Yin Xiuzhen: Mapping the Fabric of Life
A thesis presented to
the faculty of
the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts
Cynthia A. Strickland
June 2009
© 2009 Cynthia A. Strickland. All Rights Reserved. 2
This thesis titled
Yin Xiuzhen: Mapping the Fabric of Life
by
CYNTHIA A. STRICKLAND
has been approved for
the School of Art
and the College of Fine Arts by
Marion Lee
Assistant Professor of the Arts
Charles A. McWeeny
Dean, College of Fine Arts 3
ABSTRACT
STRICKLAND, CYNTHIA A., M.A., June 2009, Art History
Yin Xiuzhen: Mapping the Fabric of Life (90 pp.)
Director ofThesis: Marion Lee
This thesis examines the circumstances of production and layers of meaning in the installation works of Beijing-based contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen (b. 1963, Beijing). The approach is to analyze several groups of Yin Xiuzhen’s installations to read how the artist has chosen to map the transformations of the economy, culture, built environment, and power structures, first of her native Beijing and then concentrically outward into the global arena. The result will chronicle the journey of the artist’s successful negotiation of place, space, materials, and message: what I call mapping the fabric of life.
As an academically trained oil painter, the 1989 graduate of Capitol Normal University in Beijing initially had limited opportunities to explore a new creative path in art production.
During the 1990s, she emerged along with other experimental artists in China who worked to create conceptual art. This thesis focuses on the choices both taken and resisted by Yin Xiuzhen as she developed her artistic voice and located her message within homegrown installations, using as materials fragments and remnants of lives and places. Yin Xiuzhen’s negotiation of the dignity, place, and space of ordinary people and their traditions, set against the overwhelming backdrop of destabilizing urbanization and depersonalizing market forces, gives voice to the powerless in the chorus of hard-won social discourse in China today.
Approved: ______
Marion Lee
Assistant Professor of the Arts 4
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the academic guidance of Dr. Kuiyi Shen, Dr.
Marion Lee, Dr. Joseph Lamb, Dr. Tom Patin, and Dr. Liang Tao, along with the other faculty and staff of Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. 5
TABLE OF CONTENTS Page
Abstract ...... 3
Acknowledgments...... 4
List of Figures ...... 7
Introduction ...... 10
Chapter 1: Yin Xiuzhen: The Early Years: 1963-1969 ...... 23
Who Is Yin Xiuzhen? ...... 23
Childhood ...... 24
Adulthood ...... 26
College and Aftermath ...... 27
Chapter 2: The Exploring Years: 1990-1994 ...... 30
Experimentation ...... 30
Underground Art ...... 32
Artists’ Villages ...... 32
Apartment Art ...... 34
Chapter 3. The Professional Years: 1995-2001 ...... 37
First Solo Exhibitions ...... 37
Beijing Re-Mapped ...... 45
Crossing Borders with Suitcases: Dislocation to Relocation ...... 51
Come Into My Space ...... 56
Chapter 4: The Museum and Gallery Years: 2002-present ...... 61
Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong: Chopsticks ...... 61 6
Mapping Global Concerns ...... 63
Fashion ...... 63
Terrorism...... 66
Consumerism ...... 68
Environmental Issues ...... 69
Militarism ...... 74
Other Power Structures ...... 78
Conclusion ...... 85
Bibliography ...... 88
7
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1. Photograph of Yin Xiuzhen with her family in Beijing, 1969. Property of the artist. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 24 Figure 2. Yin Xiuzhen, Dress Box, 1995, performance and video installation, Contemporary Art Gallery, Beijing. Photo by Song Dong, reproduced from Chopsticks...... 37 Figure 3. Yin Xiuzhen, Dress Box, 1995, performance and installation, Contemporary Art Gallery, Beijing. Image from The First Guangzhou Triennial catalogue...... 39 Figure 4. Yin Xiuzhen, Wool, 1995, Beijing, installation: wool and knitting needles, photo by Song Dong, image from kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu ...... 42 Figure 5. Yin Xiuzhen, Yin Xiuzhen, 1998, installation: mixed media, image courtesy of Yin Xiuzhen und CourtYard Gallery, Peking via Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing ...... 44 Figure 6. Yin Xiuzhen, “Ruined City,” 1996, cement dust, roof tiles, wooden furniture, The Art Museum of Capitol Normal University, Beijing. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 46 Figure 7. Yin Xiuzhen, Transformation, 1996, Beijing, installation: roof tiles, photos. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 49 Figure 8. Yin Xiuzhen, suitcase from Suitcase Series, 2000-2002, in Singapore, Germany, Japan, installation with video, used clothes, old suitcase. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 52 Figure 9 Yin Xiuzhen, Suitcase 2000, installation: used clothes, suitcases, video, Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 53 Figure 10. Yin Xiuzhen, Building Game, 2002, installation: used clothes, wood, Yuangong Modern Art Museum, Shanghai. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 54 Figure 11. Yin Xiuzhen, Portable Cities, Beijing, 2001, installation: used clothes, suitcase, map, sound. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 55 Figure 12. Yin Xiuzhen, Leisure 2002, Gwangju, Korea, installation: photos, mirrors, audio, photographs, tables, chairs, cups, bowls. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 57 8
Figure 13. Yin Xiuzhen, Leisure 2001, installation: photographs, tables, chairs, bowls, cups. From “Busy Life” exhibition, Chengdu, China. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 58 Figure 14. Yin Xiuzhen, Enjoy Leisure Time, 2002, Gwangju Bienalle, Korea, installation: photographs, tables, chairs, bowls, cups. Image reproduced from Chopsticks. (Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong seated mid-ground)...... 58 Figure 15. Yin Xiuzhen, Beijing Story, 2001, installation: photographs, stools, audio, from “Living in Time: Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition” Hamberg Bahnhof Contemporary Art Museum, Berlin. Image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 59 Figure 16. Advertising Announcement: My House is Your House, image from http://claudiahill.com/news/yx/ ...... 65 Figure 17. Yin Xiuzhen, Fashion Terrorism, 2006, mixed media, image from www.we- make-money-not-art.com ...... 67 Figure 18. Yin Xiuzhen, Super Market, 2005, installation, mixed media, UB Center for the Arts, (photo: Rose Mattrey) ...... 69 Figure 19. Yin Xiuzhen, Washing the River, 1995, performance in Chengdu, China, image from http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/mahjongartists/popups/Yin Xiuzhen_xiuzhen1.htm ...... 71 Figure 20. Yin Xiuzhen, Shoes with Butter, 1996, Tibet, installation: shoes, yak butter candles. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 74 Figure 21. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table, 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, Installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks. .... 75 Figure 22. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table (detail), 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Wolf Kahlen, image reproduced from Chopsticks...... 76 Figure 23. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table, 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks. .... 77 Figure 24. Yin Xiuzhen, TVT-Rocket 2005, used clothing and metal frame. Image from Chinadaily.com.cn Copyright 2003 Ministry of Culture, P.R.China. http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_focus/2007-06/05/content_99049.htm ...... 79 Figure 25. Yin Xiuzhen, TVT-Rocket 2005 http://www.nga.nu/mnkunstenaar.asp?artistnr=37028&vane=&em=&meer=&sessio nti=135040599 ...... 80 Figure 26. Yin Xiuzhen, Arsenal, 2007, installation of old clothes and everyday objects, 52nd Venice Biennale. Image from ArtIndia...... 83 9
Figure 27. Yin Xiuzhen, TV Tower Weapons, 2007, 52nd Venice Biennale, installation: old clothes and daily life things. Image from Beijing Commune Online Catalogue ©2007 artnet. - . http://www.artnet.com...... 84 10
INTRODUCTION
This thesis examines the work of Beijing-based contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen
(b. 1963) to determine how personal and cultural transformations inform and empower
her installations and approach. Her works from 1995 to 2007 are a direct negotiation with the rapid economic, physical, and social changes taking place all around her, primarily in Beijing. As Yin Xiuzhen travels more internationally, her themes broaden to
include more globalized concerns: translocality, terrorism, consumerism, fashion, and
mass media.
The approach in this thesis is to construct a chronology of Yin Xiuzhen with a
focus on political/social movements during her early life and then during her creative
period, post 1989.
The thesis itself will be divided into four general sections:
Chapter 1 - The Early Years: 1963 to 1989. These years fall into the timeframe of
the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China’s post-Mao economic opening and reforms
(1978-present), the ’85 Art Movement (1985-1989), and conclude with the Tiananmen
Massacre of June, 1989. This section will show how prevailing influences shaped Yin
Xiuzhen’s sense of self and orientation to her community, which became an important
theme and element in her work.
Chapter 2 - The Exploring Years: 1990 to 1994. This coincides with the
timeframe of new ‘post-1989’ art trends, including artists’ villages and “Apartment Art,”1
1 Gao Minglu, “From Elite to Small Man: The Many Faces of a Transitional Avant-Garde in Mainland China,” Gao Minglu, ed. Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1998, 161. Gao Minglu coined the phrase “Apartment Art” for the phenomenon of the private and personal in- home art making movement in the development of Chinese contemporary art during the early 1990s. 11
the latter of which Yin Xiuzhen was a pioneer. I will indicate ways in which social and
political movements and counter-movements in China interacted to both limit and extend
opportunities for artistic experimentation and expression.
Chapter 3 - The Professional Years: 1995 to 2001. These years include more
public art exhibitions and performances by Yin Xiuzhen and other experimental artists.
These events were not necessarily officially sanctioned; and even when they were, the exhibitions were often shut down by the authorities within minutes before or after
opening. Invitations to international exhibitions and biennales became sought after and
realized, beginning the short march to fame for some experimental artists. This section
highlights Yin Xiuzhen’s early works as an experimental artist and her first domestic exhibitions and international forays.
Chapter 4 - The Museum and Gallery Years: 2002 to 2007. This section opens with Yin Xiuzhen and her artist-husband Song Dong’s joint exhibition “Chopsticks” in
2002 at Chambers Fine Art, New York. Now internationally known in the world of contemporary art, Yin Xiuzhen’s works are acquired by museums and collectors; she is sought out as a leading contemporary artist. Invited to exhibit in “How Latitudes Become
Forms” at the Walker Art Center in 2003 and “The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary
Chinese Art” in Buffalo, New York, she also exhibited in “Global Feminisms” at the
Brooklyn Museum in 2005. Yin Xiuzhen was one of the four artists chosen by Paris- based curator Hou Hanru for the China Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
She continues to live and work in Beijing as a member of The Beijing Commune Gallery. 12
I will examine how her works exhibited in this most recent period could be read within
the current global/local discourse.
Taken as a whole, Yin Xiuzhen’s body of work represents multifaceted linkages
between the artist’s life experiences and a series of post-1979 economic and
sociopolitical shifts in China. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, these shifts
were initially legislated by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979.
