfYLcw3Hs/. 47 2013 Hong Kong Pavilion Web site, http://www.venicebiennale.hk/2013/exhibition/you-you-lee-kit/. 48 Online Web chat with co-curator Yu Ma on June 25, 2013. 49 Shu-Mei Shih, “The Geopolitics of Desire,” in Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific, 107.

60 Vol. 12 No. 5 Yu Hsiao Hwei Interview with Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Curator of Asian Art, Guggenheim Museum, New York

he Guggenheim Museum and the Hong Kong-based Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation announced in March 2013 a joint Tinitiative to support contemporary Chinese art. This five-year ten- million-dollar program, the first of its kind, begins with the appointment of a curator. Dr. Thomas J. Berghuis has been designated to direct the vast project. He is to select at least three contemporary artists from the greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) and oversee commissions of new works to be exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in the course of 2014–17; the artworks will later enter the Guggenheim’s permanent collection under the name of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection. The author interviewed the two major players in this project, Dr. Alexandra Munroe of the Guggenheim Museum and Mr. Ted Lipman of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, to find out more about this ambitious and unprecedented initiative that involves research, exhibition, collection, publication, and educational programs.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: What’s the position of Asia in the Guggenheim’s global aspirations? Could you talk about the Guggenheim’s involvement with Asia and how it has evolved over the years?

Alexandra Munroe: The Guggenheim was founded in 1938 as a museum of the art of our time, and since its founding it has been devoted to a deeply internationalist vision of contemporary art. Initially that vision of the international phenomena of modern art went across Europe and into Russia focusing on artists such as Vassily Kandinsky. In the post-war period there were many curatorial programs redefining the boundaries of modern and contemporary art, and as early as the mid-1950s the museum was presenting exhibitions that included art from Asia. These even included Zao Wou-Ki’s paintings, works by artists living in Paris, but also very significantly included artists from Japan as well as from the Middle East and India. In the early 1990s, under the leadership of our former director Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim once again became involved in a very ambitious program of presenting Asian art. That resulted in an exhibition that I curated at that time as a guest curator, focusing on the history of post-war Japanese avant-garde art. It culminated in 1998 with a major exhibition focusing on China—China 5,000 years—which was a historical survey of Chinese art, with the centrepiece being a section on twentieth century Chinese art curated by Julia Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, the first of its kind in a US museum. In fact, the Guggenheim has had varying starting

66 Vol. 12 No. 5 Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Photo: Kris McKay, © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

points for its engagement with Asia. The difference now is that in 2006 the board decided to establish an Asian art program and to hire a dedicated curator of Asian art, focusing on modern and contemporary art of the non-Western world. I accepted that appointment and over the last seven years, the Guggenheim has built a very active exhibition, acquisition, and publication program focusing on key artists and key periods in modern and contemporary Asian art, striving to integrate those histories into our own history of modern and contemporary art.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: What is the Guggenheim’s ambition in the field of Asian art, and Chinese art in particular?

Alexandra Munroe: Our ambition is first to extend and recast our own history of modern and contemporary art to include relevant and extraordinary artists, movements, and periods of art that were active outside the traditional boundaries of European and American art-making. Second, our ambition is to build a network with artists, writers, critics, collectors, and museum curators across Asia to broaden our own understanding of contemporary culture and to introduce global perspectives into our understanding of modern and contemporary art. Third, through our work, we aim to contribute to the larger discourse, the larger area of study of modern and contemporary Asian art, specifically in this case with Chinese art. We hope that the work we do can stimulate discussions and reflections on China’s creative community today.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: What’s the paradigm or model you use to approach Asian art—national, regional, cross-regional? Can you give some examples?

Vol. 12 No. 5 67 Alexandra Munroe: We bring a multitude of theoretical frameworks to our appreciation, analysis, and presentation of Asian art within the context of the Guggenheim Museum. Our approach would be different if we were an Asian art museum like Asia Society or Japan Society; it would be different if we were situated in Asia; it would be different if we were an Asian department of an encyclopedic museum like the Metropolitan or the Louvre. We are the Guggenheim Museum, an American museum of modern and contemporary international art and we must always be mindful of our own context and our own institutional history. We offer a specific platform from which to reach out, embrace, selectively integrate, and contextualize art from outside the traditional boundaries of this museum’s purview. We have brought in totally modern theoretical frameworks; we have brought in a postcolonial theoretical framework. We are very keen, we base our work on scholarship—the Guggenheim curators engaged with Asian art are necessarily scholars of both the region and of modern and contemporary art. We think it’s important to ground our presentation in a local and regional history of culture, politics, intellectual histories, and, of course, art histories and critical discourses. However, it’s equally important in the context of New York to place that work in an international and global context. We do that through a variety of live educational programs, online programs, publications including exhibition catalogues, and through our work with artists here in New York to help them speak to our public, bringing a wider and deeper understanding to their own art and to their own practices.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: You were appointed in 2006 as the Guggenheim’s first senior curator of Asian art, then in 2010 as the Samsung senior curator of Asian Art. How has the Samsung funding changed your status or position at the Guggenheim? And has it influenced or reshaped the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Program?

Alexandra Munroe: I have to say that the Samsung funding has given the Asian art programming a status within and beyond the museum and helped establish a firm grounding for our work. While it has not fundamentally changed the course of our research or programming, it has been a transformational sign of support and of encouragement. We were very pleased that the Samsung Foundation was also instrumental in our presentation of a retrospective devoted to the Korean-born artist Lee Ufan in 2011.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: After Samsung, another significant collaboration the Guggenheim has with a corporation is the UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, with the first phase focusing on South and Southeast Asia. How do you negotiate between the corporation’s interests—that is, global development and marketing strategies—and the museum’s curatorial and critical work?

Alexandra Munroe: There is no such negotiation. We maintain one hundred percent direction over all curatorial decisions. However, like all museums in America, we depend on private philanthropy for our work.

68 Vol. 12 No. 5 We do not have the luxury that many Chinese museums have of being fully state-funded, nor would we desire any single-entity funding because that would introduce restrictions to curatorial freedom. We decide on our curatorial programs, we set the strategies for them, and then we seek funding for those programs. Such funding ensures the successful realization of an idea that we have developed internally. The funders do not influence our curatorial, artistic, aesthetic, or intellectual decisions at all! But they do provide key support and encouragement, which ultimately benefits the artists themselves and ensures the realization of our mission to engage the broad public in arts appreciation and education.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: I heard that it was you who initiated the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation’s collaboration with the Guggenheim on a contemporary Chinese art project. Could you talk about how it all began? What have the main issues of discussion been with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation during the process?

From left to right: Richard Alexandra Munroe: We were introduced to the Robert H. N. Ho Family Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Foundation in 2008 through the artist Cai Guo-qiang, whose exhibition I and Foundation; Jean Miao, Operations Director, The was curating and presenting at the Guggenheim. He introduced us to the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation; Ted Lipman, CEO Ho Family Foundation as a potential partner for the exhibition. Indeed, the and President, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation; Foundation came in with a one-million-dollar grant for that show, which Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art, was a tremendous contribution. In the course of our work with them, we Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Thomas J. realized that we had many ideas in common—we shared a commitment to Berghuis, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Curator a scholarly approach to the presentation of Asian art in American museums. of Chinese Art; and Cai Guo- Qiang. Photo: Kris McKay, © We shared a concern that Chinese art needed to be better understood and that The Solomon R. Guggenheim contemporary Chinese art could be a portal to a wider appreciation of Chinese Foundation, New York. culture. And they understood that the Guggenheim Museum could provide

Vol. 12 No. 5 69 a very dynamic platform for introducing Chinese art to a wide and diverse audience—not only to those predisposed to, or already initiated in, the area of Chinese art studies, but to reach an audience that may know very little about Asia (because we get audiences to the Guggenheim from all over the world who are interested broadly in modern and contemporary art). The Ho Family Foundation was interested in the power of education that the Guggenheim offers, specifically through our high visitorship and online presence.

I realized very early on as a curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim that it was not enough to have exhibitions and publications; ultimately we needed to build our collection of contemporary Asian art to have a lasting impact on the museum. It was virtually impossible to make a real impact through our conventional channels of acquisition at the Guggenheim Museum. We have several wonderful and active acquisition committees, but it would take a hundred years to make a quantum leap, to really influence the DNA of the Guggenheim collection. So in 2010, our director Richard Armstrong began discussions with the Ho Family Foundation focused on collection-building, curatorial capacity, and education. From inception, we also thought about this project in terms of creative ways to connect and engage with the greater Chinese art community.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: In this ten-million-dollar grant contract, is it specified how the money will be used? For example, how much money will actually be allocated to the commissioning of three art projects? Will the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation have a say regarding the selection of the artists and the art projects?

Alexandra Munroe: The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation will not have a say regarding the selection of the artists. This is a curatorial decision that will be made among the curator, the curatorial department, and the museum director. That said, we welcome advice from the Robert Ho Family Foundation because their excellent leadership and staff, based in Hong Kong, are active in this space. We will also engage the expertise of our Asian Art Council composed of leading critics, curators, and museum directors from across Asia. But, ultimately, the selection of the artists and development of their commissions will be the purview of the Ho Family Foundation Curator of Chinese Art. And in terms of the direct allocation of the resources, I am not at liberty to talk about it.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: The press release states that the commissioned works will be exhibited between 2014 and 2017. Does this mean that this collaboration with the Robert Ho Family Foundation is a five-year project? What will happen after that?

