Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014

This article draws attention to ways in which contemporary Chinese art is linked discursively to history and community. Drawing on the notion that history lies suspended, including in the common discourse on contemporary Chinese art, the article examines the role of politics and aesthetics, and the aesthetic regime in Chinese art. Moving the discussion from art of the revolution to the multiple revolutions in contemporary Chinese art, the article points at important developments in combined socio-artistic projects in China focused on drawing attention to the links between art, cultural revolution and communal history. It also presents ways in which such links might be critically examined. The combined study of these socio-artistic projects and the prevailing aesthetic regime in China is intended as way of opening up a new perspective on the avant-garde in Chinese art today.

In the discourse on ‘nativism’ and ‘cultural conservatism’, now dominant in Mainland China, the position of ‘traditional’ art, and especially painting made with Chinese ink, has been promoted by official institutions like the China Artists Association, thus emphasizing the support of the state. The discourse accompanying the appreciation and creation of Ink art in Mainland China has thus been stated with an often extremely nationalistic attitude. When Ink art belongs to art practices seen as ‘contemporary’ and therefore not ‘traditional’ in Mainland China, it is generally ignored by official, state-sponsored institutions. Both ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ Ink art practices also coexist in Hong Kong, but even the traditional is generally defended without recourse to the kind of excessive cultural nationalism prevalent in the Mainland (even though there is always the possibility for Hong Kong nativist conservatives to exhibit in China, where they can rely on the official promotion of their art). Hong Kong public and private art institutions have also defended Ink art, thus redefining its function and boundaries. The role of M+ and the museums of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department have been instrumental in the promotion and expansion of the field of Ink art.

This article aims to show how different artists propose an approach to their own family tree and, at the same time, examine new family relationships currently being established in China. These creators explore various issues such as maternity, paternity, and agreements and disagreements between grandparents, parents and children. Other realities that are reflected in their works are the processes of adoption, and how the one-child policy – that began in the 1970s – has affected and currently affects families and Chinese society.

Artists such as Song Dong, He Chengyao, Xing Danwen, Lin Tianmiao, Ma Qiusha, He Chongyue and O Zhang and Shen Yuan deal with their own genealogy in their artworks, linking the individual and the collective, the personal and the social. Their art becomes a tool to focus on different problems that remain in the domestic and intimate sphere. Here, the transition from private to public becomes a political act. The objective is to question, to create spaces for debate and reflection.

In this article, selected works by four Chinese artists who emerged towards the end of the twentieth century are examined. The works have in common the motif of the headless woman. This motif is explored within the historical timeframe in which they have lived, trained, emerged as professional artists and produced these works; investigated in relation to the artists’ contact with the work of European and American artists using the same motif; considered in the context of the lives of women in the PRC following the end of the Cultural Revolution, and in relation to ideas about individualism and collectivism (and particularly the move from one to the other) in China.

This article discusses the characteristics and background of the phenomenon of self-organized collectives formed by the younger generation of Chinese artists after the year 2000. First, this article traces the origin of the term ‘self-organization’ in the context of contemporary Chinese art. Second, four categories – art communities, art groups, independent projects and autonomous institutions – are employed to analyse these self-organizational practices. The article then offers specific examples of these self-organizational practices under various different conditions, demonstrating that the strategic responses and aims of self-organizations vary with their contexts. Lastly, the article demonstrates that these self-organizations differ fundamentally from the collective practices of the previous generation of artists, and that the cause of this change was the establishment and consolidation of an institutionalized contemporary Chinese art scene. From this angle, the self-organizational practices of young artists today constitute a rethinking of, and critique against, this new institutionalized system.

Recent political, economic and cultural developments have changed people’s lives in China. Individuals now question themselves and present a challenge for each other. They are called upon as individuals and subjects to consider how they might determine and orient themselves within possible communities. The present calls for a reorientation toward tradition which is, however, running the risk of disappearing. Questions about ethical and moral positions, about values and ideals, are now a matter of great urgency within the context of a consumer culture offering seemingly unlimited possibilities. The contemporary art scene in China addresses this situation in manifold ways and often places the human body as a site for debate and negotiation at the centre of experiments and exhibitions. This article, an exchange of ideas between Eva Lüdi Kong and Jörg Huber, closely examines the current situation in China and its reflection in art. Referring to various concrete examples, Jörg Huber asks how these artworks approach the ‘body as a theme’. His reflections also consider the situation ‘in the West’, where the question of the body and subjectification (biopolitics, self-care, forms of life, psychopower, etc.) is highly topical (Foucault, Agamben, Buter, etc.). Eva Lüdi Kong responds to these reflections by drawing on Chinese philosophy and cultural, situating them in relation to a larger context (the Confucian cultivation of the self) as well as shedding light on important terms and concepts.

Installationskunst in China. Transkulturelle Reflexionsräume einer Genealogie des Performativen/Installation art in China. Transcultural spaces reflecting a genealogy of the performative, Series: Image, Vol. 45, Birgit Hopfener (2013) Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, 325 pp., incl. 107 black/white illustrations, ISBN 978-3-8376-2201-0, p/bk, €36.80

The Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theatre, Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan (Eds) (2013) Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, 278 pp., ISBN: 9783837623093, p/bk, €24.80

’Avant-Garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979–1989, Paul Gladston (2013) Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 194 pp., ISBN 9781841507156, p/bk, £25.00