Deng actively pursued economic reforms in China, beginning by instituting the
“family responsibility system” in 1978, wherein farming families could make profit by
selling over-quota goods on a newly open market.2 In the early 1980s, several special
economic zones were created along coastal cities wherein private enterprise and
foreign/domestic joint ventures were encouraged. These special economic zones were set
up to focus on attracting foreign capital into China, to increase construction using foreign
capital, and to gear up factories for producing goods for export. Based on early
resounding successes (measured by market outcomes), these reforms were then expanded
across larger areas of China as more special economic zones were added.3 Deng also sent the brightest students abroad to attain higher education in specialized fields. In 1997,
Hong Kong was regained as Chinese sovereign territory when the 99-year lease to Great
Britain expired.4 In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, gaining highly
preferential trading terms with world trading partners. Also in 2001, China won the right
to host the world 2008 Olympics. During this long series of successful economic reforms
2 Edwin E. Moise, Modern China, “Post-Mao Reforms,” Chapter 9, 205-206. 3 Ibid., 209. 4 Hong Kong (Kowloon) had been under British rule since the Treaty of Nanjing was signed in 1842, but the port was leased to Britain in 1898 for a 99-year term. 13
(largely from communism to capitalism), foreign investment poured into China, and
exports poured out. An era was ushered in during which China was reconfigured into a
post-socialist iteration. The resulting urban transformation was fully pronounced during
the 1990s, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai.5
A mere child during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Yin Xiuzhen saw her life was more affected by the transformations which occurred during the late 1970s through the 1990s. During these two decades, as we have noted, China left its 1949-to-
1979, Mao-induced insularity behind and began its spectacular climb into consumerism
and export production. It is in the ramifications of the unfolding of China’s market
economy that we locate the work of Yin Xiuzhen and, in fact, witness the unfolding of
the international phenomena which Chinese contemporary art has become.
The racing economic growth engendered by China’s official new post-socialist
attitude toward private profit has spurred massive urban transformations. The mad rush to
modernize mandated a new urban architecture to accommodate luxury shopping, hi-rise
domiciles, and corporate offices. The sudden razing of miles of centuries-old
neighborhoods to make room for new high rises has been decried by writers, endured by
inhabitants, and engaged by artists. Without living there, it is hard to imagine the scale
and intrusion of such extensive urban remaking. This destruction and reconstruction has
been dubbed “Sino-Haussmannization”6 and “Olympic power dressing.”7
5 Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000)” in The First Guangzhou Triennial – Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Art 1990-2000 exhibition catalogue published by the Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002, 15. The exhibition ran from November 18, 2002 to January 19, 2003 in Guangdong (Canton) China. 6 Jasper Becker, The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China, quoted by Yuan Fang in “Where Have All The Hutongs And Courtyard Houses Gone? An analysis of ‘Soft Factors’ of the decline 14
The great political strength of China’s government has been implicated in the
immensity of its power not only to build but to erase. According to Sze Tsung Leong, “…
the greatest and most valued power of the state is the authority to erase.”8 Nigel
Warburton describes “…what is happening in China is itself an instance of the more general expression of power through destruction and erasure and the re-making of
people’s lives through the built environment.”9 And from David Spaulding’s research and
interviews with Chinese artists, including Yin Xiuzhen’s husband, Song Dong, “the
breakneck demolition of China’s urban centers has resulted in a man-made disaster, one
whose hallmark is the violent erasure of the hutongs, narrow alleyways filled with
courtyard housing .… Now, only piles of rubble remain where homes once stood – and
even the debris quickly disappears. As bulldozers relentlessly push China’s cities toward modernization, the past is being eviscerated with a rapidity that denies the cities’
inhabitants a chance to mourn what they have lost. The speed and force with which city
planners have razed historic residential areas in Beijing and Shanghai has torn sudden,
gaping holes into the fabric of everyday life…”10
of Beijing’s old street fabrics,” essay for Master of Urban and Regional Planning 2009, University of Michigan, accessed via http://www.planning.org/china/studytour/pdf/fangessay.pdf 7 Deyan Sudjic, “Power Dressing” Frieze Magazine, Issue 99, 2006, accessed via http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/power_dressing, describing the “form follows function” notion giving way to “form follows image” and the ethical implications of architects taking commissions for “repressive regimes,” i.e. Rem Koolhaus designing The CCTV Tower in Beijing, “which tells a billion people what to think , the mouthpiece of the governing Communist Party…” 8Sze Tsung Leong, ‘A History of Erasure’ in History Images, 141, Steidl. 9 Nigel Warburton, ‘Who Controls the Past Controls the Future.’ Article on Sze Tsung Leong's History Images published in Portfolio Magazine no. 45 accessed via http://nigelwarburton.typepad.com/art_and_allusion/2007/09/article-on-sze-.html 10 David Spaulding, “Ghosts Among the Ruins: Urban Transformation in Contemporary Chinese Art.” Thesis Project Excerpt, 2002. Sight Lines, publication of California College of the Arts (CCA). [Italics added.] http://sites.cca.edu/currents/2002/dspalding_thesis.html
15
It is these gaping holes in the fabric of everyday life that Yin Xiuzhen and other
artists would come to address in their installation works. These physical and social
changes, along with heavy multinational corporate advertising, the influx of new ideas
from the global Internet, and the diminishing dominance of political concerns have
combined to influence overlapping generations in China. Contemporary artists have
helped shape and have been shaped by the rapid changes there. By 1992, Beijing had
“become a Mecca for young, avant-guard artists”11 who migrated there from across the
country, further enriching the creative resource pool and experimental mood.
Yin Xiuzhen’s work addresses social consequences in the hyper-modernization aspect of the globalization process: the effect on the local traditions and social practices,
and the strategies of engagement and adaptation. Her work is embedded in the experimental art movement, which developed within China during the 1980s and
particularly in the 1990s.
At this point, it is helpful to discuss the notion of experimental art in China.
There has been some confusion and disagreement among scholars, curators, and
artists about what to call the movement and how to classify the works and the artists:
avant-garde, experimental, contemporary, or some combination, such as contemporary
experimental. There are several strongly held views regarding different designations and
the theories supporting each. As Wu Hung explains of Chinese art of the 1980s and
1990s, “many books and articles correlate this type of contemporary Chinese art with
11 Wu Hung, Rong Rong’s East Village: 1993-1998. New York and Chicago: Chambers Fine Art and Chicago University Press, 2003, 11. 16
more familiar concepts and historical categories, especially the Western avant-garde that aimed to subvert existing art traditions and institutions.”12
However, Wu Hung goes on to note that because of the different sociopolitical
context of contemporary Chinese art, such correlation is limited. “Instead of
understanding contemporary Chinese art according to a ready-made Western model, it is
crucial to define the experimental or revolutionary nature of this art historically and contextually.”13
Wu Hung points out that “the applicability of the term ‘avant-garde’ to
contemporary Chinese art is the subject of ongoing debate. Some scholars, mostly
specialists in European modernism, argue that historical avant-gardism is strictly a
Western phenomenon and so the term ‘avant-garde’ should be used only in its original
historical context. Other scholars typically writing on contemporary Chinese art hope to
apply the concept of avant-garde to this art by broadening its definition.”14 This latter group includes Gao Minglu, who argues that there is more than one narrative of modernity and that China’s avant-garde movement developed from its own internal national logic in its own timetable and is valid as another strand in a multipolar international discourse on transnational modernity.15
Wu Hung sets out a third position, which is to move away from this debate and its
pressure of “naming” a specific tradition in contemporary Chinese art in order to more
12 Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 19, Note 1. 13 Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 15. 14Wu Hung. “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 19, Note 1. 15 Gao Minglu, “Toward a Transnational Modernity,” Inside Out: New Chinese Art, 15-40. 17
productively find a more flexible designation. He believes that the term “experimental art” offers this flexibility.16
The term experimental art goes beyond the naming of a specific tradition; it
creates a broader base which can encompass notions of avant-garde as well as other
strands of experimentation unrelated to avant-garde, even including such non art-making
activities as venue choices and promotion methods.
While it is true that unofficial Chinese artists of the 1980s themselves overwhelmingly used the terms xianfeng and qianwei (both meaning “avant-garde”), it is also true that the characteristics and circumstances of Chinese contemporary art in the
1980s in fact shared some of the characteristics of Western avant-gardism, in particular a
desire to overthrow existing systems of official and academic art production.
During the 1990s, most of these artists referred to their art as “experimental.”17
This is because experimental art of the 1990s diverged from its 1980s avant-garde
orientations, from collective experiments to individual experiments”18 and the shift in
focus “demanded an independent identity.”19 “Disengaging themselves from large-scale
political, ideological, and artistic movements, artists focused more on developing
individual languages as expressions of personal ideas and tastes. The yun dong mentality20 had lost its appeal to the experimental artists of the 1990s.”21
16 Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 11. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 13. 19 Ibid., 11. 20 “A yun dong is a large-scale political, ideological or artistic movement or campaign …which has been one of the most fundamental concepts and technologies in Chinese political culture.” Wu Hung. “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 13. 21 Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art (1990-2000),” 13. 18
Peggy Wang, writing for Yishu, notes that “although installation art was initially
used primarily for its anti-mainstream status, the mid-1990s saw a conscious turn away
from collective efforts addressing reflections on and reconciliations with historical
ideology. A new interest in examining the vast transformations within the present
landscape emerged during this new era of experimentation that moved beyond
indiscriminately adopting installation art as a mere tool.”22
Wu Hung discusses various factors relating to experimental art, including style and political orientations. He summarizes with this most fundamental requirement of what defines experimental art:
The defining factor of contemporary Chinese experimental art … is neither stylistic nor political, but the artist’s own self-positioning and re- positioning in a changing society. Experimental artists place themselves at the border of contemporary Chinese society and the art world. On the other hand, by taking up the mission to enlarge frontiers and open new territories, they also constantly challenge their own marginality and must thus constantly reposition themselves on the border in order to be continuously ‘experimental.’23
Yin Xiuzhen’s body of work comes out of the 1990s’ experimental art phase, which positioned itself outside the established systems of art production. This phase took as its main project the creation of an entirely new set of individual languages in which to construct the contemporaneous reimagining of China. Yin Xiuzhen is just one among a growing number of experimental artists whose artistic development, works, and choices break new ground with clarity of self-direction which argues for determination against great odds, to successfully negotiate space, place, and message in their works.
22 Peggy Wang, “Dis/Placement: Yin Xiuzhen’s City Installations,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 4 No. 1 (March 2005), 88. 23 Wu Hung, “Major Traditions in Contemporary Chinese Art,” Transience, 16. 19
The artists in this new mode of art production did not take the goal of
overthrowing or even overtaking existing systems of art, such as academic, official,
commercial, or popular imported visual culture. Instead, they chose to position themselves on the borders of all of these to create – alongside and on the edges – various
indigenous and autonomous visual and conceptual vernaculars. Wu Hung notes:
The content of Chinese experimental art has been constantly changing as its relationship with these other art traditions changes. Generally speaking, this art has shown three consistent characteristics: a penchant for new art forms and materials, an interest in reinventing the language of artistic expression, and the self-positioning of the artist outside, or on the border of, official and academic art.24
In this thesis, the terms avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary will not be employed interchangeably, but as seems most specific in context, keeping the above discussion in mind. Though academically trained as an oil painter, Yin Xiuzhen has chosen the path of experimental art. To varying degrees, she has kept her edge, her position on the margin, as she maps the ever-shifting borders and layers of space, place, and time.
Entwined with China’s economic upswing of the 1980s and 1990s were vacillating political attitudes toward uninhibited expression in China. Periods of relative freedom during the 1980s were interrupted by the “Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign” from October 1983 to February 1984.25 According to the Communist Party Propaganda
Chief at the time of the campaign, Deng Liqun, spiritual pollution included “obscene, barbarous or reactionary materials, vulgar taste in artistic performances, indulgence in
24 Wu Hung, “Introduction: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China” Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, 11. 25 Thomas B. Gold, “Just in Time!”: China Battles Spiritual Pollution on the Eve of 1984, Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No. 9 (Sep., 1984), pp. 947-974. 20
individualism” and statements that run counter to the country’s social system.”26 This
campaign started with signals: “Premier Zhao Ziyang quietly forsook his Western suits
for Mao jackets. The Peking municipal government ordered its employees to shave off
their mustaches.”27 Things got uglier: The director of The People’s Daily (major newspaper) was forced to resign, and one of the three deputy editors-in-chief was dismissed. Examples were made. “Their apparent crime: printing a scholarly article eight months ago that dared to suggest that ‘alienation,’ a term reserved by Karl Marx for decadent capitalism, might actually be applicable to Chinese socialism as well.”28
This campaign was undoubtedly a vain attempt to counter the hugely popular appeal, for better or worse, of the enticements of the wider world as China opened up and the outside world became accessible. After the cultural mind-bending of the Cultural
Revolution and the insularity of the Communist rule in general since 1949, the outside world looked amazingly interesting.