Alexandra Munroe: The grant covers a period of five years. And the components of the grant include three exhibitions, each exhibition being the outcome of a commission or a series of commissions with an artist or a group of artists, and at the close of these exhibitions, the works in the exhibitions will enter the collection of the Guggenheim Museum. We are

70 Vol. 12 No. 5 very much hoping that we will build on this grant in the future, but it is of course too early to say.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: When is Dr. Thomas J. Berghuis officially assuming his position as curator of Chinese art? What exactly will his job entail?

Alexandra Munroe: He will be assuming his position this summer, and his job is to head this project.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: Does that mean that he is going to travel to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao to do field research or will he largely rely on local infrastructures and expertise?

Alexandra Munroe: Thomas will travel widely in greater China to research and develop his exhibitions. He is already very well known among the art communities in these regions. He knows the academy very well, he knows the artists very well, and he knows several artist collectives, official and unofficial. His works are widely read. I know he looks forward to deepening his ties and to enlarging his understanding of contemporary currents.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: Do you have any idea about what kind of contemporary Chinese art scene you want to target? Is this initiative going to focus on young and emerging artists? Will it only include artists living inside greater China, and exclude overseas Chinese artists?

Alexandra Munroe: We don’t know yet. This is not something that we are predicting; this is something that is going to emerge as the organic outgrowth of our research. We are not closing any doors. We are here to do the very smartest job that we can possibly do, and to make a contribution to the appreciation, study, and creativity of contemporary Chinese art.

Vol. 12 No. 5 71 Yu Hsiao Hwei Interview with Ted Lipman, Chief Executive Officer of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation

Yu Hsiao Hwei: First of all, could you tell us a bit about Robert H. N. Ho and how he has become an important philanthropic figure?

Ted Lipman: Robert H. N. Ho is the grandson of the Hong Kong entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Robert Ho Tung. Sir Robert Ho Tung, in the second half of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century, was a very successful businessman in Hong Kong who very notably devoted a lot of his resources to philanthropy. Sir Robert’s wife, Lady Clara Ho Tung was a devoted Buddhist and philanthropist, in particular in the field of education for young women in Hong Kong. So, the family, going back to Sir Robert Ho Tung, has a tradition of giving that Robert H. N. Ho carries on to this very day.

Robert H. N. Ho has been the genesis of a variety of philanthropic projects from major gifts to his alma mater, Colgate University, to some large and important medical facilities in Vancouver, Canada, where he resides. These have been largely pursued through his personal philanthropy; that is, in his own name. In 2005, Robert H. N. Ho, together with his family, founded our foundation in order to focus on the field of Chinese culture and Buddhist philosophy, two areas very close to his heart. The foundation serves as a professional philanthropic organization to manage the Ho family interests in these particular fields. His son, Robert Y. C. Ho, carries on the family’s tradition in currently serving as our foundation chairman.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: What are your foundation’s main activities?

Ted Lipman: Based in Hong Kong, we are active globally in the field of Chinese culture and Buddhism. Much of our activity has been focused on visual art. We see Chinese culture from a broad perspective, including classical arts from the past, right up to the living art and culture today. We have also been active in the fields of music and dance, but visual art has taken most of our attention. In the field of Buddhism, our foundation has supported major educational institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in delivering programs that will highlight what for Mr. Ho is a very important aspect of Buddhism—as a living philosophy, Buddhism should be considered in a contemporary context, not as simply as an ancient school of thought from 2,500 years ago.

72 Vol. 12 No. 5 We are also active where visual art and Buddhism intersect. An example would be The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Gallery of Buddhist Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another example would be our support to the Asia Society last year when they exhibited the Rockefeller collection of Buddhist art in their new centre here in Hong Kong. Finally, and this is an area that currently we focus on here in Hong Kong, is the field of creative arts education; that is, how art and culture can be used to develop young people, not necessarily to become great artists but using art as a medium for them to develop themselves creatively through critical thinking and self-reflection.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: In the examples you cite above, did people approach you with a project, or did you also initiate your own projects and then propose them to potential collaborators?

Ted Lipman: This is a very relevant question at this point in time. We are, relatively speaking, a very new foundation. At the beginning, our focus was on looking for good projects for which we would collaborate with reputable institutions, so our approach was somewhat eclectic, although still guided by the overarching themes of Chinese culture and Buddhist philosophy. In recent years, our Board has decided to take a more systematic approach, which reflects more coherently on the foundation’s objectives. So, while we still consider proposals for individual exhibitions or cultural projects, most of our philanthropy is now structured on the basis of grant making. In the field of Buddhist philosophy, for example, grants are now administered in collaboration with the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies). A recently launched series of grants focuses on dissertation fellowships, post- doctoral research, collaborative research projects, and visiting professorships.

In the field of visual art, we do not provide support to individuals, but, rather, to institutions. We welcome institutions to approach us with a general idea of the project in the form of a letter of inquiry. Subsequent submission of a full proposal is by invitation only, representing a very small proportion of the ideas we receive. We encourage applications for ambitious projects and programmes that will have broad and lasting impact; for example, projects such as a major travelling exhibition, or a groundbreaking print or web publication that will be widely disseminated. The Guggenheim project is the largest that we have supported, with a view to playing a rather unique and constructive role in the future development of contemporary Chinese art. The idea was developed through an iterative process between the Guggenheim and our Chairman, Robert Y. C. Ho. So I think it’s fair to say that the idea was not ours alone, and was not the Guggenheim’s alone. It was an idea that developed over many years based on a relationship that existed between us from having done some successful projects in the past.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: How did this ambitious collaboration with the Guggenheim start? What exactly is the content of the project?

Vol. 12 No. 5 73 Ted Lipman: It all started a few years ago, soon after our foundation was From left to right: Thomas J. Berghuis, Robert H. N. Ho established. We collaborated with the Guggenheim for Cai Guo-qiang’s solo Family Foundation Curator of Chinese Art; and Ted Lipman, retrospective I Want to Believe. As that exhibition was quite successful and CEO and President, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. very well received, we then supported another exhibition at the Guggenheim Photo: Kris McKay, © The Solomon R. Guggenheim called The Third Mind, which focused on the dialogues and mutual Foundation, New York influences between Asian art and American art. These successes led to a discussion, resulting in the current project, for which the point of departure is the establishment of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Curator of Chinese Art at the Guggenheim. Dr. Thomas Berghuis, a well-known academic and curator in the field, has been selected by the Guggenheim to fill this role. All the works will be commissioned by the Guggenheim, so it all begins with Thomas—it will be his work as curator and to a large extent his vision that will develop a series of three exhibitions from now until 2017. The three exhibitions will focus primarily on contemporary Chinese artists who may be lesser known among international audiences. It could be individual artists or it could be artist collectives. We don’t know that yet because Thomas has just begun the process, but we have a general idea of the direction he is taking. I was impressed last month when during the Basel Hong Kong Art Fair many senior Chinese artists and curators were in Hong Kong and they all seemed to know Thomas very well; he enjoys a lot of respect. I think it’s basically Thomas’s ability to connect with artists and understand movements happening within greater China that will determine the success of this project.

I should also mention that the commissioned works themselves—again, we don’t know how many works there will be—will become part of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection. The collection will be retained by the Guggenheim as a named collection. It’s our intention that this will become part of a global collection to the extent that there will also be works of art in other

74 Vol. 12 No. 5 From left to right: Alexandra institutions, which either have been commissioned, or have been acquired with Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art, Solomon the support of our foundation. So this is an initial step in that direction. R. Guggenheim Foundation; Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation; Yu Hsiao Hwei: The model of first appointing a curator to head the Thomas J. Berghuis, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation commission and collection of artworks is unique. Is this the way The Robert Curator of Chinese Art; Ted Lipman, CEO and President, H. N. Ho Family Foundation operates normally, that is, when it engages in The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation; Jean Miao, long-term projects? Operations Director, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. Photo: Kris McKay, © The Solomon R. Ted Lipman: This project is to commission rather than to collect art. At the Guggenheim Foundation, same time, I believe that in everything we do, whether it be commissioning New York a work of contemporary art, promoting Chinese culture and Buddhist philosophy, or creative arts education here in Hong Kong, we are looking for sustained impact. It is a long-term project not just in terms of execution. The collection of works initially acquired by Solomon Guggenheim himself many decades ago, still has resonance with audiences and impacts upon the development of art today. So yes, whatever we do, we think of long-term impact and hope to advance the field we are supporting.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: You mentioned about building a global Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collection that will be disseminated in many different institutions around the world, that is a very interesting and original idea. Could you talk more about it?

Ted Lipman: This is a long-term project that will happen quite deliberately, one step at a time. The first acquisition that was supported by our foundation was the Mahasiddha Virupa, a Buddhist sculpture that was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum. We see the collection rolling out over the longer term as a result of the relationships, which we are developing with various institutions with which we work around the world.

Vol. 12 No. 5 75 It’s not a project in which institutions simply come to us to ask for our support to acquire a work of art—although, believe me, we’ve received a lot of applications like that. It’s more about how these acquisitions and commissions will help us to realize Mr. Robert H. N. Ho’s goal in deepening the appreciation for and understanding of Chinese culture and Buddhist philosophy globally. Chinese culture, to us, is not defined in the rigid terms that many people may have seen it: as something old, something ancient, and something strictly classical. The Collection will be representative of Chinese culture past, present, and, in the case of the Guggenheim project, the future as well.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: Will this collection have any relationship with Robert H. N. Ho’s personal collection or the personal collection of any member of his family?

