Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China Published by Edizioni Charta. Milano, Italy, 2007 Jonathan Goodman ell conceived and well written, Melissa Chiu’s Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China Wconsiders the Chinese artistic diaspora— painters and sculptors, performance artists and conceptual practitioners who left the Mainland in favour of greater aesthetic freedom in America, Europe, and Australia. After the events on June 4, 1989, at Tian’anmen Square, the democracy movement in China was crushed, and many artists sought to escape what had become a prison house for the intelligentsia. At the same time, however, as Chiu points out in a perceptive introduction, there was a general exodus that had to do with cultural restlessness as much as political oppression. She finds that not everybody wanted to leave; she quotes Ah Xian, Cover of Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China. a ceramic artist who settled in Australia: “Once we had Image: Ah Xian, Human Human—Landscape 1, 00-00. Courtesy Edizioni Charta, Milano. the chance to go overseas, we tried as hard as we could to stay” . And most recently, many Chinese artists have returned to China, including such major figures as Zhang Huan, who never gave up his Chinese passport while working in America, and Xu Bing, who has accepted the post of vice president at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees more than two decades ago. Chiu rightly suggests that the ebb and flow of immigration by Chinese artists is complicated, and much of her book, which is devoted to case studies of individual artists, claims a greater complexity for these figures than what the general perception might assert. Chiu argues for a continuing perception of the “Chineseness” of Chinese art, no matter where it is being practiced and shown. Chinese art is based upon the incorporation of Western avant-garde practices of the 1960s and 70s—in particular, performance and conceptual art—which is then used to express specifically Chinese concerns; it builds upon, but is not beholden to, Western contemporary art. Interested in the interaction between Western and Asian cultures, Chiu has coined the word “transexperience,” which she deems as being “thought of as a theoretical framework to explain Chinese overseas art by questioning its relationship to time, in particular to the past, present, and future”. The homeland thus becomes a site of the past and the country the artist has immigrated to serves as a place in which the present is investigated. Chiu sees three strategies whereby transexperience is redeemed through art—by an emphasis on the recovery of Chinese materials “at a geographical and psychological distance from China”; by juxtaposing “memories of China with its current reality”; and by modifying “Chinese signifiers, such as Chinese characters, to make them accessible to non-Chinese audiences.” The recovery, juxtaposition, and modification of Chinese cultural artefacts build a new architecture of experience. The past, present, and future respectively concur with the three 9 aspects of cultural recognition that comprise the effects of transexperience. Xu Bing’s famous installation, Tianshu (Book from the Sky) (1987-91), is based on a visual archaeology that attempts to recover lost language even if that language is nonexistent or entirely imaginary. New York City-based conceptual painter Zhang Hongtu does not so much juxtapose as literally replace styles in his paintings, which take recognized masterpieces of Chinese art and rework them in the manner of Van Gogh or Cezanne. Finally, the attempt to reify the future occurs when Chinese artists work out a connection between Chinese as a language and the other languages it coexists with. As Chiu points out, Xu’s New English Calligraphy (1994-96) has Wenda Gu, Speechless No. 2, 98, performance view at National Art Academy, unsuspecting participants writing Hangzhou. Photo: Jiao Jian. Courtesy of the artist. English calligraphy while they think they are practicing writing Chinese characters; she also cites Gu Wenda’s piece United Nations, with its variants—especially United Nations—China Monument: Temple of Heaven—transforming traditional calligraphy into something as monumental as it is unreadable. It would seem that the notion of mixing Western and Chinese cultures carries with it a pessimistic reading of the merger; most likely, the works imply, the conflation of signifiers cannot be reduced to the melting pot Americans so often refer to. Chiu cites the manipulation of Chinese characters as examples of a “new, subversive Chineseness”. It is an accurate term for an entire generation of artists old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution and the savageries of Tian’anmen Square, but who are not always or necessarily thrilled with their experience in Western culture. Indeed, viewers