In spite of the brief Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, the 1980s were for the most part relatively open in China as massive amounts of information, education, foreign capital, and influences of every stripe flowed into the country. The 1985 Art Movement brought together groups of “avant garde” artists from all over China; by February of
1989, they had managed to organize an exhibition in the National Gallery of Art in
Beijing. This monumental exhibit of contemporary Chinese art was short-lived: The staging was confrontational, the tone was controversial, and the exhibition was closed
26 Pico Iyer, David Aikman, “Battling Spiritual Pollution,” Time.com Monday, Nov. 28, 1983 via http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926379,00.html 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 21
down soon after opening due to one of the artist’s firing a gun into her exhibit. The real
success was that it opened at all.
The decade culminated with the 1989 student demonstrations in Tiananmen
Square, which ended in bloodshed. The government repression in the aftermath of this globally televised standoff severely limited freedom of expression and exhibition. This
crackdown was the main factor in the growing establishment of underground artists’
groups, which experimented privately with new concepts and techniques, often using
each other as models and audience. Some moved into so-called “artists’ villages”; others retained their own housing but met in each other’s apartments to share imaginative proposals. Eventually (sometimes through strategic self-positioning, sometimes by chance, and sometimes by maneuvering between emerging art critics within and professionals abroad), some of these experimental artists were noted by international curators and brought to the international stage. In the international art world, curiosity
and then critical acclaim grew. At home in China, however, it took international fame
and money to help the artists finally gain acceptance, albeit sometimes grudgingly, from
China’s own official arbiters. Official art in China is territorial and seeks to monopolize
not only the national narrative but the entire acceptable discourse.
Collusions can be made, though, when both the government and the artists stand
to win. The Chinese government and Chinese experimental art can sometimes peacefully
co-exist and sometimes cooperate. Certain taboos still apply: One cannot explicitly
criticize the government, thereby making for rich subtlety and wit within works. Money
and connections are always factors in negotiating experimental exhibits. An outstanding 22
documentation of this complex area of experimental art exhibitions is Wu Hung’s
Exhibiting Experimental Art in China.29
It is in this mixed social, political, and economic environment that Chinese experimental artists have sought to exist and create art. To find their voices, to find space to be heard, to be heard, and to contribute to the local dialog and global discourse, these are the challenges of the emerging experimental artists inside China. The complexity of their circumstances has created a richly challenging environment for experimentation.
The results are often ingenious and sometimes critically acclaimed. The art of Yin
Xiuzhen is one case in point.
29 See bibliography. 23
CHAPTER 1: YIN XIUZHEN: THE EARLY YEARS: 1963-1969
Who Is Yin Xiuzhen?
It is germane to construct a narrative of the artist Yin Xiuzhen. Much information
is embedded in her artworks, which are often autobiographical and sometimes intimate.
Through her various installations, the exhibition catalogue Chopsticks,30 and a
few interviews and articles, it becomes clear that she values the ordinary and every day, and that her self-orientation is as an ordinary individual among millions, who just happens to be an artist married to another artist living and working in the capital of
China.
Creating imaginative works with a practical homegrown street sense (pointing to what Wu Hung has dubbed ‘vernacular’ post-modern31), two themes anchor the majority
of her works: the simple human dignity of ordinary people and the importance of human
values in the face of increasingly destabilizing urbanization and depersonalizing market
forces. These forces are rushing to overtake long-held notions of time, space, and place in
urban China. Yin Xiuzhen collects everyday items from her rapidly changing world, such
as worn clothing and fragments of destroyed neighborhoods; she reconfigures them to
form a clear voice which speaks from the “masses” (via their traces) to the powers that
be.
30 Chopsticks is the name of the exhibition catalogue for the “Chopsticks: Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen” exhibit at Chambers Fine Art in New York, which ran from November 7 through December 14, 2002. Mao, Christopher W., ed. Chopsticks. New York: Chambers Fine Art, 2002. 31 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern: The Art of Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen” Chopsticks, 20. 24
Childhood
Yin Xiuzhen was born in Beijing in 1963, into a working-class family, the third child of four. She has included in Chopsticks a family photograph taken in 1969, when she was six years old. It shows the family dressed in the Maoist uniform of the time, the children prominently holding their little red Mao books, (see Figure 1). At this time,
though living in the capital in the throes the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), her family
was neither threatened nor ostracized, since their class status was “good.” They were
workers, classified as members of the “urban masses”32 as opposed to intellectuals, elites,
or descendants of wealthy landowners. The working class was not persecuted but
glorified en masse.
Figure 1. Photograph of Yin Xiuzhen with her family in Beijing, 1969. Property of the artist. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
32 Ibid., 20.
25
Growing up, Yin Xiuzhen would have been surrounded by the visual culture of
Mao posters everywhere, big word political slogans, and loud speakers blaring
propaganda and state-sanctioned, politically themed music. She would have marched,
sung, and recited the virtues of Chairman Mao along with all the other children in China.
This was nothing unusual for the times. Gao Minglu notes that “for Chinese people, these
stories are commonplace; they are attractive mostly to foreigners. Therefore, these
‘individual’ narratives are still the products of collectivity and ideology.”33
As a child, Yin Xiuzhen enjoyed knitting: “seeing patterns evolve and change in
her hands.”34 Some of the family’s clothes were sewn or knitted by Yin Xiuzhen and her
mother and sisters. She also liked to paint pictures and “attributes her interest to her elder
sister’s influence.”35 When Yin Xiuzhen was thirteen, the Cultural Revolution ended and
schools (which had all been closed for several years) opened up again. Her high school
study prepared her for a career in science, but she was determined to study the arts.36 For
four years after high school graduation in 1981, Yin Xiuzhen painted interiors by day for an architectural firm (which also employed her father); in the evenings, she studied painting in preparation for the entrance examination”37 She noted later that she enjoyed
38 seeing the changing colors from the act of painting. Although paining created visual
change, demolishing a house – hundreds of houses, thousands of houses – created social
change. This was about to happen in Yin Xiuzhen’s city of Beijing, as the wrecking balls
33 Gao Minglu, The Wall, 051. 34 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern: The Art of Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen,” Chopsticks, 9. 35 Ibid. 36 Kris Imants Ercums, comp. “Appendix 1: Biographies of the Artists: Yin Xiuzhen,” Transience, 192. 37 Ibid. 38 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern,” Chopsticks, 10. 26
prepared to destroy more than 80% of the traditional housing. Mapping this upcoming,
onrushing social change would be a central theme of her future installations.
Adulthood
From Yin Xiuzhen’s indications, her family is very close. Just as she helped her
father paint houses and sewed and knitted with her mother and sisters, her entire family
has helped her prepare some of her installations and exhibits. She acknowledges that her
father refitted the suitcases used in her original Suitcase Series.39 Her mother helped her sew the components; her younger sister collected used clothing; and her elder sister, who, along with the rest of the family, didn’t understand what Yin Xiuzhen was doing, offered to cook for the family as they worked on the projects.40 In “Chopsticks,” Yin Xiuzhen
includes two photographs of her family. In the one from 1997, they are seated on the
floor amid piles of yarn and cloth winding, sorting, and joking. The other, from 2001, depicts Yin Xiuzhen and her mother snipping and fitting the interior of her now-famous
Beijing41 suitcase work.
The security of her family’s political situation was gained by their favorable
classification during a time of great socio/political turmoil throughout Yin Xiuzhen’s
childhood years. That, along with the close personal feelings within the family, seems to
have played a role in rooting Yin Xiuzhen to her childhood surroundings. Her works
project a relatively secure sense of self and self-preservation amid rapidly changing
surroundings and a sensitive though stoic outlook on life. This comes through in her
39 Suitcase Series, 2000-2002, in Singapore, Germany, Japan, installation with video, used clothes, old suitcases. 40 Yin Xiuzhen, Artist Statement, Chopsticks, 70. 41 Portable Cities, Beijing, 2001, installation: used clothes, suitcase, map, sound. 27
work, even when it deals with devastation. She injects comfort and dignity amidst
destruction, documenting loss yet moving forward into the new.
She is “unfashionably loyal”42 to her local identity according to Wu Hung, who
notes that while other experimental artists began moving to artists’ villages or moving
abroad to be “independent artists,” Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong stayed in their old
neighborhood to live, work, teach, and make art.43 In her loyalty, it is not that she isn’t
critical, but her criticism is couched in observation and idiosyncratic documentation
rather than confrontation. She is loyal, rather, in the sense of choosing to continue to live and work in Beijing in a modest apartment (though she now has a studio), documenting the losses, celebrating the simple pleasures, and engaging through creative visual and tactile feedback the economic and societal forces which shape her changing world.
Through her imaginative installations, the message is to pause, witness, feel, think, interrogate, participate, adapt, and move forward.
College and Aftermath
In 1985, Yin Xiuzhen tested into the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal
University in Beijing. It was there that she met and became classmates with her future
husband and kindred artistic spirit, Song Dong. The two majored in oil painting; and “as
students, painting became their pressing duty, and laid the foundation of their future
careers as artists.”44 Capital Normal University is a large teacher-training college; upon
42 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern,” Chopsticks, 9. 43 Ibid., 20. 44 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern,” Chopsticks, 9. 28
graduation, Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong were assigned jobs teaching art to middle
school children of working-class families.45
Coinciding exactly with Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong’s university graduation in
1989 was the June 4 Tiananmen Massacre. The bloodshed was the result of the
government suppression of the June Fourth protests in Tiananmen Square. During the aftermath, many colliding forces acted to drive the choices and future careers of artists, including Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong. One was certainly deep sadness for the loss of young lives and a shaken sense of ideals. Another was the extreme disillusionment regarding opportunities for freedom of expression, which had, during the 1980s, been gradually opening up alongside the infusion of Western philosophies, consumer goods, and increased exposure to contemporary popular culture from other parts of the world.
This brief relaxing of governmental controls (deemed necessary to further its plan for economic reform) ended temporarily in 1989 after Tiananmen. The government clamped down on art, artists, writers, and perceived dissidents, declining to grant space, funding, or permits to hold experimental or avant guard exhibitions. Not only that, but several experimental art magazines and weeklies were banned and privately organized art exhibitions were closely monitored and restricted.46Another factor which drove artists’
personal choices resulted from the search for personal and social meaning in
contemporary art, both before and after the June Fourth movement. What did they want
to say with their art? What role could it assume in society? In what way, if any, could
their art be relevant? As one voice? As a collection of voices? As an agency for change?
45 Ibid., 20. 46 Wu Hung, Appendix: “A Chronicle of Experimental Exhibitions in China (1990-2000)” Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, 210. 29
Accepting their government-assigned jobs as art teachers, Yin Xiuzhen and Song
Dong began the next stage of their lives. 30
CHAPTER 2: THE EXPLORING YEARS: 1990-1994
Experimentation
In the two-year period immediately following the aftermath of the Tiananmen
Square massacre, no official space was granted to avant-garde artists in China. The
experimental art scene went underground or, in a few cases, jumped borders and became
internationalized.
Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong worked diligently at their jobs as middle school art
teachers by day, but on their own time they experimented and explored concepts of art
quite unlike anything in their academic painting education. Later when asked how she
started working in a new style, Yin Xiuzhen replied, “…when I graduated in 1989, I went
to see a big exhibition. I really didn’t understand it, and I asked myself, so this kind of art
also exists? Then slowly I saw more and more, and I became interested in doing it
myself. I didn’t want to paint, so it was natural for me to change…”47
The big exhibition to which Yin Xiuzhen undoubtedly referred was China/Avant-
Garde, organized and curated by Gao Minglu and held on February 5, 1989 in Beijing at the National Museum of China. This was four months before she graduated and before the Tiananmen student demonstrations. It was the first nationwide avant-garde exhibition, and it was closed twice during its two-week run. “The first closing occurred just hours after the opening, when Xiao Lu and her collaborator Tang Song transform their installation, Dialogue, into a performance by firing two gunshots into it. The second closure resulted from anonymous bomb threats sent to the gallery, the municipal
47 Ai Weiwei, ed., “Interview with Yin Xiuzhen,” Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 1998-2002 (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2002), 130-131. 31
government, and the Beijing Public Security Bureau.”48 It turned out that the bomb
threats themselves were sent in by an artist, as a work, in order to challenge the political
sphere by stirring up excitement and action. The idea was to make an art event into a
political event or an art space into a political space, by pushing against constraints.49
Some of the works exhibited in China/Avant-Garde fired Yin Xiuzhen’s imagination, which is not surprising given that the exhibit featured “293 paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations by 186 artists, including Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing,
Wu Shanzhuan, Huang Yongping, and Gu Wenda.”50
From then, Yin Xiuzhen decided to embark on a completely different type of art
than the realistic oil painting she had trained in. She did do a few more oil paintings. But
she now had a different vision. Song Dong, as well, stopped oil painting, though in 1994
he did sell one of his student paintings for 8000 yuan to finance an independent exhibit of his experimental installation/performance work called Another Class: Do You Want to
Play with Me? Scheduled to be shown at the Gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing; it was promptly closed down by the authorities.51 This political interference
was typical in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident. With no government support, no
public support, and no private support at that time, the experimental artists had little
choice but to take their projects underground, or, as in the cases of Xu Bing, Gu Wenda,
Huang Yongping, and a few others, relocate outside of China. This movement of top
48 Gao Minglu, The Wall, 374. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Wu Hung, “Vernacular” Post-Modern,” Chopsticks, 9. 32
experimental artists abroad marked the beginning of the international interest in Chinese experimental art.
Underground Art
Artists’ Villages
For experimental artists inside China, the post-1989 underground art movement was conducted in two main strands. One was the phenomenon of artists’ villages, and the other was, in a phrase coined by Gao Minglu, dubbed “Apartment Art.”52
Artists’ villages came about as a result of several factors. One, as mentioned
above, was that there was no government or private funding: no jobs for avant-garde
artists. In the very early ’90s, there was as yet almost no foreign interest in Chinese
experimental art, and, for that matter, no domestic interest. Some of these artists had no
jobs and no prospects. Therefore, they found the least expensive lodgings possible,
usually on the fringe of Beijing in poor and crumbling areas, where the rent was cheap
and the space was decrepit. Still, to be in close proximity to the resources of Beijing, the center of the most experimental of artists was enough of a draw to compel other itinerant artists from around China to gather in groups for cheap rents and rich camaraderie. In some cases, the artists actually had other jobs but wanted to pursue their experimental works. They were considered part-time artists, with the relative luxury of not needing to support themselves through their experimental, often unsalable works.53
Some of these artists’ villages went on to become famous: The village of
Dashanzhuang became known as Beijing East Village in 1992; and it was home to Zhang
52 Gao Minglu, “From Elite to Small Man,” Gao Minglu, ed. Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1998, 161. 53 Wu Hung, Rong Rong’s East Village, 12. 33
Huan, Ma Liuming, Rong Rong, Cang Xin, and Zhu Ming. (For a fascinating account of this group and its significance in contemporary Chinese art history, see Wu Hung’s Rong
Rong’s East Village.) Beijing’s East Village no longer exists, having been closed down by the police in 1992 and since razed to make way for spreading urbanization.
Another artists’ village of note is Songzhuang in Tongxian outside Beijing, started in 1994 with Fang Lijun. He along with other artists established the more professional
Songzhuang Artists’ Village comprising design and architecture studios and living quarters.54
One famous and currently thriving artists’ village is the 798 Factory complex in
the Dashanzi district of Beijing. In the early 1990s, starving artists, attracted by the cheap
rents, began moving into the abandoned mid-century, Bauhaus-style factory complex.
The area has become a series of studio spaces, now supported by foreign galleries and
publishers. With the advent of new artists’ villages in the same neighborhood, it has
evolved into the Beijing Dashanzi New Art Community. One evidence of its cachet is the
fact that rich nationals and foreigners now have apartments there. One of these
apartments, purchased by American lawyer David Kay in 1992, was featured on the April
2006 cover of The World of Interiors. The lead story described Kay’s conversion of the old, crumbling, state-owned factory space into chic living space furnished with sculptures and paintings from his artist neighbors. Combining the Bauhaus aesthetic, leftover
Cultural Revolution slogans remaining on the interior walls, Mao figures and statuettes by Yu Qingcheng, the American elite working for Microsoft, pulls together a diorama of a half century of Chinese political history. Très chic, hence the magazine cover.
54 Gao Minglu, “The 1990s: Artists’ Villages and Apartment Art,” The Wall, 72. 34
Apartment Art
During her exploring years of 1990 to 1994, Yin Xiuzhen was part of an entirely
different branch of experimental art space: apartment art. Wu Hung notes that while other
experimental artists were moving into abroad or into artists’ villages, Yin Xiuzhen and
Song Dong elected to stay in their own tiny apartment, in their old messy compound,55
situating their artistic experiments in their ordinary lives. Since they did have teaching
jobs, they were relatively secure and could experiment with unsalable projects during
their non-working hours.
Apartment art, relating to household art practice and apartment exhibitions, began in the early 1990s. For five years, from 1990 through 1995, Yin Xiuzhen’s new art evolved primarily within her own home and personal space. Although Yin Xiuzhen is
unquestionably an artist in her own right, the collaboration and mutual support of Song
Dong, her kindred artistic spirit, makes for a true partnership in the creation and growth
of each other’s individual careers.
Gao Minglu writes that Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong were probably the earliest practitioners of household art activities.56 Their tiny home became a meeting place for
other underground artists to test new proposals, often only on paper, as space and
materials were limited or restricted; hence the term “proposal art.”57 Starting in 1990,
55 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern” Chopsticks, 21. 56 Gao Minglu, The Wall, 76. 57 Elaborating on proposal art, or “document art,” Wu Hung, in “Exhibiting Experimental Art in China,” 41, notes that “the public display of experimental art became difficult in China after the crackdown of the June Fourth movement in 1989.” Therefore, some art critics curated “document exhibitions” to facilitate the communications between experimental artists. Consisting of reproductions of works and writings by artists scattered throughout the country, these traveling shows provided information about recent developments of Chinese experimental art. These ‘document exhibitions’ have been effectively replaced by ‘virtual exhibitions,’ which serve similar purposes in a new period and medium.”… Sometimes entire 35
they took turns with another artist couple in meeting at each other’s apartments to test out
new ideas. “Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong had daily visitors, sometimes as many as
fifteen,”58 rendering their apartment a hub of ideas and creativity. Their own art
experiments were conducted within the extremely limited parameters of space and
budget, but also within the comfort zone of intimacy and security, resulting in some personal creative projects. For example, Song Dong cut the pages of old political books into thousands of very thin strips, dubbed “Cultural Noodles,”59 which they strew all
around the floor of their apartment and lived with. Yin Xiuzhen unraveled some of their sweaters and, taking yarn from his and hers, knitted a new, androgynous one.
These experiments were small steps for big ideas. Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen were choosing to live creatively, to deconstruct ideology, to erase the boundaries between art and life, to exercise critical thinking, and to imagine outside the box. They, along with many other experimental artists, were attempting to build a new discourse, away from the models and constraints of official art, academic art, Western art, historical art, commercial art, and purely aesthetic art. The next chapter will chronicle Yin Xiuzhen’s development on this self-chosen, self-directed path.
Yin Xiuzhen’s work appears paradoxically reserved and open at the same time.
She doesn’t hesitate to use personal materials, such as intimate clothing, personal legal documents, and family photographs. However, she stops short of using her body itself or nudity in any form. Sexual references are eschewed in favor of gender voice. She chooses
physical exhibitions which had been cancelled or closed by authorities could be turned into virtual exhibitions and accessed online, so that the virtual exhibit became ‘a powerful means to counter official censorship.” 41. 58 Gao Minglu, The Wall, 77. 59 Ibid. 36
deliberately and carefully what she will collect, construct, and reveal; but at the same
time, her imaginative eye is always open to new ways and ideas. She is consummately aware – both self aware and culturally aware. Her oeuvre is mapping psychic and social geography from street level. She has been called an explorer of cultural architecture whose work examines the way in which “cultures are composed and constructed.
Through her choice and transformation of materials and objects, and the situation of her work, Yin Xiuzhen examines how cultures are built from the diverse experiences of individuals and communities over time. Her work explores the layers and residues of presence and meaning that mark and measure our lives.”60 Her work has similarities to
field studies of ethnographers. Like a cultural anthropologist, she is a
participant/observer, both living the experience and mapping the record of it. There are
similarities to the urban flaneur as well. “‘Nobody can avoid life. Life is no more than
self experience.’ Yin Xiuzhen.”61
60 Samantha Comte, critical review of Building Materials, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces March 3-25, 2000, from Chopsticks, 63. Yin Xiuzhen was the UNESCO /ASCHBERG Bursary laureate resident in 2000 in Fitzroy Australia. 61 Peggy Wang, “Dis/Placement: Yin Xiuzhen’s City Installations,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 4 No. 1 (March 2005), 91. 37
CHAPTER 3. THE PROFESSIONAL YEARS: 1995-2001
First Solo Exhibitions
In 1995, Yin Xiuzhen took her first public steps as an experimental artist with her
solo exhibition at the Beijing Contemporary Museum of Art.62 The installation, entitled
Dress Box (in other translations Suitcase and Clothes Chest) (Figure 2), was the result of a performance.
Figure 2. Yin Xiuzhen, Dress Box, 1995, performance and video installation, Contemporary Art Gallery, Beijing. Photo by Song Dong, reproduced from Chopsticks.
This work deals with personal and social identity: transitions from child to adult, single to married, and traditional to modern. Embedded in these notions of identity is the role of the agency of time. As part of her interrogation of time and place, Yin Xiuzhen finds
62 Dress Box from “Installations” Exhibition, Beijing Contemporary Art Museum, 1995, information from Chopsticks, last page, non-numbered. 38
ways to layer, capture, record, and preserve time. In this work, Yin Xiuzhen begins by
unpacking her own clothes which she’s saved since childhood – one item for each year of
her life. Each item has a special meaning: For example, the first piece her sister helped
her sew, the first piece she made all by herself, and so on. Each of the items is then neatly
refolded and laid out across the room in perfect rows of squares, resembling a
chessboard, or a cemetery. Yin Xiuzhen begins, one at a time, to place each perfectly
folded article of her clothing carefully inside a traditional wooden trunk, the type women
formerly put their sole belongings into when they married and left their own family to
become part of their husband’s family. (This trunk is a precursor to Yin Xiuzhen’s later
studies of translocality and portability.) Often this trunk would be all that the new wife
had to call her own; and those few personal possessions, with the memories and dreams
contained therein, were gathered in that one box. Yin Xiuzhen inscribed a note and
attached it to the inside of the lid of the trunk which formerly belonged to her father:
“The clothes in the suitcase I have worn for the last 30 years, on them there is my
experience, your memories and the marks of time.”63 Yin Xiuzhen carried the action one step further. When all of her saved items, one for each year of her life, were laid to rest in the trunk, she then sealed them permanently in place with mortar cement (Figure 3). Wu
Hung suggests that this work can indicate among other things, a desire for survival: “It seems that when the whole world is falling to pieces [which for Yin Xiuzhen, as we shall see, was the case as Beijing was being demolished all around her], the only way to keep
63 PhilipTinari, “Yin Xiuzhen,” Artists in China, Verba Volant, Ltd. Pellipar House, First Floor, 9 Cloak Lane London EC4R 2RU, 2007, 423 39
oneself intact is to gather one’s own ‘fragments’ together and to secure them as tightly as
possible.”64
Figure 3. Yin Xiuzhen, Dress Box, 1995, performance and installation, Contemporary Art Gallery, Beijing. Image from The First Guangzhou Triennial catalogue.