Ted Lipman: No, not at all. I think it’s fair to say that different members of the family have different tastes in art; and they all have strong interest in Chinese art. The Guggenheim brings to this project their curatorial expertise and academic rigour. It’s not simply a matter of taste. They have a concept based on research that will frame the project, and the commissioning will be done in a rigorous manner. We, as a philanthropic funder, do not think that it’s appropriate for us to be involved in detailed artistic decisions. There is a certain amount of trust that we must place in the institution to realize our vision for a world-class collection of Chinese contemporary art.

Yu Hsiao Hwei: Does that mean that you won’t take part in the decision- making at all?

Ted Lipman: The Guggenheim will make the ultimate decisions. Obviously with the close relationship we have with this institution, we frequently discuss with them the project’s development. We don’t just sign the cheque, and go away for three years, and then go to the exhibition opening for a big surprise. However, the key decisions on the selection of the artists and how the works are presented are to be made by the Guggenheim.

76 Vol. 12 No. 5 Wang Ruobing The Quest for a Regional Culture: The Artistic Adventure of Two Bali Trips, 1952 and 2001

Left to right: Liu Kang, , Luo Ming, Ni Pollok, Adrien-Jean La Mayeur, , , 1952. Courtesy of Liu Kang Family.

iu Kang (1911–2004), Chen Wen Hsi (1906–1991), Cheong Soo Pieng (1917–83), and Chen Chong Swee (1910–1986) are four Limportant early artists of Singapore. They were born in China and emigrated to what was then called Malaya before the founding of the People’s Republic of China.1 In 1952, these four members of the Chinese diaspora went to Bali for a painting trip. Struck by the vibrant scenery and exoticism of Balinese culture, on their return they produced from their sketches a significant amount of artwork that portrayed the primitive and pastoral Bali in a modernist style, and a group exhibition entitled Pictures from Bali was held a year later at the British Council on Stamford Road in Singapore. This visit has been regarded as a watershed event in Singapore’s art history,2 signifying the birth of the through their processing of Balinese characteristics into a unique “local colour”—an aesthetic referring to a localized culture and identity within the Southeast Asian context. Their Bali experience had great significance, not only for their subsequent artistic development, both as individuals and as a group, but also for the stylistic development of Singaporean artists who succeeded them.3

Vol. 12 No. 5 77 Exhibition of Pictures from Bali, British Council, Singapore, 1953. Courtesy of Cheong Leng Guat.

The search for “local colour” in Bali in 1952 had another ripple effect. In 2001, forty-nine years after this iconic event, four Singaporean Chinese artists, Agnes Yit (b. 1974), Kai Lam (b. 1975), Jeremy Hiah (b. 1972), and Wei Woon Tien (b. 1974), who, at the time, were still in their twenties, paid a visit to Bali with the objective of retracing the pioneers’ paths. Driven by the idea that if a Bali trip in 1952 made those artists important in Singapore, they were curious to see if they too could achieve such success with their own visit.4 At the time, in 2001, Jeremy Hiah and Kai Lam were students at the LASALLE College of the Arts, in Singapore. Agnes Yit had just graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), in Singapore, and Wei Woon Tien had just returned from studying at Goldsmiths College, , in the United Kingdom. Though young in the contemporary art scene, they were not impulsive in their approach to this project; rather, it was planned in a serious way, substantially researched beforehand, and they managed to secure funding for travel from the National Arts Council of Singapore. They also interviewed Liu Kang, by then the sole survivor of the four pioneer artists, to obtain first-hand information on their Bali experience.5 They also consulted Singapore’s most influential art historian T. K. Sabapathy, who had made one of the very first attempts to define Nanyang art.6 They sought advice from him on the significance of the 1952 trip in historical, cultural, and social contexts. Equipped with substantial information about their predecessors and without any preconceptions about what to create, they allowed their experiences in Bali to generate their creative approach. As a result, a body of work was produced by these young artists that included a series of photographs and documentation of the interviews.

These two visits to Bali, Bali, 1952. Courtesy of Cheong Leng Guat. conducted nearly half a century apart, reflect the attempts of two generations to probe the meaning of a regional culture and to define and cultivate their very own regional characteristics. The

78 Vol. 12 No. 5 Cheong Soo Pieng and Balinese women weaving, 1952. Courtesy of Cheong Leng Guat.

derivation of a “local colour” from the customs of the others is, however, problematic. Bali is not an ordinary place but, as Liu Kang described it, “a paradise filled with wonders.”7 We all love wonders, but appreciation of a culture is quite different from appropriation and transference from that culture to one’s own. So what drew the artists to set foot on Bali?

Left: Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy Hiah, Wei Woon, Artist and Model, 2001, photograph, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesy of the artists. Right: Liu Kang, Artist and Model, 1954, oil on canvas, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesyof National Heritage Board, Singapore.

After War World II, anti-colonial sentiments in Singapore intensified when the British deliberately left Singapore out of their negotiation for a Malayan confederation. Throughout the region, the idea of forging a new identity was growing deeper and seen as a reflection of people warming up to the idea of independence. The invention of a Nanyang regionalism, which specifically refers to the context of Malaya,8 has been regarded as a successful example. Nanyang literally means “the South Seas” and embraces the geographical area encompassing the regions to the south of greater China. It is regarded as “historically a China-centric term referring to the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia with its pan-Chinese nationalism, and it has become anachronistic as the community settled in as citizens in postcolonial nation-states.”9 Nanyang first emerged as a local subject in the late 1920s as a kind of literary activity among Chinese immigrants and initially had very little aesthetic bearing in the visual arts.10 The rise of the term reflects the patriotic feelings of the Chinese diaspora, who at first felt nostalgic for China and unsettled in a foreign land.11 After a while, a sense of belonging gradually developed among them. The patriotic aspect of Nanyang was increasingly losing importance, while its regional flavour was growing stronger. Artists who failed to notice the local colour of the South Seas were criticized; for example Chen Lianqing, the editor of the journal Coconut Grove, commented that “if our artists say that the landscape of the South Seas is too coarse, too lacking in artistic value and thus unworthy of

Vol. 12 No. 5 79 their attention, that is really a statement about their own perception and not necessarily a true picture. They have not perceived the atmosphere here with any understanding.”12

In 1938, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) was established. At the time, Nanyang was a popular prefix, frequently adopted for names such as the Nanyang University and the Nanyang Siang Bau (the Nanyang News). The academy has become one of the most reputable and influential art academies in the region of Malaysia and now in Singapore. World War II and the Japanese occupation temporarily paused the search for regional identity,13 and NAFA was forced to close from 1941 to 1945, but it quickly resumed thereafter. When the People’s Republic of China was founded, Singapore experienced another wave of emigration from China. Those who had settled here earlier faced the dilemma of whether to stay or to return. When Chinese nationalism and Southeast Asian regionalism were seen to be growing apart, for those who decided to stay (Liu Kang and Chen Chong Swee), and those who had just migrated here (Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng), the urgency of foraging a new regional identity became even more so. In responding to the call, the NAFA’s founding Principal, (1893–1963), who saw Singapore as a central locality of Nanyang because of its role as a trading port linking the East and West of the region,14 appealed for “an art form archetypal of the tropical region.”15

Liu Kang, Bathers, 1988, oil on canvas, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore.

Seeking inspiration from tropical Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy Hiah, Wei Woon, Bathers, scenery could be done locally, so 2001, photograph, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesy of the artists. why travel to distant Bali? With no budget airlines or efficient transportation network available, planning a sketching trip to Bali was a significant undertaking in the 1950s and certainly not the result of an impulsive act. They would have been clearly aware of the difficulty and significance of such a trip, which led Chen Wen Hsi to proudly claim, “No one had done something like that before. We started it.”16 Liu Kang considers their exhibition Pictures from Bali, which was held after their trip, to have been “quite an event at that time.”17

80 Vol. 12 No. 5 Liu Kang, Two By the Waterfall, 1996, oil on canvas, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesy of the Liu Kang Family.

Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy Besides the social and political Hiah, Wei Woon, Two By the Waterfall, 2001, photograph, forces searching for a local colour, 84 x 124 cm. Courtesy of the artists. the artists’ search beyond the isthmus of Malaya was also the result of the art education that they had received, a blend of techniques from the East and West. The Xinhua Academy of Fine Art in Shanghai, where the Western Art Department had been established since the 1930s,18 was their alma mater. After the Xinhua Academy, Liu Kang had furthered his practice in Paris, and Chen Wen Hsi was able to study French art publications during his sojourn in Vietnam prior to settling in Singapore.19 They were very familiar with Western styles such as Impressionism, Post- impressionism, and Symbolist aesthetics, and with prominent Western artists such as Paul Gauguin, who had spent time in Tahiti in the late nineteenth century. According to Liu Kang, for them the most desirable places to seek inspiration were, in fact, Beijing and Tahiti at the time, but the sociopolitical conditions of that period prevented them from doing so.20 Another reason to visit Bali could have been the presence of the Bali resident Belgian artist Adrien-Jean le Mayeur (1880–1958), who held a number of exhibitions between 1933 and 1941 in Singapore. The Singapore Free Press, Straits Times, and Malaya Tribune reviewed his exhibition in 1933 favourably.21 In addition, according to Chen Chong Swee, Mayeur’s Balinese wife, Ni Pollok, was seen topless during the openings of her husband’s exhibitions. This inspired the artists to imagine Bali being an alternative place to explore Tahitian tropical scenery closer to home.22 They did not only visit Mayeur during their trip but also had Pollok model for them. Their blended Eastern and Western education explains fully why the Nanyang aesthetic is imbued with a mixture of the style and techniques of Chinese pictorial traditions with the School of Paris.

Vol. 12 No. 5 81 Liu Kang, Portrait of Ni Pollok, 1952, pastel on paper, 60 x 47 cm. Courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore.