see, again and again, these artists return to the historic, and historical, signifiers of an older (even ancient) Chinese culture. Surely their artistic decisions constitute a reaction toward the monolithic, usually capitalist societies they chose to relocate in. Identity, as understood by the Chinese, the vast majority of whom belong to one racial group, remains key to their concerns. They build bridges with their homeland by addressing not only inspired moments in Chinese culture but also stereotypes, as happens in Zhang Hongtu’s Acupuncture Chart (1990), with a corpulent Mao as the model for key acupunctural points. Here the artist expresses his long obsession with Mao, as consequential an icon—for better or worse—as the Chinese have seen in modern times. Chiu’s astute reading of the need for members of the diaspora to remain culturally Chinese correctly points out their need is essential to their creativity. In Chapter Two, “Theories of Being Outside,” Chiu elaborates on the Chinese artist’s need to remain connected to his or her culture of origin—a desire based upon the inevitable identification of the artist with his or her Chinese heritage. All artists in transit bear with them the information 9 and the experience of their home, but in the Chinese case, the connection appears to be particularly intense, occurring on a racial level. Indeed, Chiu quotes the late, Paris-based artist conceptual artist Chen Zhen, who acknowledges his practice as being based upon his “bank of genes.” Chen’s connection to his heritage is not a mere matter of influence; rather, it is a world Huang Yongping, VOC, 998, scales, cardboard boxes, of history and culture, genetically linked to his plates. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery. own circumstances, from which he can draw materials for his own art. China’s great past, its imperial history, enables the Chinese artistic diaspora to borrow and quote at will. The collective achievements of China are quoted, but the diaspora artists prefer to make use only of what they want, infusing background materials with processes that are local and more or less contemporary in respect to their sites of work. In fact, it would be romantic, however, to say that the artists are nostalgic or filled with longing; it is not the idea of China that they draw upon, but, rather, the specifics of its artistic history. Culturally speaking, they seem to look Wang Zhiyuan, Underpants, 00-00, wood, acrylic and mixed media, 80 x x 0 cm. Photo: Wang Zhiyuan. backward, but in fact they draw upon the past to Courtesy of the artist. create art that is absolutely contemporary. The remarkable emigration of the many Chinese artists to America, mostly to New York City, is brought up in Chiu’s informative Chapter Three. The list of New York-based Chinese artists includes Zhang Hongtu, Wenda Gu, Xu Bing, and Cai Guo- Qiang, as well as Ai Weiwei, Cai Jin, and Yun-Fei Ji. In recent times, there has been a movement back to China—Cai Jin, Ai Weiwei, and Xu Bing, for example, have returned to Beijing. However, it is clear that the chaotic freedom of New York has acted as a catalyst for a large number of the artists mentioned. In this case, transexperience proves an accurate term in describing the passage of these artists into the broad liberties of a post-industrial, Guan Wei, Two Finger Exercises No. 30, 989, gouache, hyper-capitalist society—a context that generally wax, oil, crayon on card, . x . cm. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Photo: Yang Yong resulted in the artists’ use of the Chinese past. They Qiang. Courtesy of the artist and Sherman Galleries. pursued a global outlook through their intense identification with native traditions and materials, from which the technical skill and human subtleties gave them much to work with. Chiu, who uses a case-study approach for much of the rest of the book, deftly handles the ambitious individuals who moved west in pursuit of both freedom and personal gain. Zhang Hongtu, one of the earliest pioneers, first moved to New York in 1982, at the age of thirty-seven. Of a Muslim background, he exorcized his Chinese experience by fixating on Mao, whose presence was ubiquitous while he was growing up in China. 9 Cai Guo-Qiang, Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, 999, installation view at 8th Venice Biennale, clay, wood, lamps, sculpture tools. Photo: Elio Montanari. Courtesy of Cai Studio, New York. Zhang, who work has shifted since his arrival in the U.S. and now acknowledges both Western and Chinese legacies in a single painting, is given much space for the illustration of his works, which include his negative Mao series, in which Mao’s stately figure is given its contours in negative space. In the remarkable Last Banquet (1989), a version of the Last Supper, all the figures, including Jesus and Judas, are portrayed as Mao himself.