Beyond the linkage with the old female tradition of packing up one’s belongings
and moving to a new place and role, in which the notions of identity and
placement/displacement are embedded, there are at least two other layers of meaning situated in this work. One is the aspect of yi wu, and the other is the significance of the cement itself.
64 Wu Hung, “Sealed Memory,” Transience, 126. 40
Yi wu, according to Wu Hung, “is the Chinese term for ‘leftover things’ that often
refers to the possessions left behind by the dead. The ancient Chinese imagined that a yi
wu retained the ‘moisture’ of its former owner; a ‘leftover’ cup had moisture from the
mouth of the dead and a personal letter had moisture from the hand of the dead.”65 From
this idea, which is still relevant in China today at least in memory if not belief, the power
of personal, leftover fragments go beyond the physical objects to channel the lives of the
actual people. Perhaps, less poetically than ‘traces,’ one could imagine DNA residue
upon surfaces, though that rational comparison discounts the layers of belief, memory, haunting, and deep time embedded in the notion of yi wu. Yin Xiuzhen describes
moisture, scent, memories, and experiences imbuing used objects, especially clothing.
This is a major reason why she chooses to work with the lived-in objects, and why, frankly, it is a powerful medium. It is useful to note that the connotations of worn clothing have different associations in different cultures. For example, in the United
States, where consignment shops and yard sales are commonplace, used clothing would not have the same subtext as worn clothing might in cultures where people would never
wear strangers’ clothing or use objects, such as dishes, which have been used by
strangers, particularly if the stranger had died. Wu Hung notes that “we can understand
the meaning of those ‘used’ and ‘found’ objects in Yin Xiuzhen’s installations; these are
all yi wu conveying feeling and emotion; even the cement dust gains life by absorbing
moisture in the air.”66 The worn clothing is more significant as a choice of material in its
own cultural milieu and needs to be understood in that context. When Yin Xiuzhen uses
65 Ibid.,124. 66 Ibid. 41 clothing, it is her own, that of friends or relatives, or that of residents “on location” where she is installing a work or adding to a work, which involves translocality. She often links the residents to the works.
Dust, including cement dust, is a ubiquitous substance which has infiltrated and permeated Beijing for most of Yin Xiuzhen’s adult life. She feels it is intimate, as it silently settles into folds and nooks, and, if left alone, absorbs moisture from the air and hardens.67 Yin Xiuzhen uses cement dust both as a bonding agent (as in Clothes Chest) and as a unifying element (as in Ruined Capital).
In 1995 she exhibited Wool at the Beijing Contemporary Art Museum (see Figure
4). This was simply two folded piles of sweaters, one men’s and the other women’s, held apart but at the same time joined together by the connectors of wooden knitting needles.
From the top of each pile, a strand of yarn from each was being unraveled into piles and re-knit together into a single garment. The installation was a small, succinct, and aesthetically pleasing arrangement which packed a soft punch in a small space. It was quiet, almost prim, but the statement was strong and deliberate. The project of gender awareness was ongoing, notions were being deconstructed and reconstructed, and the progress was being mapped. Here, an engagement with contemporaneous social shifts.
67 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post- Modern” Chopsticks, 21. 42
Figure 4. Yin Xiuzhen, Wool, 1995, Beijing, installation: wool and knitting needles, photo by Song Dong, image from kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu
In 1998, Yin Xiuzhen returned to the subject of her childhood and the process of
growing and changing in Yin Xiuzhen, for the “It’s Me!” exhibition68 (see Figure 5). This
work consists of 10 photographs of shoes. In each photograph, one pair of black, cotton,
traditional Chinese cloth shoes is arranged on a unique background: stones, bricks, tile,
wood, cloth, etc. to indicate different places. Yin Xiuzhen thinks of shoes as boats which
carry the wearer through the journeys of life. In the insoles of each pair of shoes is a
printed photograph of Yin Xiuzhen at a significant time in her life: one year old, four
years old, six years old, the age of primary school, the age of middle school, the age of
68 It’s Me: An Aspect of Chinese Contemporary Art in the 90s, curated by Leng Lin; Main Ritual Hall in the former Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing. Scheduled to run from November 21-24, the exhibition was cancelled by police on November 20. 43 high school, the age of university, the age of the first time to do installation, the age of the first time to go abroad, and 1998. The matching shoes, the brightened colors, the appealing photos, the varied backgrounds – all signal happiness. But each photo is bifurcated. The right side of the face is in the right shoe, the left in the left.
On the one hand, this evokes fragmentation; on the other hand, each pair of shoes holds one face, the correct proportion of feet to heads in an actual life. The ambiguity, the placement/displacement dichotomy, and the layering of past and present are all pulled together in this small map of a life thus far.
44
Figure 5. Yin Xiuzhen, Yin Xiuzhen, 1998, installation: mixed media, image courtesy of Yin Xiuzhen und CourtYard Gallery, Peking via Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing
45
Beijing Re-Mapped
In 1996, Yin Xiuzhen began her intense work on the remapping of the changing physicality of Beijing. She gave a solo exhibition of her work Ruined Cit y69(see Figure
6) at her alma mater, Capital Normal University Museum, Beijing, an early and consistent supporter of its graduates who have moved into experimental contemporary art. Ruined City deals with Beijing’s overwhelming phenomenon of the destruction of whole neighborhoods to make room for new, high-rise apartments and retail spaces. This activity was at its peak from 1996 to1998. Though Yin Xiuzhen’s childhood and home life may have been stable, her external world literally came crashing down. The destruction of centuries-old narrow warrens of lanes, called hutongs, is on such a massive scale that the construction cranes visible everywhere have been dubbed “the national bird of China.” This demolition suddenly and deeply affected local culture and traditions. Not only the social culture, but the visual culture of Beijing in the 1990s was marked by upheaval.
She notes in an interview with Ai Weiwei that when riding her bicycle home from work at the end of the day, she would often pass demolished buildings which had stood intact when she had ridden to work that morning:
Sometimes when I would ride my bike to work I would hear a sound, look around to see a house fall down. Everywhere you looked you could see the character chai (tear down) written on buildings. Sometimes you would go
69 Ruined City: a solo exhibition by Yin Xiuzhen held at the Capital Normal University of Art Gallery, Beijing, which ran from July 20 through August 4, 1996. This University is Yin Xiuzhen’s alma mater; and its director is a supporter of experimental art, making this venue one of the earliest and strongest licensed public venues for exhibiting experimental art in China. Information compiled from Wu Hung’s Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, “Introduction, 22, and “A Chronicle of Experimental Exhibitions in China (1990-2000), 213. 46
out in the morning and see the character on a house, and come back in the evening to find the house already gone.70
Figure 6. Yin Xiuzhen, “Ruined City,” 1996, cement dust, roof tiles, wooden furniture, The Art Museum of Capitol Normal University, Beijing. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks.
The character for “condemned” was everywhere on the facades of former residences
which faced imminent destruction. The work Ruined Capital is an installation of debris,
dust, and rubble, along with a few pieces of furniture, which have been formally laid out,
cemetery fashion, in a huge space. What is conveyed, but not portrayed, are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced. As in Dress Box, Yin Xiuzhen chose to deal with subjects close to herself, close to home, using for artistic materials fragments, remnants, and traces of lives lived. Ironically, the people hadn’t died, but as their homes
70 Ai Weiwei, ed., Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 1998- 2002, 130-131. 47
disappeared, so did they, in a massive displacement. Of the four chairs, “a small
mountain of cement powder on each seat… denies their function as a means of providing
respite. Refuting the notion of social engagement, the chairs all face the corner of the
room, where the path of tiles tapers off towards the wall.”71
In another of Yin Xiuzhen’s works, the site-specific Transformation,72the
bifurcation between old and new is visually highlighted by juxtaposition (see Figure 7).
Here, the materials are not traces of the distant past, but, as Wu Hung has pointedly
noted, “material fragments of a vanishing present.”73 This installation is a good example
of Yin Xiuzhen’s layering of time and space. Like oil and water, the old and new
architecture cannot peacefully co-exist. There will be tension until one completely
displaces the other. Here, hutong housing faces off against a towering high-rise, with the
famous Ping’an Avenue bisecting the street. A courtyard among the hutongs provides a
clearing, in which Yin Xiuzhen has laid out in neat rows leftover roof tiles of demolished
houses. Upon each tile is a black-and-white photo of the demolished houses from which
the tiles came. Over several years, Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong had personally wandered
the lanes, collected the tiles, and taken the photos. It’s an engaged struggle. It’s personal
and it’s social. “Functioning in the logic of measurable and rational space, this re-
diagramming of the topology of a place is perhaps the most visually noticeable
phenomenon affecting the city. But it is also the modification of spatial practices, the
71 Peggy Wang, “Dis/Placement: Yin Xiuzhen’s City Installations,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 4 No. 1 (March 2005), 91. 72 Transformation was a site-specific work which Yin Xiuzhen installed in 1997 in a courtyard along Ping’An Avenue. The work could be seen from the street, putting it in the public realm. The roof tiles were the remains of the previously demolished houses. The photo by Song Dong is the remaining documentation of the artwork and its site, which itself has now been destroyed. 73 Wu Hung, “Sealed Memory,” Transience, 120. 48 clearing away of traditional codes, and the introduction of a new logic within that are causing shifts in value systems as well as social, economic, and cultural frameworks.”74
74 Peggy Wang, “Dis/Placement: Yin Xiuzhen’s City Installations,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 4 No. 1 (March 2005), 88. 49
Figure 7. Yin Xiuzhen, Transformation, 1996, Beijing, installation: roof tiles, photos. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks.
50
Song Dong explained his emotional connection to the traditional housing of
Beijing, expressing the sense of loss which hangs over the city as these buildings are
demolished:
I have always lived in a hutong, a traditional Beijing alley. The hutong represents a way of life and subsistence. Among people living in the same hutong, there exists a very special degree of familiarity… Practical issues are not everything; people also have spiritual needs. … The types of relationships that I used to entertain with other people living in the same hutong, which was probably very similar to that of other people living in other ones, is slowly disappearing.75
Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong lived in their hutong apartment and took a picture
together on its doorstep every year from the time they were first married in 1992. The
annual photographs are included in the catalogue Chopsticks. Their hutong apartment was
torn down to make way for the 2008 Olympics.
Are experimental artists in China free to express controversial opinions? As of
1999, Yin Xiuzhen had been prohibited from teaching during the previous year.76 One wonders whether it was Transformation or another installation that was the culprit drawing the censure.77 There are lines that still cannot be crossed when criticizing the
government. And those lines shift back and forth over time and across regions.