Art historian John Clark has argued that much of Asian art in the twentieth century is influenced by contact with Western Europe. The “foreign” ideas frequently led to Asian artists blending them with their own more local traditions in their art.23 The Nanyang aesthetic spearheaded by the 1952 Bali trip was a particularly well-known example of Chinese emigrants entwining “foreign” ideas and local traditions to create a unique identity— a pragmatic attempt to promote the development of the cultural landscape of Southeast Asia. But Nanyang style is much more complex than a simple blend, as it involved appropriating “traditions” not only from China and Western Europe, but also from the neighbours of their newly settled state—a kind of decorativisim that represented a Southeast Asian aesthetic tradition. Can these traditions find a common ground among the younger generations? Half-naked Balinese women and the melodic beauty of dancers had been favoured subjects repeatedly painted by the pioneers. In the introduction to the catalogue of Pictures from Bali in 1953, Liu Kang even celebrated that Balinese women were gentle and obedient to their men to a degree surpassing even that of the women of Japan.24 Favouring such primitive taste, it is not surprising that, in Liu Kang’s view, Bali is “the last paradise.”25 Today, in this “last paradise,” you certainly won’t see topless women anymore, and you will have to pay to enjoy Balinese dances that are choreographed specifically to satisfy the curiosity of the growing number of tourists.

82 Vol. 12 No. 5 Liu Kang, Masks (Bali), 1955, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 cm. Courtesy of Liu Kang Family.

Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy In the context of the available discussions on Hiah, Wei Woon, Masks (Bali), 2001, photograph, 72 x 60 cm. postcolonial, transcultural, and feminist issues Courtesy of the artists. today, the pioneers’ privileged gaze would have led to furious criticism. This was not an issue for them at all, but it certainly troubled the current generation who grew up in an age when the interchange of world views, ideas, and cultures is supported at an unprecedented rate by advanced transportation and telecom- munications. The young artists who recreated this journey in 2001 targeted the pioneers’ privilege and masculine gaze explicitly by including a female artist, Agnes Yit, to balance the all-male membership of the pioneers.26 In the series of photographs that were the result of this more recent visit, the artists also offered their own male bodies as objects for study instead of those of the local Balinese. Initially, they tried to invite tourists to pose for them but were rebuked for their seemingly inappropri- ate invitation. This rejection was not at all a bad thing, as they realized later that their own bodies were a more exacting agent in animating a compara- tive discussion between the earlier artists’ work and their own.27

Besides counter proposals to the pioneers’ privileged gaze, there were many other puzzles to which the young artists were hoping to find answers during their trip. Among them, a sense of belonging was critical. The first and

Vol. 12 No. 5 83 Liu Kang, Balinese Woman— Blue Chair/Red Sarong (Siesta), 1952, pastel on paper, 61 x 47 cm.

Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy Hiah, Wei Woon, Siesta in Bali, 2001, photograph, 61 x 47 cm. Courtesy of the artists.

84 Vol. 12 No. 5 foremost question they pondered throughout the trip was “Why is it that, after the Bali trip, they all became the pioneer artists in Singapore? Can we [achieve that after our Bali trip]?”28 In other words, why did the Balinese subject matter become an important part of Singapore’s art history? During the interview with Liu Kang, they asked why a Post-impressionist style was the only method intensely practised by them, whereas Western art trends such as Fauvism, or even Dadaism, seemed to have been intentionally ignored, even though they were popularly practised in the West while Liu Kang was in Paris. Because the British Council at that time had been a powerful supporter, organizing and hosting the Pictures from Bali Exhibition, these young artists questioned if the rise of the Nanyang aesthetic style in fact had a political intention.29

Left: Chen Wen Hsi, The Ferry, 1952, oil on canvas, 112.6 x 85.2 cm. Courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore. Right: Agnes Yit, Kai Lam, Jeremy Hiah, Wei Woon, The Ferry, 2001, photograph, 112.6 x 85.2 cm. Courtesy of the artists.

Promoting the ritualistic and decorative Nanyang aesthetic certainly was a less sensitive and controversial intellectual practice in comparison with the socialist realist style depicting the harsh conditions in the 1950s and 60s Singapore when the population had been struggling to combat hunger and poverty. Inspired by the socialist realist style of Lu Xun in China and the realist painting of the Soviet Union, there were some young artists who graduated from NAFA who embraced socialist realist expression, responding to the plight of the masses, especially the poorer classes, in promoting nation-building. This can be seen in the practices of the Equator Art Society founded in 1956.30 Besides painting, many of these social realist works were produced in the form of wood-block prints and cartoons that could be widely circulated among the masses.

With their “return” to Bali, these younger artists examined the subject matter of the Nanyang aesthetic site specifically. Unlike the artists who visited in 1952, however, the ritualistic and decorative aspects of Bali clearly did not inspire them much. After spending a week in Bali they travelled to another part of Indonesia to visit their artist friends such as Heri Dono in Jogjakarta. For them, this was much more exciting and real.31 After two weeks in Jogjakarta, they returned to Bali and spent another week completing a series of photographs. By imitating the compositions of the earlier artists, they appropriated the traditions of Bali using the same subject manner in order to investigate the

Vol. 12 No. 5 85 convergence of traditions of the other in the context of Singapore art, and therefore attempted to make sense of their own cultural roots.

On the other hand, the way the younger generation perceives China is very different from that of the pioneers. Just as the earlier emigrates were faced with the decision to help make a new state or to return to China after the Communist Party victory over the Nationalists, they had mixed feelings about the prevalence of contemporary Chinese art that followed China’s swift rise to become one of the world’s most powerful economic and political players. Patriotic sensation resonated little with them; rather, a sense of admiration and jealousy grew. Kai Lam and Jeremy Hiah have visited China to participate in its contemporary art scene regularly in the last few years. Recently, when I tried to get in touch with Jeremy Hiah, he was about to spend two weeks in Xi’an, China, where he was to research contemporary art and have exchanges with a local artist-run residency. Kai Lam shared with me his experience of living in China, which has made him envious of his mainland Chinese friends who are nurtured by a rich cultural tradition. The lack of it in Singapore has made him feel that he is “missing out on a lot.”32 The impact of such a feeling is intriguing. The revisiting of the Nanyang style is in some ways a creative enquiry in the hope of articulating what is missing for such a young nation, the existence of a gap that they may not have been fully aware of at the time.

These two Bali trips illustrate two kinds of adjustment and recreation that arise from the convergence of different cultures at two points in history. For the earlier migrated Chinese, the appropriation of the culture of others intertwined with their Chinese and European art educations was to establish their own identity and secure their presence in a newly settled state. The Nanyang style they catalyzed is a hybrid aesthetic based on multiple identities. For the later local-born Singaporean-Chinese artists, to revisit Bali, an important component in the evolution of the Nanyang style, was to exercise a creative criticality and deconstruction of their own identities.

The rich Balinese culture has now been borrowed Lee Wen, Journey of a Yellow Man No. 15: Touching China, twice by the Singaporean artists, but nonetheless 2001, performance. Courtesy of the artist. still belongs to the Balinese people. In his inaugural address to the NAFA Symposium in 2008 which coincided with NAFA’s 70th Anniversary, Professor Michael Sullivan said, “[W]hat I find most fascinating about Singapore . . . is the contrast, the conflict even, between its consciousness of being at the very centre of a ring of great civilizations which affect it richly, and its constant desire to forge its own identity.” But “out of what?” he asked.33 Forging an identity for a nation like Singapore built mainly on immigrants lacking a shared origin can be a complex, challenging, and enduring task. It is an important and precious source of inspiration for their artists. The Journey of a Yellow Man series by Singapore performance artist Lee Wen is a prominent example of such a pursuit. The series has been performed in

86 Vol. 12 No. 5 many parts of the world but Journey of a Yellow Man No. 15: Touching China which was performed in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, in 2001, is particularly thought-provoking as it goes beyond examination of the identity of a Chinese man born in Singapore, prompting critical engagement in relating Singaporean Chinese to the larger discourse about the Chinese diaspora. One thing we are certainly very sure of is that the question Sullivan asked has been, and will be, continuously explored by these creative minds, who have never failed to demonstrate vigorous energy in understanding their own identity, with their roots in the past and their eyes on the future.

