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oa China–Africa: Performing the Image of Migration and Migration of Image

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The article focuses on Beijing-based artist Pu Yingwei's works that address the complex relations, both real and imagined, between China and Africa with his monumental installation Dam Theater (2021) as an example. By contextualising the wide array of visual culture materials in Pu's work from the post-Bandung moment to presentday Belt and Road Initiative, from Chinese Political Pop to fashion, the article deploys an expanded notion of performativity to decode the artistic gestures. The artist consciously probes into propaganda art by eliciting vestiges of the macroperformative apparatus of revolutionary art, and at the same time strategically embodying an updated notion of Political Pop that becomes a form of many contradictory forms, most notably its affinity to commercial culture. This points how the socialist revolutionary is assimilated into the capitalist postmodern by way of style and critique.

Keywords: Bandung ; Belt and Road Initiative ; capitalist realism ; China and Africa ; Jonas Staal ; macro- and micro-performativity ; minor transnationalism ; Political Pop ; propaganda art ; Pu Yingwei ; Third Worldism

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China–Africa: Performing the Image of Migration and Migration of Image
Intellect , 369 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389616_25
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     [Google Scholar]
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     [Google Scholar]
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     [Google Scholar]
  5. Driessen, Miriam. “Africa Drifters.” Made in China Journal, vol. 5, no. 3, 2021, pp. 48–51.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Gan, Yang. 通三统 Tong Santong, Communication of the Three Tradition. Joint Publishing, 2007.379
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Gladston, Paul. Deconstructing Contemporary Chinese Art: Selected Critical Writings and Conversations, 2007–2014. Springer, 2016.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik. “(Primitive) Accumulation.” Ankerzentrum, edited by Natascha Süder Happelmann and Franciska Zolyom, exh. cat. German Pavilion Venice Biennale, Venice, 2019.
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  9. Lee, Weng Choy. “Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents: Reflections on Curating Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia.” Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, edited by Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores, National Gallery Singapore, 2017, pp. 336–347.
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     [Google Scholar]
  11. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-Mei Shih. “Introduction Thinking through the Minor, Transnationally.” Minor Transnationalism, edited by Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, Duke University Press, 2005, p. 121.
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  12. Lu, Yinghua, and Ding Liu. “From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: The Echoes of Socialist Realism,” e-flux, no. 55, 2014. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/55/60315/from-the-issue-of-art-to-the-issue-of-position-the-echoes-of-socialist-realism-part-i/. Accessed 27 May 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
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     [Google Scholar]
  14. Morgan, Jessica. “Political Pop: An Introduction,” Tate, 2015. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-world-goes-pop/jessica-morgan-political-pop-an-introduction. Accessed 27 May 2021.
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     [Google Scholar]
  16. Pu, Yingwei. Artist Interview, Shanghai Biennale Opening Program, Shanghai, 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Pu, Yingwei. Exhibition text, Pu Yingwei: Obscure Adventure – Speculative Pop & Pan-Chinesism, Start Museum, Shanghai, 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Routledge, 2003.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Staal, Jonas. Propaganda Art in the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2019.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Vishmidt, Marina. “What Do We Mean by ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Reproduction’?” Reproducing Autonomy: Work, Money, Crisis and Contemporary Art, edited by Kerstin Stakemeier and Marina Vishmidt, Mute, 2016.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Wang, Peggy. The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art. University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Wang, Zheng王诤. “咿呀欧雷欧…” 朱明瑛说春晚节目《非洲歌舞》.” 2021, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_11326451.
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     [Google Scholar]

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