Experimental artists do a dance to exhibit controversial material in public, sometimes
taking the lead, the risk and the consequences; sometimes lying low, exhibiting abroad;
or arranging clever partnerships with private enterprises. The strategies of exhibiting
75 Song Dong quoted in Francesca Del Lago, “Space and Public: Specificity in Beijing,” Art Journal 59 (Spring 2000): 86. 76 Wu Hung, “Coda: A Brief Reflection on the Study of Contemporary Chinese Experimental Art,” Transience, 176. 77 Eventually [several years later],Yin Xiuzhen did lose her job as a teacher, “partly because of her frequent travels abroad” notes Wu Hung in “Introduction: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China,” 18. 51
experimental art in China are a strand of art historical study well introduced by Wu
Hung.78
Crossing Borders with Suitcases: Dislocation to Relocation
During the latter half of the 1990s, Yin Xiuzhen’s reputation as an emerging artist
crossed international borders. She began winning awards and receiving invitations to
exhibit abroad and to create site-specific installations in places such as London, Berlin,
Singapore, Brisbane, Chicago, and New York. Her personal experiences of traveling to
unfamiliar places, hence experiencing a new type of dislocation, were documented in a
series of works which became known as the Suitcase Series.79
In her words, “the initial concept came from the baggage claim at the airport. I saw the luggage conveyer at the baggage claim every time I traveled. Many people wait there. I was one of them. Since I always traveled with a large suitcase, it felt like I was
traveling with my home.”80 Suitcase (see Figure 8) began with an ordinary, old suitcase;
but upon its opening, a house would pop out, completely filling the suitcase and rising
above the open frame as if on a hillside.
78 Wu Hung, Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2000. 79 Suitcase Series in various permutations has been exhibited in several international locations in assorted galleries and exhibitions. 80 Christopher W. Mao, ed., Chopsticks (New York: Chambers Fine Art, 2002), artist’s statement, 70. 52
Figure 8. Yin Xiuzhen, suitcase from Suitcase Series, 2000-2002, in Singapore, Germany, Japan, installation with video, used clothes, old suitcase. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
Sometimes a whole street would rise from a suitcase of worn clothing stitched together to
form small houses and lanes. In one case, a tall flowered dress (see Figure 9) rose up
majestically from the interior of a suitcase, with window openings cut into the fabric and
illuminated from within, as a building. 53
Figure 9 Yin Xiuzhen, Suitcase 2000, installation: used clothes, suitcases, video, Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
Accompanying the installation is the video of Yin Xiuzhen carrying the suitcases to the
airport, checking them, waiting for them to come back from the baggage carousel, claiming them again with her baggage check, and then continuing on with her home in a suitcase. It was a document of taking home with you the mobile home, the portable home,
and the home that goes away and returns on a conveyor belt. The installations were strange and lovely – a unique concept mapping travel to an unfamiliar place, taking a
comfort zone with you, leading to the larger issues of where and what home is in an
increasingly mobile world.
As time went on, the suitcase with the home inside became more elaborate. The
suitcases and clothing structures became urban architecture (Figure 10). For the 54
exhibition “Cities on the Move,”81 Yin Xiuzhen created Building Game: Recognizable
pantyhose stretched over frames became skyscrapers with T-shirt walls and collar
windows. Gone were suitcases of hills and soft homey houses with flowers. In Building
Game, Yin Xiuzhen created a city of rectangular skyscrapers, sleek, urban, and
anonymous, interchangeable with any other urban metropolis on any continent.
Figure 10. Yin Xiuzhen, Building Game, 2002, installation: used clothes, wood, Yuangong Modern Art Museum, Shanghai. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks.
Later, whole cities came alive inside a single suitcase. This became her series of
Portable Cities (see Figure 11). In this series, Yin Xiuzhen returned to the personal: each
city carefully crafted with its own identifying landmarks mixed in with the ephemera of
81 “Cities on the Move”, co-curated by Paris-based Hou Hanru and Hans Olbrist, was a migrating exhibit from 1997 to 1999, including venues in Austria, France, USA, UK, Thailand, and Finland, among others. 55 other buildings. Described by Philip Tinari with comments by Yin Xiuzhen, “Portable
Cities, old suitcases open to reveal stuffed skylines of the places she has traveled, offers a highly personal take on the grand themes of urbanization and globalization; they are sculpted entirely from old clothing collected from the residents of those cities, which the artist sees as a sort of second skin, having noted how ‘people in our contemporary setting have moved from residing in a static environment to becoming souls in a constantly shifting transience.’”82
Figure 11. Yin Xiuzhen, Portable Cities, Beijing, 2001, installation: used clothes, suitcase, map, sound. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
82 Philip Tinari, “Yin Xiuzhen,” Artists in China, Verba Volant, Ltd. Pellipar House, First Floor, 9 Cloak Lane London EC4R 2RU, 2007, 423. 56
Come Into My Space
Yin Xiuzhen’s equal and opposite take on cities went from the miniature, where
the city was the object, to the super-sized version where the viewer becomes the object in
the recreated life-sized neighborhood. In this series, an installation called Leisure
Figure 12) was created for the Chengdu exhibition “Busy Life”83 This work, according to
Yin Xiuzhen’s statement in Chopsticks, amounted to an intervention to mitigate the
psychological effects of the hectic pace of economic development and depersonalization.
“I will create a photograph sound installation event for the Gwangju Biennale. For the installation, I will use 4 photographs that I shot in Chengdu City (Southern China). ‘BUSY LIFE’ represents the international city life, However, I focus on the lives of those who enjoy leisure and how they manage their leisure lives within the context of their city life. Chengdu is an international as well as the most developed leisure city in China, so I would like to bring its leisure life to the Gwangju [Korea] Biennale. People enjoy leisure at the tea house where I work. People can enjoy conversations with a cup of tea and sit down for a rest.”84
The viewer is invited to join others, both real and photographed, engaging in a
pause. This takes place in a tea house, which is constructed of life-size photographs taken
by Yin Xiuzhen of the courtyard of a tea house, where people sit at tables, drink tea, talk,
eat sunflower seeds, read, and rest. Photographed passersby on foot and bicycles meander around buildings, trees, and flowers. In this work, the others are already there. They are engaged in various social activities. In the Gwangju, Korea exhibit (Figures 12 and 14), you enter (through mirrored exterior panels) from your world to hers and are invited to join in, take part, and leave your schedule behind. Part of this work is interactive in that you actually sit at small tables, rest, drink tea, and munch snacks (see Figure 12) (Figure
83 “Busy Life” was an exhibit in Chengdu, China in 2001. 84 Yin Xiuzhen, artist’s statement, Chopsticks, 57. 57
14). The sense of real life is all around and can be contrasted to the earlier Ruined Capital
work, which is inhabited by only cement dust and fragments, and yi wu. Yin Xiuzhen’s
message is to pause and rest, enjoy life, and remember to keep leisurely social traditions
as a value, indeed, as a coping mechanism in an increasingly hectic life. In modern life in
urban China, displacement is a reality and one must constantly be aware and intentionally
engage that displacement in order to ensure a space and place for life to be lived in a
meaningful, interactive way.
Figure 12. Yin Xiuzhen, Leisure 2002, Gwangju, Korea, installation: photos, mirrors, audio, photographs, tables, chairs, cups, bowls. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
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Figure 13. Yin Xiuzhen, Leisure 2001, installation: photographs, tables, chairs, bowls, cups. From “Busy Life” exhibition, Chengdu, China. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
Figure 14. Yin Xiuzhen, Enjoy Leisure Time, 2002, Gwangju Bienalle, Korea, installation: photographs, tables, chairs, bowls, cups. Image reproduced from Chopsticks. (Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong seated mid-ground). 59
The elderly citizens of Beijing have demonstrated a special set of coping mechanisms for dealing with change. They have a longer set of traditions to fall back on to keep continuity in their routines: singing Beijing opera, doing group Tai chi, taking their pet birds out to the park, sitting around, chatting, and playing games with their old friends in public spaces. Yin Xiuzhen brings a sense of this ongoing life into some of her installations, for example Beijing Story (Figure 15). Again, you are invited to take up a small stool and be part of the group. You also hear the music and ambient noise through a recording of the scene. She is emphasizing the value of engagement and social interaction as an element which is in danger of being lost in the rush to develop at all costs.
Figure 15. Yin Xiuzhen, Beijing Story, 2001, installation: photographs, stools, audio, from “Living in Time: Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition” Hamberg Bahnhof Contemporary Art Museum, Berlin. Image reproduced from Chopsticks.
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A few years later she created another work called Where Are the Brakes?, in
which she constructed a large motorcycle from used clothing and scrap metal. The
motorcycle lies on its side, and a large pool of blood, rendered in red wool carpet,
expands away from the wreck. Yin Xiuzhen explained this piece in a video of a slide
lecture available on the Brooklyn Museum’s website.85 One of Yin Xiuzhen’s enduring
themes is to be aware of living as one’s life rushes on. One wonders, if she hadn’t
mapped her own progress, who would remember where she’d been? Would she herself?
Many of the doorways from her childhood are gone. Her clothes no longer fit; her shoes
are outgrown or worn out. Her neighborhood is gone; so are her neighbors. Most of us
can revisit the actual places of our childhood, but hers and millions of others’ in Beijing
are physically gone.
My work is concerned with examining the different social, cultural and geographical environments within which people live. Each of these different combinations of elements produces a different architectural and urban texture. We are experiencing an unfathomable development towards rapid physical transportation and Internet communication technology is making the speed of communication between different cultural centers beyond the control of traditional forces. People in our contemporary setting have moved from “residing” in the static environment to becoming souls in a constantly shifting “transience” …. In my work I like to include the “real” remnants of “real”’ people’s lives. These items bring to my work not only their tactile reality but also their in-built memory. As the discarded items of “real” people, I feel that such elements add additional factors of connection to the history that such items provide.86
85 From Yin Xiuzhen’s artist talk given at Brooklyn Museum’s “Global Feminisms.” In conjunction with “Global Feminisms,” 46 out 88 international artists featured in the exhibition discussed or performed their works in the Forum of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. These artist talks took place during the Center's opening weekend, March 23–25, 2007. Accessed via http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/Yin Xiuzhen_xiuzhen.php licensed by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 86 Yin Xiuzhen, artist statement published in Text & Subtext: International Contemporary Asian Women Artists exhibition catalogue, Earl Lu Gallery, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore, 2000. Accessed via http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/downloads/Yin Xiuzhen%20xuizhen.pdf
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CHAPTER 4: THE MUSEUM AND GALLERY YEARS: 2002-PRESENT
Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong: Chopsticks
In 2002, Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong created their first joint exhibition, at
Chambers Fine Art in New York City. The occasion was their 10th wedding anniversary
and the culmination of their ten years of individual careers finally coming together in this
shared work. As well, their daughter was to be born in two months – another cause for
celebration. We know this because of their inclusion of a visual reference to a seven-
month pregnancy in their exhibition catalogue Chopsticks. The theme of the exhibition
was eating, drinking, playing, and happiness.
Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong collaborated on parts, colluded on other parts, and
kept secrets from each other about certain aspects of this exhibition, where they are both
the artists and the curators. 87To get the idea of their originality and reality, the works in
this exhibition provide a good lens.
For the playing aspect, Yin Xiuzhen installed ping pong tables so guests could play a few games. However, the paddles were covered with used clothing: fitted to the paddle, yes, but with the buttons and other accoutrements, some wild shots ensued.
Likewise, the prizes are fabric trophy cups and button medals hung on ribbons. It was fun, interactive as a good party game should be, and unpredictable. Also, the wall of trophies and medals was colorful and funny, considering that most prizes are seriously
competitive and exclusive, for example the Oscars, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and
the Olympics. Yin Xiuzhen’s trophies and prizes brought it down to the level of the
ordinary person playing games and winning toy prizes. This is the kind of fun people who
87 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern: The Art of Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen” Chopsticks, 21. 62
are not the elite often enjoy, when one has learned to do a lot with a little. This is an example of the type of neighborhood social engagement which has appeared in different incarnations in other works by Yin Xiuzhen.