Notes 1 Singapore was part of Malaya before it separated from Malaysia. Liu Kang emigrated to Singapore in 1942, Chen Wen His in 1948, Cheong Soo Pieng in 1946, and Chen Chong Swee in 1932. 2 Yvonne Low, “Remembering Nanyang Feng’Ge,” Modern Art Asia 5 (November 2010), http:// modernartasia.com/low-nanyang-style-5/. 3 For example, the artists such as Tew Nai Tong, Khoo Sui Hoe, Tay Chee Toh, and Lin Hsin Hsin were influenced by the four earlier artists. 4 Jeremy Hiah, conversation with the author, May 23, 2013. 5 Ibid. 6 Jeremy Hiah explained that the exhibition catalogue Reminiscence of Singapore’s Pioneer Art Masters (Singapore: The Singapore Mint, 1994), was brought along on their trip as an important reference. The catalogue includes an essay, “Bali, Almost Re-visited,” by T. K. Sabapathy . 7 Liu Kang, “Introduction,” in Bali Bali lvxing huace () Art Catalogue of Bali Trip, (Singapore: British Council, 1953), 1. 8 Singapore and Malaysia, collectively termed Malaya at that time, were considered the heart of Nanyang. 9 Huang Jianli and Hong Lysa, “History and the Imaginaries of ‘Big Singapore’: Positioning the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall,“ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35, no. 1 (February 2004), 65–66. 10 Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences: A History of Singapore Art (Singapore: , 1996), 9. 11 Zhong Yu, “Nanyang Art Series One: The Birth of Nanyang Art before The War,” Nanyang Yishu 125 (2007), 38. 12 Chen Lianqing, “Literature and Local Color,” Coconut Grove, September 23, 1929. 13 Zhong Yu, “Nanyang Art Series One: The Birth of Nanyang Art before The War,” 40. 14 Lim Hak Tai, “Remembrance the Process in Founding of the School,” in Nanyang meishu, special issue, Reopening of Nanyang Fine Arts College, 1946. 15 Quoted in Kwok Kian Chow, “History of Art in Singapore—An Introduction,” Window on Singapore Art (Singapore: National Arts Council and National Heritage Board, 1994), 11. 16 Quoted in Yvonne Low, “Remembering Nanyang Feng’Ge,” Modern Art Asia 5 (November 2010), http://modernartasia.com/low-nanyang-style-5/ . 17 Quoted in T. K. Sabapathy’s interview with the artist, on December 13, 1993, Singapore (unpublished), translated by Lai Chee Kien. 18 Kwok, “History of Art in Singapore,” 12. 19 Kwok Kian Chow, “A Dialogue with Tradition: Chen Wen Hsi’s Art of the ‘80s,” in A Dialogue with Tradition: Chen Wen Hsi’s Art of the ‘80s (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1992), 7. 20 Liu Kang, interview with Rawanchaikul Toshiko , trans. Horikawa Lisa, in Nanyang 1950–65: Passage to Singapore Art (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2002), 36. 21 Jop Ubbens and Cathinka Huiging, Adrien Jean le Mayeur de Mer—Painter Traveller 1880s–1958 (The Netherlands: Pictures Publishers, 1995), 102–105. 22 Chen Chong Swee, quoted in A Heroic Decade: Singapore Art 1955–1965 (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2005), 3. 23 John Clark, Asian Modern Art (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998), 51, 71. 24 Liu Kang, “Introduction,” 2. 25 Ibid. 26 Kai Lam, conversation with the author, November 19, 2012. 27 Jeremy Hiah, conversation with the author, May 23, 2013. 28 Jeremy Hiah, conversation with the author, May 23, 2013. 29 Kai Lam, conversation with the author, November 19, 2012. The exhibition Pictures from Bali was held at the British Council at Stamford Road in 1953. 30 The Equator Art Society was an artist’s group that promoted the social realist art style in Singapore. It was also a nationalist and anti-colonialist society, most active during the 1960s, when the country was going through several political changes. 31 Jeremy Hiah, conversation with the author, May 23, 2013. 32 Kai Lam, conversation with the author, November 19, 2012. 33 Michael Sullivan, “Keynote Paper,” in New Asian Imaginations (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 2008), 6.

Vol. 12 No. 5 87 Edward Sanderson ON I OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing January 13–April 14, 2013

ith ON I OFF: China’s Li Shurui, The Unknown Shimmering at the Edge of the Young Artists in World, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 257 x 257 x 15 cm. Courtesy of Concept and Practice, the Artist and UCCA, Beijing. W Opposite page: Li Shurui, an extensive group show that Heiqiao Tower of Babel, 2013, acrylic on canvas. Photo: Dora occupied all of the exhibition spaces Tang. Courtesy of the artist and at Ullens Center for Contemporary UCCA, Beijing. Art (UCCA) in Beijing, curators Bao Dong and Sun Dongdong attempted to come to grips with the ongoing issue of rationalizing the latest round of artists to have emerged on the Chinese visual arts scene over the past few years. They chose to pursue a course of highlighting what they see as the diversity of current art production in China. The curators framed this diversity as a distinctive trait of the Chinese art environment, a trait they say works against generalizing views, describing the exhibition as an expression of “polyphony” and “multiplicity.” They go so far as to characterize contemporary art in China as “a series of encounters,” each of which must be taken on its own merits, also claiming that “any artistic practice is yet another attempt at defining the scope of practice itself.” As a result, contemporary art practices can be understood neither from “a sociological perspective—seeing [them] as evidence of any number of social realities and ideologies”—nor “by way of the so-called internal logic of artistic language and method.”1

In the exhibition format of ON I OFF itself, the curators deliberately attempted to reflect this understanding of the contemporary art world in China. Its fifty participating artists (or, in three cases, a duo of artists) were presented in what might be described as a “flat” format in the sense that there was no articulation by category, theme, or highlight. That said, despite the curators’ premise of multiplicity and the consequent lack of logical organization in the gallery spaces themselves, it was possible to pick out particular connections among the artworks.

Several artists’ work displayed an interest in investigating form or material, a manifestation of a kind of “internal logic” that the curators apparently dismissed. The painterly abstractions of both Xie Molin and Wang Guangle, which, while using diametrically opposed techniques—Xie Molin has developed a machine to create the evenly-spaced furrows in the thick, multi-hued painted surfaces of Ji No. 4 (2012) and Inconsistent Output No. 6 (2012); while Wang Guangle labouriously hand- subtle

88 Vol. 12 No. 5 Vol. 12 No. 5 89 progressions of coloured pigments, Liang Yuanwei, Pisces (left), 2011, oil on canvas, 160 x 180 layer after layer, to create physical stacks cm. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Beijing. of on the canvases121101 (2012) and 121102 (2012)—share a concern with the physicality of paint. In Heiqiao Tower of Babel (2012) and The Unknown Shimmering at the Edge of the World (2012) by Li Shurui, multiple canvases depicting shimmering interference patterns were connected to create structures that invaded the spaces in which they were installed. Liang Yuanwei’s paintings of repeating floral motifs, Pisces (left) (2011), and Pisces (right) (2012), retain an element of process-based activity in their creation, as these motifs were meticulously picked out from a gradation of colour travelling from the top to the bottom of the canvas. At first glance these repetitions appear cool and unemotional, yet the patterns apparently relate to clothes worn at significant events in the artist’s life.

A focus on the process of creating a Zhao Zhao, Repetition, 2012, stone. Photo: Dora Tang. work of art was another common thread Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. amongst several other artists’ works in the exhibition. Repetition (2012), Zhao Zhao’s cube of grey stonework, was sourced from dismantled Buddhist statues, the original carvings weathered away or cut down to leave flat surfaces which formed the outer surface of the cube, emitted a feeling of the pathos of Li Liao, Consumption, 2013, installation. Photo: Dora Tang. ruined structures. In The Narrative of Courtesy of the artist and UCCA, Beijing. a Stack of Paper (2012), Wang Yuyang’s nine hundred sheets of paper were printed with over 10,000,000 still images that recorded the process of the papers’ fabrication. Li Liao gained employment at the Foxconn company in Shenzhen, China (famous for making Apple products), staying on for the forty-five days necessary to earn the equivalent of the price of one of the iPads he had played a part in manufacturing. His work contract, uniform, and the iPad he purchased are on display in Consumption (2012), succinctly presenting the reality of the production of this item.

Various degrees of humour or satire could also be identified in the exhibition. Xin Yunpeng’s mechanical bucking bronco, No Problem (2013), dominated UCCA’s ticket hall, inviting spectators to try to avoid being thrown from the motorized animal and onto the inflated cushion surrounding it. Such exciting possibilities were literally deflated as soon as the bull was mounted, at which point a sensor immediately cut its power. In the videos by Yang Jian, strange and futile activities were demonstrated with utter seriousness. One section of the video Sooner or Later, Lightning

90 Vol. 12 No. 5 Xin Yunpeng, No Problem, Will Strike Us All (2011–12), showed the 2013, installation. Photo: Dora Tang. Courtesy of the artist and effects of a wire-and-pulley arrangement UCCA. Beijing. attached at one end to a briefcase held Right: Yang Jian, Sooner or Later, Lightning Will Strike Us by an actor, and at the other to the leg All, 2013, video installation. Photo: Dora Tang. Courtesy of of a second actor standing in front of the artist and UCCA. Beijing. Right bottom: Li Ran, Born the first, such that when the briefcase Again, 2013, video installation. Photo: Dora Tang. Courtesy of was dropped, the leg rose. Li Ran’s the artist and UCCA. Beijing. mockumentary Born Again (2012), documenting the early life of a fictional American musical pioneer, addressed the mythologies that are built up around the idea of the undiscovered musical genius. Hu Xiangqian’s Solo Exhibition for the Xiangqian Museum of Art (2012) was a remake of a previous performance by the titular artist, Hu Xiangqian, in which he described the artworks populating his imaginary museum. Now an actor took his place, adding a further layer to this activity of imaginary museum-building. A vague promise of political engagement came with Tank Project (2011–13), by He Xiangyu—an armoured tank made of leather collapsing under its own weight, much like a Claes Oldenburg soft sculpture.

Stand-alone videos included Fang Lu’s Lovers are Artists (Part Two) (2012), which continued her focus on seemingly ritualistic tasks, often involving food or clothing, that members of her cast have undertaken. At one point an actress lies face-down on a massage table, spitting half-chewed chocolate from her mouth onto sheets of paper placed on the floor beneath her; at

Vol. 12 No. 5 91 Fang Lu, Lovers Are Artists (Part Two), 2012, video, 11 mins., 40 secs. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing.

Yan Xing, Arty, Super-Arty, 2013, video, 9 mins., 16 secs. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing.

another point she is filmed cutting Lu Yang, Uterus Man, 2013, video installation. Photo: Dora a number of women’s shoes into Tang. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing. two pieces with an electric saw and pushing the pieces into the surface of a large cream cake. In Arty, Super-Arty (2013) Yan Xing recreated scenes on video from

Edward Hopper paintings, with Zhao Yao, Expectations of Form, 2013, installation. Photo: black-and-white mise en scènes in Dora Tang. Courtesy of the deep chiaroscuro populated by artist and UCCA. Beijing. arrangements of bored-looking characters. Lu Yang posited the new character UterusMan (2013) in her video’s hectic collage of bio- genetic science mixed with manga aesthetics. Hu Xiaoyuan’s poetic but impenetrable Axing Ice to Cross the Sea (2012) was a three-screen work showing a figure casting about on a seashore, flanking a slow pan across an icy ground. Song Ta’s Uglier and Uglier (2012) presented enumerated clips of female students

92 Vol. 12 No. 5 Hu Xiaoyuan, Axing Ice to Cross the Sea, 2012, 3-channel video, 9 mins., 40 secs. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing.

Ma Qiusha, Oh, Be Sweet, at the artist’s university, presented in 2013, installation. Photo: Dora Tang. Courtesy of the artist and a subjective ranking system based on UCCA. Beijing. his aesthetic preferences. Ma Qiusha, whose works (particularly her video pieces) have often been entrancing, presented something of an unfocused installation in Oh, Be Sweet (2013). Along a long, thin corridor floored with white acrylic, various power tools covered in fur were switched on and left to grind away at the flooring. Cheng Ran’s single-channel video of a woman in a blue dress playing ominous chords on a bass guitar, came across as somewhat self- indulgent in its slow and drawn-out tempo. The installation Expectations of Form (2013) by Zhao Yao of a huge billboard, raised by a scissor platform to the eaves of UCCA’s main space, promised much in the description—that all the trash from this exhibition would be recycled and displayed as this work— but it was unclear how this had been fulfilled in the final piece.

Despite the focus on diversity among the artworks on exhibit, one organizing principle identified by the curators themselves was the phenomenon of collectives as a strategy for artists’ self-organization. Bao Dong and Sun Dongdong considered collectives a manifestation of pragmatism: “Independently organized, collective practice is not an attempt to do away with the system, but is rather built in parallel to it, constituting a complementary relationship whereby artists can forge relatively independent spaces for the preservation of the autonomy of artistic practice.”2

ON | OFF more or less retained a focus on the individual artist, so the idea of collectives was featured in what was described as a “prologue” show entitled SEE | SAW (curated separately by Paula Tsai of UCCA) which took place during the month prior to the opening of ON | OFF. SEE | SAW demonstrated the fact that collectives of artists are an important part of the art scene in China, and at the same time reflected the fact that many individual artists included in ON | OFF also participate in collectives, and thus appeared in both shows. For example, Xu Qu and Zhao Yao individually took part in

Vol. 12 No. 5 93 ON | OFF and were also included GUEST, Guest, 2012, installation. Photo: Peter Le. in SEE | SAW as members of the Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing. collective GUEST; Chen Zhou, Li Ming, Li Ran, and Yan Xing are members of COMPANY, and they all appeared individually in ON | OFF; Li Ming at one time or another has also been a member of GUEST, as well of the Double Fly Art Center, a collective that too was presented in SEE | SAW.

SEE | SAW, coming as it did immediately prior to ON | OFF, proved prescient of the problems that the latter show would display. Each week a set of two or three collectives were allowed seven days in which to install and present their projects before the next cluster of collectives took over the same spaces. Although short introductory texts were mounted on the gallery walls for each collective, the time constraints possibly worked against in-depth and sufficiently contextualized information being made available about the new works, some of which developed over the course of the week and never settled into a finished form. SEE | SAW remained, however, a very interesting series of presentations, highlighting the nature of many of these collectives’ activities—an awareness of ephemerality and temporariness, practices that favoured fast, reactive activity. But the disadvantage of this kind of curatorial proposition was the difficulty in pinning down what was on show due to the limited information provided by the institution.

Birdhead, Today Series, 2013, gelatin silver prints, mahogany, python skin, chamois leather, installation. Photo: Dora Tang. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing.

Two artist groups and one set of brothers also appeared in ON | OFF. Birdhead (Song Tao and Ji Weiyu), which is known for its massive clusters of photographs of friends in its hometown of Shanghai, utilizes an aesthetic of the snapshot or street photography. For this exhibition, Birdhead’s installation also addressed the printing and presentation techniques that are used when exhibiting their photographs in general. Here, they mimicked a Victorian household setting by covering the walls of the installation space with old-style flock wallpaper and presenting their black-and-white photographic prints in baroque-style frames. To draw attention to the process of photography, beyond the subject matter depicted, the prints themselves were further distressed and manipulated in the darkroom.

94 Vol. 12 No. 5 Gong Jian + Li Jinghu, Urban- Taking their creative cues from the Rural Fringe Group Prologue, 2013, installation. Photo: Dora friable terrain between the city and Tang. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA. Beijing. the countryside, Urban-Rural Fringe Group (Gong Jian and Li Jinghui) presented an installation that included fabric off-cuts that covered the floor complemented with stray dogs made from the same materials and distributed around their space. The walls were covered in the bland tessellated tiles typical of municipal swimming pools, and embellished with paintings of the same dogs, along with garden topiary, and the bland building-types that populate the fringe areas of the city.

While ON | OFF was a marvellous opportunity to see such a large representation of artists in one place, with many of them producing new works especially for this show, the sheer quantity of participants and the even-handed presentation by the curators left one at times feeling bewildered. Within the exhibition spaces, each artist was represented by one or two artworks accompanied by a short wall text. The number of artists, the diversity of works, and the limited textual information about the artwork risked providing an unsatisfactory experience in terms of understanding how these artists are representative of practices in China at this time. Given this presentation, analysis of each artist’s work was difficult and tended to leave one to interpret this show as a series of unrelated, spectacular works with little appreciation for the context of each piece within the artists’ wider oeuvre and within the wider context of Chinese (or indeed, international) art practices. While a limited articulation might reflect the reality of the art scene in China, critical analysis of this limitation and its consequences was ineffectually elaborated for the audience.

The curators’ understanding of the art scene as displaying “polyphony” and “multiplicity,” reflected in ON | OFF through the diverse selection of types and forms of work, and through the non-hierarchical strategy of display, was a conceptually valid and interesting proposition. At best, it served to allow us to reconsider the assumed structures and formats that are ingrained within the art world. By relying less on the didactic presentations of curators and organizers and more on subjective encounters with the works by the viewer, new connections may well have arisen between the artists and their works

However, this proposition leads to at least two problems when attempting to realize this potentially new engagement with contemporary art within an exhibition format. First, the assumptions that this methodology works against are institutionalized in the art world and require additional information or theoretical background material to support this alternative approach. Without such information—and I have suggested it was insufficient in this exhibition—entering UCCA’s galleries unprepared may lead to a misunderstanding of the “flat” nature of the exhibition that I described earlier: that it displays unclear and unjustified choices of artworks. Second (although I appreciate the following point inevitably goes beyond the remit of this exhibition), a methodology favouring multiplicity,

Vol. 12 No. 5 95 and by its nature taken to its logical conclusion undermines this particular exhibition’s premise—a show about young artists. Multiplicity is surely radically non-specific in its subject matter, and while I am not suggesting this exhibition could or should present all and sundry, ON | OFF’s own thesis displays an internal contradiction by attempting to align multiplicity with a restricted selection of artists, a contradiction that I believe the curators did not sufficiently address or pre-empt.

A partial resolution to these issues, however, came in the form of the catalogue for this show that included additional works by the artists that were not on display in UCCA’s galleries, as well as curatorial texts that were valuable in providing greater depth of information to assist with an understanding of the works. But this catalogue was not published until near the end of the run of ON | OFF which left the works and the audience without its benefits for most of the exhibition.

Moving through UCCA’s spaces with the knowledge that the curators had avoided proposing affinities among the artists or the works, a suspicion arose in me that the ordering and layout may have been governed by more pragmatic requirements; for instance, the spaces available dictating the size of the work possible to show in them. This principle of pragmatism, though, is perhaps more significant than initially might be assumed. The curators pointed out that pragmatism played a major role in the artists’ responses to the socio-political environment within which they had developed their practices. The curators characterized China since Mao’s death in 1976 as operating under institutions and ideas possessing multiple identities: Socialism | Capitalism, Reform and Opening | Stability and Harmony, International Rules | Chinese characteristics. While at times seemingly contradictory, they suggest the two sides of the conjunction represented by the “|” that separates them could exist simultaneously through an act of pragmatism: “these ideas are able to coexist without contradiction, and can even replace one another at the flick of a switch.”3 Such an understanding explains the curators’ choice of the title ON | OFF for this exhibition: to represent this switching action. The curators make the symbolic connection between the major “identities” listed above and the relatively simple (but significant) activity of switching a VPN from inactive to active in order to bypass the “Great Fire Wall” of Internet controls inside mainland China.