The happiness aspect involved Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong’s self-shots of the
two of them inside and outside their hutong home on their 10th anniversary day. We see
the photographs, and also photographs and video of the photography session, for a
double-vision effect. We see both of them taking pictures of each other. We are the viewer/participant, both inside and outside the action. We see the outside and inside of
each room and everything in each room of their home. It’s very personal yet not
pretentious. Their home is not pretentious. (It’s interesting to compare the interior of their
apartment to the interior space of the Space 798 Beijing apartment of Microsoft’s David
Kay.) In fact, “keeping it real” could be their leitmotif. Neither artist cares to be easily
classified or part of a commercial or ideological system. Wu Hung calls their discursive
style “‘vernacular’ post-modern” and wrote an insightful article introducing this term.88
“Chopsticks” – the name of the exhibition and the symbol of Yin Xiuzhen and
Song Dong’s relationship – contains a work wherein each artist agreed to make one chopstick secretly, agreeing only on the measurements. Neither knew how the other had rendered their chopstick until the exhibition opening. Song Dong’s 15-foot chopstick was crafted of metal, with maps of Beijing etched on its surface, representing the North South axis of Beijing. Yin Xiuzhen’s chopstick was the same size but was fabricated of clothing. Along the top of Yin Xiuzhen’s chopstick were sewn tiny buildings and familiar landmarks along Beijing’s North South axis. The chopstick was created with a long
88 Wu Hung, “‘Vernacular’ Post-Modern: The Art of Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen” Chopsticks, 20. 63 zipper which opened up to reveal domestic articles within, such as scissors, personal, items, and even condoms.
The announcements read like party invitations to an anniversary party, and favor bags were created by the artists themselves. At the opening, visitors were treated to hot and cold food, hot and cold drinks, games, and prizes; all of these elements were artworks.
The exhibition catalogue, Chopsticks, is created like a scrapbook in three sections: one for Song Dong’s work over the preceding ten years, one for Yin Xiuzhen’s, and the center for their collaboration in “Chopsticks.” The catalogue is filled with photos and labels in scrapbook style, along with a few excellent essays and several interviews and statements from the artists themselves. It is an outstanding example of the artists integrating their art with their lives, with each other, and with others.
As Jonathan Goodman, reviewing “Chopsticks,” notes in Yishu, “For all the specific rootedness of the art and behaviors, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen see art as catching anyone and everyone in their grasp. They have made the process enjoyable, even humorous, by which we, as fellow participants, are rendered hopefully as happy as the artists themselves.”89
Mapping Global Concerns
Fashion
In 2004, Yin Xiuzhen was invited by fashion designer Claudia Hill to celebrate the opening of Hill’s new store in Berlin (see Figure 16). Entitled “My House is Your
89 Jonathan Goodman, Yishu Review “Chopsticks: Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen at Chambers Fine Art,” Yishu, March 2003. Accessed via http://www.chambersfineart.com/press/sd-yxz_yishu_march03.pdf 64
House: Berlin Meets Beijing: Claudia Hill - Yin Xiuzhen,” the exhibit ran from
September 16 to October 30 and featured selected works from Yin Xiuzhen’s Portable
Cities series, including “Beijing” and “New York” among others. Hill is known for her
investigations into the convergence of art and fashion. For example, her new line of
clothing was revealed in a performance, existing now as photographs entitled
“Frozen…Thawing….” The new collection of clothing was first revealed as compacted,
frozen wads of cloth suspended from a high wire in the store. As the hours passed, the ice thawed and the clothes slowly dripped, unfolding by degrees until finally revealed as full- length articles of designer clothing. It is a novel showroom concept which “attempts a convergence of fashion and art.”90
For Yin Xiuzhen, it was an opportunity to experiment in an alternate exhibition site (a boutique) with another innovative artist on the international stage. The artistic proclivity to textiles was a commonality Yin Xiuzhen and Hill shared; the commercial references were not. Yin Xiuzhen’s materials were used, donated, and could be considered cast-offs; Hill’s designs are attainable only to the rich. Thus, a power differential is illustrated in materials: discarded cast-offs vs. the latest must-haves.
Interestingly, in the very end, even Hill’s expensive designer clothes will become cast- offs; and Yin Xiuzhen’s suitcase constructions of castoffs will become valuable. Both fashion and art history are sometimes written by the checkbook.
90 From an advertising promotion of the opening of Claudia Hill’s new store in Berlin. Accessed via http://claudiahill.com/news/yx/
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My House is Your House
Berlin meets Beijing: Claudia Hill – Yin Xiuzhen
September 16 to October 30, 2004
Figure 16. Advertising Announcement: My House is Your House, image from http://claudiahill.com/news/yx/
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Terrorism
After September 11, 2001, air travel became much more complicated from a security standpoint. Yin Xiuzhen had begun traveling extensively and decided to address some of the security restrictions as they affected not only herself but travelers the world
over as a symptom of global unease. In one installation, Fashion Terrorism, she packed a suitcase full of weapons (see Figure 17) to interrogate the notions of safety and scrutiny.
Using the list of contraband items from the airport rules, Yin Xiuzhen packed guns, knives, grenades, magnets, scissors, and bullets, determined to take them on the plane from Beijing to Berlin in spite of regulations. She passed through the security checkpoints and carried them onto the plane. She was allowed because her weapons were wooly, soft, safe, and colorful. The weapons were like toys. Who would make toys like that? But then again, who would take real weapons like that on a plane? And what does that say about the state of the interconnected world? Neither goodwill nor even neutrality is an assumed orientation toward fellow man, and safety is no longer assumed in public places. Travelers in particular must now be scanned, scrutinized, and dehumanized as potential weapons carriers.
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Figure 17. Yin Xiuzhen, Fashion Terrorism, 2006, mixed media, image from www.we-make-money- not-art.com
Yin Xiuzhen has been accused of feminizing, or softening, her subjects. But she
rejects the totalizing of her approach as feminine. Here is an excerpt from her interview
with Ai Weiwei:
AW: “Using clothing as a material in your work makes people think it’s a feminine material, have you thought of that?
YXZ: No.
AW: Do the materials you use have a special significance to you?
YXZ: I haven’t thought about a particular significance that they have for me, they just grabbed me. I saw that there were a lot of things in clothing, not to say a specific piece of clothing, or a kind of clothing. I always think clothes carry our experiences in them – go wherever the person goes, they carry her scent.… I've never thought about what kind of materials women artists use, I use concrete. That’s not necessarily something that women artists use, it’s just that I had a feeling for them; they moved me, so I decided to use that material.91
91 Ai Weiwei, ed., Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 1998- 2002, 130-131.
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Consumerism
It may be that nothing says “consumerism” quite like a shopping cart. Therefore,
Yin Xiuzhen chose to iconicize this emblem by stretching it to 20 feet tall, as part of her
Supermarket installation, first shown in 2002 at the Beijing Agricultural Palace. Again, she deals with mapping power structures, often juxtaposing the weapons of the weak
against the more powerful and pervasive structures of corporate and political power. In
this installation(see Figure 18), she continues her diminutive used-clothing structures
depicting villages, towns, and farms laid out like toys on baby blankets, with “roads” in-
between the squares which become the lanes for the gigantic shopping carts to roll
through. The softscapes are made by actual people, sewing on real sewing machines as
part of the installation. The gigantic carts are metal on wheels and overpower everything.
This work could be read as her tribute to China, prospering exponentially as it
produces billions of dollars worth of products for export. Many countries have realized
huge trade deficits to China as world markets become increasingly saturated with Chinese
exports.
But China is suffering from its own consumerism problems, which Yin Xiuzhen
has addressed in many ways in previous works; and it becomes obvious that she is
addressing her own country’s issues – both the positive and negative – with regard to
rampant economic growth. Although China realizes positive cash flow from its exports,
its own citizens are dealing with a mix of unparalleled consumerism (and pollution) in the
cities and some measure of being left behind the rural areas. It’s clear that the issues
around consumerism do have global implications and most countries can relate to both 69
the positive and negative impacts of economic growth as well as to the
interconnectedness of the global economy. This work can also, as with most of Yin
Xiuzhen’s installations, be read as an intervention to stitch together ruptures in changing
cultural practices as globalization ensues. It is these layers of meaning that make her
works rich and readable to both the local and the global audience.
Figure 18. Yin Xiuzhen, Super Market, 2005, installation, mixed media, UB Center for the Arts, (photo: Rose Mattrey)
Environmental Issues
Yin Xiuzhen’s professional career as an international contemporary artist largely
began in 1995 with an award to do an environmental project as part of American artist
Betsy Damon’s Healing the Waters projects funded by UNESCO. Yin Xiuzhen created
three installations, two of which became very famous: Washing the River and Shoes with 70
Butter. Washing the River (Figure 19) was a collaborative work, done in Chengdu in the
Sichuan Province along the banks of the Funan River. Water from the extremely polluted river was hauled away and frozen into huge blocks of ice, which were then carried back to the riverbanks. There, passersby were given mops and buckets of clean water and were asked to help scrub the polluted, discolored ice blocks to make them clean again.
Obviously, this was an exercise in futility regarding cleaning that batch of water. But the effort was a visual and participatory challenge to realize that the river was highly polluted and to understand that it was a community problem and needed a community solution:
Everyone can and should help take responsibility to get it cleaned up. Many people participated in washing the river, and the event was recorded in photographs. 71
Figure 19. Yin Xiuzhen, Washing the River, 1995, performance in Chengdu, China, image from http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/mahjongartists/popups/Yin Xiuzhen_xiuzhen1.htm
The Brooklyn Museum, as part of its “Global Feminisms” exhibition, noted in its catalogue that this work was an example of women artists in leadership roles regarding public works. While it could be seen as that, it also sounds as though Yin Xiuzhen’s work 72
was being appropriated to fit into a category in that show’s agenda, and that appropriation
seems a rather totalizing summation of the meaning of this work. I believe that the
“Global Feminisms” group does attempt to appropriate rather than give recognition to the
work by Yin Xiuzhen and other artists. Western feminism has tried hard to appropriate all
women into its grand narrative, but the fit is often awkward. China has its own
philosophical roots with regards to the female and male, yin and yang, its own history of
the modern woman, and its own contribution to make to the world in weaving the fabric
of the narrative of the feminine. I found the exhibition catalogue of “Global Feminisms”
brooding, heavy, and unappealing, while I find the work of Yin Xiuzhen to be
compelling, inviting, and positively thought-provoking.
To its extreme credit, The Brooklyn Museum made available on the web the video
of the talk given by Yin Xiuzhen in New York.92 It’s always enlightening to hear the
artist discuss her own works, and, with an interpreter, Yin Xiuzhen showed slides of
many of her works while discussing her thoughts and the meanings she attributed to each
work. This is a wonderful resource made available from the Brooklyn Museum free on
the World Wide Web.