The principle of pragmatism also lies within the curators’ own practice. Their pragmatic solution to the presentation of these artists’ work was to leave their own practice as “a kind of open field observation” that resulted in their attempt to avoid the pressures of categorization. As Bao Dong wrote: “With field research and an analytical approach, ON | OFF just hints at a solution, and suggests relationships rather than prescribes a certain decisiveness.”4 The curators stress the importance of avoiding the reduction of the artists or their activities to a “simple idea”; they are against their “being simply defined and then immediately consumed by the market and the media.”5

To that end, the curators “wanted to emphasize the differences between individuals,”6 and hold the curators’ own viewpoint “in suspension”:

96 Vol. 12 No. 5 “we hope to . . . regress to a standpoint of having no standpoint.”7 For them this has direct relevance for an understanding of the contemporary: “contemporaneity is first and foremost a rejection of decisiveness.”8

The curators further state that they “weren’t originally meant to provide any answers, but to transform awareness of the problems,” going on to say, “there is no need and no way to define the art practice of the generation in whose very midst we find ourselves. What is necessary is to turn to the background and to research and understand internal tensions within the art institution . . .”9

For all these justifications that were provided by the curators in the catalogue, within the exhibition space itself this aspect of the presentation of the works in ON | OFF was not sufficiently highlighted or drawn out. The inclusion of these particular artists inevitably amounted to validation of their work by the institution, but the lack of analysis meant it remained unclear why this particular set of artists had been selected. In many cases, the works were good in themselves and may be representative of contemporary art production in China today, but the curatorial support— in the form of statements or in the installation of the works—did not provide a coherent reading to reinforce such assertions. Without such support and without existing knowledge of the artists, the audience may have found it difficult to understand the artwork that was included, and, therefore, ultimately learned little about tendencies within the Chinese art world at large. Without being too dogmatic about how a curator or an institution should behave, I believe such a show, in such an institution, has a responsibility to present its subject matter from a more critical perspective.

On the one hand, a survey show such as this, providing the opportunity for a large number of participating artists to create new works especially for it, must be applauded—this is exactly the sort of ambitious presentation that UCCA, as one of the major museums of art in Beijing (if not China), should be cultivating as an important part of their program. But, on the other hand, the curators left themselves open to criticism—while they posited an interesting curatorial premise, the lack of elaborating that premise meant that meaningful interpretation of the exhibition was, for the viewer, left hanging in a frustrating way.

Notes 1 Bao Dong and Sun Dongdong, “ON | OFF: On Polyphony and Liminality,” in Bao Dong et al., ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept & Practice (Beijing: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 2013), 29–33. 2 Ibid., 32. 3 Ibid., 31. 4 Pu Hong, Bao Dong, and Sun Dongdong, “The Subject of Viewpoints in Suspension: A Discussion on the Politics of ON | OFF,” in ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept & Practice, 343. 5 Ibid., 342. An immediate response to this would be that it appears this flat format does not (in practice) defeat that consumption. By not making any relative statements about the works in ON I OFF, and hence reducing interruptions or delays to consumption that comparisons might create, it might be argued that the curators present the works in this exhibition in an almost perfectly consumable way. 6 Ibid., 342. 7 Ibid., 344. 8 Ibid., 343. 9 Ibid., 347.

Vol. 12 No. 5 97 Jonathan Goodman Feng Yan: Photography Objectified Three Shadows Plus 3 Gallery, Beijing April 13–May 26, 2013

eng Yan is a mid-career, Feng Yan, Car Door, 2006, C print, 85.7 x 130 cm. Courtesy Beijing-based photographer of the artist. Fwhose work was shown this spring at Three Shadows Plus 3 Gallery, a commercial space located on the same grounds as the esteemed Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, in the Caochangdi arts district in Beijing (the former is affiliated with the latter but independent from it financially). The exhibition, primarily consisting of colour photographs of isolated everyday objects, brought up interesting questions pertaining to the social or domestic power of solitary objects and their effect on the viewer. Feng Yan’s sophistication, for example, in his colour rendering of the massive steps in The People’s Conference Hall (2006), emphasizes the monolithic nature of the depicted building but also instills an anxiety about its purpose, as the uninhabited stairs reveal nothing but themselves. And Feng Yan’s focus on another isolated object, as in Car Door (2006), an image of a detail of the sedan Joseph Stalin gave to Mao Zedong, is straightforward enough, yet a spirit of menace is communicated through the evidence of bullet hole indentations in the window. Even so, when looked at simply as an object, the car carries no particular meaning as a sign of political power; it is merely a picture of a car. But once one knows the car’s history, it loses its anonymity. His portraits of such things amount to a documentary-like treatment of myriad objects from everyday life within both the public and private realms.

Feng Yan’s imagery thus functions Feng Yan, The People’s Conference Hall, 2006, digital as a kind of mirror of the photograph, 110 x 163.9 cm. Courtesy of the artist. isolated object because he refuses to embellish anything in the photograph. The inclusion of Mao’s car photos, however, opens up questions about power given its ominous black paint, its massive solidity, and its provenance. This implies that the meaning embedded within this photograph is made powerful by the car’s politicized origins. So it happens that Car Door, like most of Feng Yan’s work, leans toward resisting interpretation until

98 Vol. 12 No. 5 its context is made clear. This tends to position his imagery into the realm of the anonymous—at least at first look.

Feng Yan, Fan, 2010, digital Of course, it is common knowledge today in photograph, 148 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. contemporary photography that no image is objective, that the photograph reflects the photographer’s often subtle technical decisions and larger intentions. Yet a certain degree of objectivity can in fact be achieved. For example, the unplugged electric fan depicted in Feng Yan’s Fan (2010) has specificity and functions as an object but it is so mundane that it is hard to imagine what personal meaning it might have for the artist. Its virtue as an artifact, however, lies in our ability to see something as it is, in all its detail, and without any cultural or even personal history. Feng Yan is attentive in presenting these objects as seemingly impersonal, even though most of them belong to the photographer himself. So, here, one doesn’t have to know the object’s origins in order to appreciate the distance between it, the photographer, and his audience. This effect of distancing amounts to a kind of alienation—as if the fan were somehow foreign and exotic—despite the utter familiarity we have with such an object. In these works of art, Feng Yan has attempted to absent the personal to the point where the items appear to have become cultural relics dug up from some contemporary midden, cleaned up, and carefully positioned for our close scrutiny.

But if Feng Yan is practicing a kind of cultural anthropology, he is oriented towards the physical materiality of the artifact rather than its cultural meaning. Moreover, this formal materialism shows us that objects are meant for use or public display rather than interpretation; material culture can be commented upon, of course, but the object’s real function is to do the job it was created to do. So Feng Yan’s documentation of the object places it in the realm of the ordinary to the point where the object assumes a banality. The fan is just a fan, although he has recorded it with notable precision. At the same time, the seeming objectivity his images present can have troubling connotations, as in the image of the bullet holes on the window of Mao’s sedan in Car Door or the staircase that appears to lead to nowhere. Moreover, Feng Yan’s work implies that the political is an inevitable part of cultural expressiveness. For example, focusing on something as seemingly trivial as a small group of bonsai plants that seem misplaced or trapped in a corner in Corner Plants (2006), enables Feng Yan to present his view on the present state of affairs in China. One can feel that current political conditions—China’s authoritarian rule—might here be alluded to, although such an interpretation is inferred rather than explicit.

Still, objects have a life of their own. Even a simple photographic record of an object can have inevitable consequences, no matter how lacking in originality or personal attachment the object depicted may be. It is here that the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher can be cited; the German couple (Bernd Becher died in 2007) is internationally known for collaborative

Vol. 12 No. 5 99 Feng Yan, Corner Plants, 2006, C print, 74 x 110 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

studies of architectural typologies, of industrial buildings for example, mostly but not exclusively located in Germany. The Bechers’s images are completely without embellishment; indeed, the lack of it, and their promise of an undiluted objectification of their subject matter, accounts for the visual power of the structures they photograph. According to Feng Yan, he has only recently become familiar with the Bechers, yet there is a clear connection between his work and theirs. The tension between the artist’s subjective and objective states of mind, as illustrated in the Bechers’ impassive imagery, is also at the unspoken core of Feng Yan’s creativity. The inclination towards an industrial aesthetic in American Minimalism, in which the sculpture reveals no cultural narrative other than the conditions of its manufacture, is an approach not so distant from Feng Yan’s. Indeed, Feng Yan has remarked in conversation that he admires the Minimalist movement in general.

Yet, ironically, despite the politicized disposition of many of the sculptors who were affiliated with Minimalism, its style has become a favourite for corporate art—likely because of its very nihilism in regard to expressions of cultural meaning. Although Feng Yan’s photography could be understood as a sort of continuance of the New York Minimalist tradition, it is unlikely to hold aesthetic appeal within a corporate context. The artist himself spent time in New York, living in Williamsburg from 1998 through 2001, and here he would have had ample opportunities to visit galleries and museums, thus becoming knowledgeable about American art.

In a quite different sequence of images, titled Psychedelic Bamboo, also exhibited in this show, we encounter shots of neon tubes stacked on top of each other. In another reference to the Minimalists, and to an audience schooled in its accomplishments, these images might look like some sort of homage to Dan Flavin’s neon sculptures. Feng Yan is thus building a bridge not only between generations but also across a considerable geographic divide. The neon tubes emanate a central core of light; in Psychedelic Bamboo 10 (2009), a green band splits the middle of a composition that is otherwise dark aside from the minimal glow of green and red horizontal lines above and below. Feng Yan’s openness to Western aesthetics acknowledges

100 Vol. 12 No. 5 Feng Yan, Psychedelic Bamboo the precedence of the evolution of modernist 10, 2011, digital photograph, 120 x 90 cm. Courtesy of the abstraction, but Chinese art jumped from artist. socialist realism to a postmodern practice without engaging in a genuine late-modernist experience, so Feng Yan’s art is genuinely startling, seeming to have sprung fully formed into a postmodern context. One can also notice that as a title, Psychedelic Bamboo is an amalgam of Western hallucinogenic drug culture with a reference to the ubiquity of bamboo in China, in both art and nature. Feng Yan’s use of abstraction also relates to his fondness for traditional with its dynamic nonrepresentational brushstrokes and flourishes.