The second famous work in Yin Xiuzhen’s Water series is Shoes with Butter (see
Figure 20). Ostensibly about environmental issues, this work was site-specific to Lhasa,
Tibet. At the site of the Yellow River’s headwaters, she placed random pairs of shoes of
92 From Yin Xiuzhen’s artist talk given at Brooklyn Museum’s “Global Feminisms.” In conjunction with “Global Feminisms,” 46 out 88 international artists featured in the exhibition discussed or performed their works in the Forum of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. These artist talks took place during the Center's opening weekend, March 23–25, 2007. Accessed via http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/Yin Xiuzhen_xiuzhen.php licensed by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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various sizes and types around a muddy stream. Each shoe was filled with yak butter and
a wick. The yak butter is made from the fat of the local yak and is used as fuel for
cooking and as heat for keeping warm; its smoke is used as the agent for carrying the
Tibetans’ prayers upward. One of my professors saw this installation in situ, and he said
it was very moving and wonderful. During the day, the scene was an isolated high
altitude landscape of rugged mountains ringing a flat plain. There were no signs of
people; just a few yaks grazing the sparse grass. The brilliant blue sky was punctuated
with bright white clouds; and the muddy puddles reflected both, with the cloud
formations looking like snow-covered mountain peaks in the mirror of the water. The
effect was that if you looked up, you saw sky; if you looked down into the water, you still
saw sky. Mountains likewise were shown in the water and above the land. At night, when
the yak butter candles in the shoes were lit and the deep darkness drew over the land, the
stars came. But, looking down, there were flame points, like stars, also on the ground and reflected in the water. Stars, tiny flames, and darkness surrounded the viewer above and below. Yin Xiuzhen believes shoes are like boats – they carry the body and soul of the wearer through the journeys of this life. The Tibetans are a prayerful people; and the installation was peaceful, natural, and meaningful – honoring them and their ways, as Yin
Xiuzhen respects all people and includes their traces in all her work. This work is another example of her layering space and time to map changes and continuity. 74
Figure 20. Yin Xiuzhen, Shoes with Butter, 1996, Tibet, installation: shoes, yak butter candles. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks.
Militarism
Yin Xiuzhen has created some site-specific installations dealing with the subject
of war. One of the most visually effective is Dining Table. This is a permanent installation on the grounds of the Ruine der Kunste in Berlin. Yin Xiuzhen was invited by
artist/manager Wolf Kahlen to create a work of her choice for the gallery. The façade of the building itself is pockmarked by artillery fire from World War II. Yin Xiuzhen made an installation for the gallery grounds in which she poured a thick layer of cement onto a table top and then pressed fresh fruit into the wet cement (see Figure 21). Over the process of time, the fruit decomposed, leaving its impressions in the hardened cement
(see Figure 22). Now these impressions fill with water from rain; in the winter, the water 75 freezes and then thaws in the spring, further continuing to evidence the processes of life: time, change, hot and cold, hard and soft. The table now matches the gallery building, though one is pockmarked by war, the other by nature (see Figure 23).
Figure 21. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table, 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, Installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks.
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Figure 22. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table (detail), 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Wolf Kahlen, image reproduced from Chopsticks. 77
Figure 23. Yin Xiuzhen, Dining Table, 1998, Ruine der Kunste, Berlin, installation: cement, fruit, metal. Photo by Song Dong, image reproduced from Chopsticks. 78
Another work dealing with the effects of war was created in 1997 in Breda/
Holland called Chasse Military Barracks Breda Building H Room No. 18. This
installation used the dormitory barracks; eight sets of beds, mattresses, pillows, sheets,
and blankets; and also photographs, tape, concrete, and explosives. While video plays
earlier interviews of surviving soldiers sitting on these barracks beds talking about their
experiences in the war, the installed beds explode intermittently, alluding to the shock
and destruction which took the lives of the non-survivors and shook the lives of the
survivors.
Other Power Structures
One might ask what rockets, TV towers, and cathedrals all have in common. Yin
Xiuzhen visually contends that are all agents of delivery in systems of power (see Figure
24 and Figure 25). In this visually stunning exhibition, she brings together power players
in the hallowed halls of Christendom, where the 40-foot rockets seem to face off with
stained glass windows. The Gothic arches seem to shelter the erect missives; and it
somehow brings to mind the English statesmen appearing before the Empress Ci Xi in the
Imperial Temple but refusing to kowtow. What may at first appear to be a standoff could
be read as a museum of powers past. The fact that the weapons are made of clothing from
ordinary people indicate that the industrial military complex is not the only power on the
stage. The venerable gothic arches no longer hold the same power over the masses as they once did, when ceremonies were conducted within which all aspects of life were marked and measured.
79
Figure 24. Yin Xiuzhen, TVT-Rocket 2005, used clothing and metal frame. Image from Chinadaily.com.cn Copyright 2003 Ministry of Culture, P.R.China. http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_focus/2007-06/05/content_99049.htm 80
Figure 25. Yin Xiuzhen, TVT-Rocket 2005 http://www.nga.nu/mnkunstenaar.asp?artistnr=37028&vane=&em=&meer=&sessionti=135040599 De volgende musea/instellingen hebben werk in hun collectie. Groninger Museum, Groningen. 81
Yin Xiuzhen closely relates TV towers and rockets, based on the fact that the iconic Pearl Broadcasting Tower on the banks of the Pu River in Shanghai looks like a rocket. In fact, the messages broadcast from the tower send information that flows to hundreds of millions of people. These messages hold the power to influence, as powerfully as religion and weapons and perhaps even more so.
In this mapping, Yin Xiuzhen layers time and histories, people, and weapons.
Religion, science, politics, and mass media pose together – a postcard of a place visited but leaving no forwarding address.
For the 52nd Venice Biennale, curator and critic Hou Hanru chose for the Chinese
Pavilion only four artists. At first, it seemed impressive to learn that all four artists chosen were women. But several other countries had first decided to showcase all female artists, which then read more as a political move than choice by merit. Actually, though,
Hou Hanru’s exhibition statement outlines excellent reasoning, worthwhile objectives, and sincere admiration of the artists he chose. The entire subject of the politics of international biennales and triennials is beyond the scope of this paper. But the layers of meaning in classifying, identifying, staging, and positioning particular artists, groups, countries, and now genders are problematic. The whole thing begins to reek of The
Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1850 in Victorian England, where classification was a function of domination and now appears to be an over-compensatory function of political correctness. This is likely a phase which must be passed through to bring to the world stage those previously excluded, so that in the future there may be a truer world stage, or more likely many world stages accessed by talent and discourse rather than by 82
designation in a political system of classification, whether politically dominating or
politically correct.
According to Sarah Thornton, cultural sociologist and art historian, a biennale is
“not just a show that takes place every two years; it is a goliath exhibition that is meant to capture the global artistic moment.”93 Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Modern,
wondered “whether a single person can any longer curate a show meant to be globally
inclusive.”94 Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale University School of Art, former curator at
MoMA and curator of this Biennale admitted to Thornton, “The vicissitudes of this
particular Biennale, the backstage politics and so on, have been extreme…I cannot
exaggerate how difficult it has been just to get to this (opening) day.”95 When the
interviewer asked Storr if biennials are supposed to capture the zeitgeist, he frowned and replied, “I’m a hardworking, 57-year-old straight, Anglo-Saxon, American guy. I’m not temperamentally inclined to try to second-guess the times. I’m not trying to prove I’m
‘with it.’ I’m just trying to keep moving and to deal with the artists who are working at
the top of their powers – who are in the heat of their own artistic moment – whether
they’re having their peak moment of reception or not.”96
93 Sarah Thornton, “Chapter 7: The Biennale,” Seven Days in the Art World, W.W. Norton, New York: 2008, 225. 94 Ibid., 231. 95 Ibid., 228 96 Ibid. 83
Figure 26. Yin Xiuzhen, Arsenal, 2007, installation of old clothes and everyday objects, 52nd Venice Biennale. Image from ArtIndia.
For the 52nd Venice Biennale, Yin Xiuzhen created a site-specific installation called TV Tower Weapons (see Figure 27 and Figure 27). In the exhibition space, the
“Arsennale,” she used worn clothing, dinner plates, and other everyday items to fashion weapons based on TV tower shapes but also resembling spears and missiles. These were hung from the peaked ceiling, filling the space with colorful, purposeful, multiple missiles, all aimed in the same direction as if flying on a mission.
Yin Xiuzhen’s mission is to map changes in physical structures, social structures, and power structures. In mapping changes, she always includes allusions to what has not 84 changed, and it is always people. She layers time, space, and place to build her case. Her core value, humanity, remains the material and subject of her mission.
Figure 27. Yin Xiuzhen, TV Tower Weapons, 2007, 52nd Venice Biennale, installation: old clothes and daily life things. Image from Beijing Commune Online Catalogue ©2007 artnet. - . http://www.artnet.com.
85
CONCLUSION
To analyze the body of Yin Xiuzhen’s work is to read the past 50 years of China’s
reorientation to the outside world. Her work is a direct negotiation with the consequences
of China’s policies of opening and reform. Beginning with her strong ties to her family
and neighborhood, Yin Xiuzhen had to deal with the built world of her childhood
tumbling down as China ‘modernized’ to take its place as a leading nation on the world
stage. As she graduated from college in the midst of a watershed incident in China’s
modern political history, the Tiananmen Square June Fourth movement, she made plans
to find her own voice by becoming an experimental artist, ultimately self-positioning.
As she exhibited in various locations in China, her art focused on issues related to the processes of hyper modernization, including the layering and fragmentation of time, space and place, identity, loss, and displacement.
As she traveled abroad, she further interrogated the issues of globalization, displacement, translocality, portability, global power structures, terrorism, fashion, and the interconnected global economy.
As she exhibited in museums and international biennales, her work, while being celebrated, at times could be seen as running the risk of being minimized, or appropriated, as “women’s art” (in “Global Feminisms”), or “Chinese art” (in the 52nd
Venice Bienalle), or “China’s Women Artists” art (again the Venice Bienalle). It indicates that being intentionally privileged can also mean being minimized. This is, and always has been, a function of classification and politics, which is working itself out as the issues of identity politics – the local and the global – are being analyzed theoretically. 86
While in the past, systems of classification have privileged the dominant culture, today’s sometimes over-compensatory privileging of underrepresented areas and groups can tend
(unintentionally) to weaken the reputations of those so privileged. At the same time, classifying can also present exhibition opportunities perhaps otherwise unavailable, which could be valuable as entry points to wider visibility and discourse. In the meantime, the issues of classification and representation continue to plague certain international exhibitions and cause curatorial headaches. Some exhibitions such as “How
Latitudes Become Forms” deal intensively with strategies of global representation, knowing that any final result, no matter how carefully considered and from how many angles, will be flawed and open to criticism, which will itself push progress and again invite new avenues of discourse.
Yin Xiuzhen has been critically acclaimed by respected scholars and curators, such as Wu Hung, Hou Hanru, Peggy Wang, and Leng Lin. Her work has been extensively covered in Yishu, the leading scholarly journal of Chinese contemporary art.
Furthermore, she has made important contributions to many national and international exhibitions and had numerous solo shows around the world. It can be said with certainty that her reputation derives from her innovative work and not from her demographics. Her work itself, however, is rooted in her demographics.
In the 12 years since her first exhibitions in Beijing in 1995, Yin Xiuzhen’s works have continuously engaged the effects of spreading urbanization and globalization, as well as notions of systemic power structures. Her works have connected and transcended 87 many previously distinct categories – not through cynical distortion but through uniquely conceived commonalities. She maps.
In one sense, Yin Xiuzhen’s work can be understood as knitting together gaping chasms of misunderstanding between historically constructed dichotomies, such as male/female, power/helplessness, and producer/consumer. In another sense, her work can be understood as the layering of time, place, and space to help visualize and cope with the fragmentation of the past and present that the processes of urbanization and globalization produce.
Sometimes her work incongruously joins divergent worlds, such as weapons and dinner plates, suitcases and parks, and fashion and terrorism to surprise the viewer into thinking in new ways about social and political systems. Yin Xiuzhen maps out humor, warnings, secular sermons, memories, plans, and values. Wordlessly, visually, the viewer can feast on the fabric of life and ponder.
88
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