Feng Yan, Psychedelic Bamboo The Psychedelic Bamboo series offers us both 04, 2009, digital photograph, 120 x 90 cm. Courtesy of the a contrast and an alternative to the highly artist. documentary tendency that characterizes much of Feng Yan’s other work. The beauty within these images results from the internal luminescence of neon; in Psychedelic Bamboo 04 (2009), for example, the horizontal bars display a broad range of colours: blue, green, red, maroon, yellow. The muted glow of the colours gives this image its power; it is reminiscent of works by other artists such as the aforementioned Dan Flavin, but it is also strikingly original. Indeed, the romanticism of these photographs—their deliberate beauty—raises useful questions about the relationship between photography and painting. For example, does the photograph continue to undermine painting’s ability for realistic representation? And why has current photography mostly been taken over by the conceptual artist and not by the realist craftsperson?

Feng Yan, Psychedelic Bamboo Even so, one recognizes at the outset that 06, 2011, digital photograph, 120 x 90 cm. Courtesy of the Psychedelic Bamboo 04 is indeed a photographic artist. image, its narrow bands of colour self-evidently flat, lacking the more nuanced surface of painting; brushstrokes would add depth, however small, to the surface of the picture. In Psychedelic Bamboo 06 (2009) the bands are wider, and the edges between them blurred. The stripes are red and white in the top two-thirds of the image, while the bottom of the composition is much denser, consisting of dark maroon and dark purple, which shifts into a near black. These bands of colour are beautiful in and of themselves, but Feng Yan is do not deliberate in suggesting the act of painting. The flatness of the surface shows us that the image is resolutely photographic, even if it recalls, in its quiet luminosity, a painter like Rothko.

If the Psychedelic Bamboo series mimics painting to emphasize the fluid depth of photography in its presentation of objects, the series entitled The Monuments presents the object, as in so much of Feng Yan’s work, purely as a physical thing. This series, which, as earlier illustrated, depicts the artist’s own belongings, is utterly straightforward—again, much like the work of

Vol. 12 No. 5 101 the Bechers—so that the bare facts of the object are revealed through its Feng Yan, File Cabinet, 2010, digital photograph, 148 x 100 details. Feng Yan’s photographs of file cabinets, for example, taken in 2010, cm. Courtesy of the artist. emphasize their intransigent existence as things, and are taken out of context by being isolated in a photographic image in order to emphasize their unadulterated specificity. He is asking his audience to see the photographed object in a new light, as if for the first time, and the result leads to full attention being paid to those ineluctable aspects that make the file cabinet so absolutely itself. Feng Yan’s realism, in this case, refuses to romanticize the object, although the cabinets show us the potential for a beauty that is nearly industrial. By remaining resolutely object-oriented, it is as if Feng Yan were reiterating, in a visual fashion, the truth of American modernist poet William Carlos Williams’ terse axiom: “No ideas but in things.”

Yet these photos of objects, despite their rejection of idealization, derive a staying power based upon the elevation of detail within each one that is represented, demonstrating striking imagination on Feng Yan’s part. By emphasizing the object’s particular details, the artist focuses on the visual beauty found in their manufacture; it moves the viewer from its objective origins to a more expressive, beautiful image. And we can invest his facticity with a historically based awareness of art; for example, when looking at Black Stool (2010), Minimalism comes back into play with this work’s echo of the simple planks of the late American sculptor John McCracken that are painted one colour and stand against the white wall of the space they are in. Thus, although it is axiomatic that human truths are partial, there are degrees of truthfulness and impartiality that allow Feng Yan to present mere everyday objects as works of art. His Chest of Drawers (2010) roots the act of vision in ontology, again emphasizing the physical presence of what is gazed upon. In his celebration of everyday objects, Feng proposes a less idealized, but equally eloquent point of view. This is because objects themselves possess an intrinsic value visually, no matter how small or ordinary that value may be.

As the pictures described above do not specifically relate to Chinese culture, they could be considered international in outlook. Yet Feng Yan’s remarkable Rock series, also on view in the exhibition, fully recalls the tradition of scholar’ rocks portrayed in Chinese ink painting. His fine depictions of a rock turn their rough surfaces into objects of visual delight; Feng Yan turns

102 Vol. 12 No. 5 Feng Yan, Black Stool, 2010, digital photograph, 148 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

back the clock by emphasizing the legacy of his culture. The large scale of the images—180 x 120 cm—makes them even more visually compelling. Even though one might relate this work to Chinese ink painting, the fact remains that Feng Yan continues his process of focusing fully on the object before him, finding a visual lyricism in it that is contemporary in its isolation of a particular object, and venerable in its recognition of tradition. Ironically, the pattern he finds in these close-ups, such as Rock 03 (2011), is suggestive of a Jackson Pollock drip painting, with a reference to Western art history again becoming evident. But in Rock 02 (2011), the affiliation is decidedly more toward Chinese ink paintings of mountains, proving that Feng Yan is not committed to any one style but, instead, to a process that results in subjects derived from a broad range of cultures and times. What ties this work together is an emphasis on extraordinary detail and clarity within each image.

Left: Feng Yan, Rock 03, 2011, digital photograph, 180 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Feng Yan, Rock 02, 2011, digital photograph, 180 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

For artists, the current sociopolitical situation in China remains tenuous— the personal freedom of their lives can be compared to that in the West, but their freedom to express oppositional politics cannot. Part of the problem has to do with critical writing, of which there is very little to match that of the West (or so my Chinese artist colleagues tell me). Yet an artist can find subtle

Vol. 12 No. 5 103 Feng Yan, Military Museum, 2006, C print, 141 x 230 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

ways to suggest government control. Returning Feng Yan, Four Flags, 2006, C print, 148 x 230 cm. Courtesy to the issue of power in Feng Yan’s work, in of the artist. another stairway photograph, Military Museum (2006), the steps lead quite literally to a closed wall—as if access to the museum and its history is forbidden. Another work with political implications is Four Flags (2006), which consists of four red flags that lack the red stars that would make each the flag of China; it is as if the flag has had its national symbolism stripped away. The VIP Room (2005) looks ominous in its treatment of shrouded furniture and lack of people. And, finally, the plastic yellow strip whose red letters announce Security Check (2006) in front of an anonymous, red marble background, feels like a warning and conveys a sense of governmental constriction in everyday life.

Left: Feng Yan, VIP Room, 2005, C print, 110 x 164 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Right: Feng Yan, Security Check, 2006, C print, 87 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Feng Yan manages to merge opposites only to find them freed by the response and interpretation of his audience. Once his images are lodged in the viewer’s mind, the artwork can be interpreted in ways that may not reflect his intentions. But it is fair to say that the implicitly politicized images described in the paragraph above and grouped under the heading The Order—The Power, owe their effectiveness to the ambiguity with which they are presented by the artist. While there is nothing openly contentious about these images, gathered together they suggest a fragile resistance, one that cannot risk being more overt than it is. This is true for most artists in China; Ai Weiwei’s experience as an ethical witness of political decay is a cautionary tale. In China, art is taken seriously by the government and puts the artist in a place of dynamic morality. Feng Yan doesn’t talk about this sort of thing directly, either in life or in art, yet his concerns are such that they inevitably lead him to an independent stance. More artists like him are needed.

104 Vol. 12 No. 5 Chinese Name Index

Bao Dong Jizi Gong Jian

Vol. 12 No. 5 105 106 Vol. 12 No. 5 Vol. 12 No. 5 107 108 Vol. 12 No. 5 110 Vol. 12 No. 5 Vol. 12 No. 5 111 W ANG GUANGYI (b. 1957) is a central figure of Yishu the Political Pop movement and recognized as a leader of the New Art Movement in China established in the 1980s. He is most recognized for Edition the socio-political paintings and prints from his Great Criticism series begun in 1998. Through his use of No. 5 the Chinese political icons and symbols of Western commercialism, his images respond to the deeply engrained legacy of propaganda experienced in To purchase a Yishu edition China during the Cultural Revolution. Originally print please send your request painted in 2005, in this work the artist uses his own to [email protected] or call 1.604.649.8187 (Canada), name as a substitute for luxury brand names common or contact Zhang Chaoxuan to his Great Criticism series. By calling attention to 134.6655.9126 (China). the consumer legacy of his own commercial success, Wang provides cheeky commentary on the experience Each edition is commissioned of China’s changing society. by and produced exclusively for Yishu; and is measured the same A RTWORK DESCRIPTION size as the Journal. ARTIST ------Wang Guangyi TITLE ------Great Criticism — Wang Guangyi (2009) MEDIA ------Serigraph DIMENSION ------210 x 295 mm EDITION SIZE ------200 PRICE ------US $400 plus shipping

Signed by the artist; produced by A Space Art, Beijing.

Since its inauguration in May 2002, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art has raised its profile internationally to become one of the most respected journals devoted to contemporary Chinese art. To further expand our platform for global dialogue and debate concerning issues in this field, Yishu launched its Chinese- language version in May 2012.

This edition is published quarterly—in March, June, September and December—and each issue features scholarly essays, interviews, conference proceedings, and critical commentary selected from Yishu’s English edition. With our English and Chinese editions, we endeavour to increase our efforts in promoting critical writing on, and contributing to the history of, contemporary Chinese art.

Yishu’s Chinese-language edition is made possible with the generous support of JNBY.

For purchase, subscription and advertising inquiries, please contact us at offi[email protected] or call 1-604-649-8187.

Rate: Single issue: USD $10 One year: USD $40 (includes postage)

Back issues available for order: October 2011, April 2012, August 2012, December 2012, March 2013 and May 2013