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- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2016
Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art - Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2016
Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2016
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‘Chineseness’ in contemporary art discourse and practice: Negotiating multiple agencies, localities and vocalities
More LessAbstractThis editorial contextualizes the theme of 'Chineseness' in contemporary art discourse and practice and explains how the eight (peer reviewed) scholarly articles, two artist contributions and one exhibition review respond to various constructions of ‘Chineseness’ explored in connection with competing, conflicting or supplementing agencies, localities and vocalities in the field of art. Methodologically, the pluralist approaches are motivated in light of the global turn in art history and related disciplines that have fostered a critical, epistemologically conscious transcultural approach in recent years. The issue’s insightful contributions present the result of selected and revised proceedings of the international symposium (In) direct speech. ‘Chineseness’ in contemporary art discourse and practice. Art market, curatorial practices and creative processes that took place at Lisbon University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2015 and discussed transculturality in connection with contemporary Chinese art. Taking together, the case studies address three overlapping aspects of ‘Chineseness’ as a) constituted in curatorial practices and institutional politics of display, b) created by individual artists and their invention or negotiation of Chinese (premodern) ‘traditions’, and c) a methodological challenge for art history given underlying, often invisible epistemological conditions and confinements.
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Is Chineseness too big for China? Chineseness in negotiation in minoritarian practices of Organhaus art space
By Mi YouAbstractThis article aims to bring to light the heterogeneity and nomadic character of ‘Chineseness’ by mapping the curatorial practice of the Chongqing-based art space Organhaus. Their curatorial projects involving Xinjiang and Iran shall be examined through the lens of ‘minoritarian practice’, which at the same time affords a tool for unpacking the notion of Chineseness as related to empire, state and in an inter-Asian context. It shall be argued that it is through minoritarian practices that negotiation and actualization of Chineseness emerge.
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The body of the archive: Chineseness at the Venice Biennale (1993–2005)
More LessAbstractThis article examines the function of the Venice Biennale as an ‘archive’ for documenting diasporic Chineseness: establishing a body of work by the Zhongguo ren gongtong ti ‘community of Chinese’ during the period of the 1990s to the mid-2000s when Chinese states were first included in the Biennale roster. The difference between cultural and national identity can be explored through the statist distinctions of the island-nation of Taiwan, the special administrative region of Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China represented at the exposition. The artists selected for the case studies of this article, Lee Ming-sheng, Lin Shu-min, Wu Mali, Stanley Wong, Ho Siu Kee, Zhang Huan and Cai Guo-qiang, have adopted the conceptual medium that showcases the body as the subject and/or object of the work of art – the medium contributes to the understanding of the human subject that Chineseness ultimately represents. The Biennale becomes a theoretical frame for contextualizing these representative works, contributing to a historiographic perspective for examining their inaugural moment. Ultimately, the exposition functions as an empirical stage for the analysis of the emergence of Chineseness in the global context for contemporary art.
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Frankenstein’s monster as translation: Articulations of artistic creativity, individuality and freedom of expression
More LessAbstractThis article presents an interpretation of conceptual artist Qiu Zhen’s photographic work Me and My Bride: Satan’s Wedding No. 5 (2008) within the theoretical framework of Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space. Because of its hybrid status and the work’s subtle likeness to certain visual elements related with the story of Frankenstein the interpretation is closely connected to that narrative. More specifically, the article uses this particular literary-photographical and cross-cultural panorama to explore artistic creativity, individuality and freedom of expression as articulated in this conceptual and postmodern work that was produced in the wake of preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games. The article further explores how something foreign like Frankenstein may engage with ‘Chineseness’ and how ‘Chineseness’ may be emphasized through the usage of something foreign. Thus this article approaches the concept of ‘Chineseness’ as a wearer of a foreign coat, negotiating the hybrid as a highly performative but softly speaking political product on the Chinese art scene.
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Analysing works of Cai Guo-Qiang in relation to ancient Chinese concepts
By Shiyan LiAbstractIn the 1990s, Cai Guo-Qiang uses one of the most famous Chinese inventions, gunpowder, to realize his Projects for Extraterrestrials, which claim to establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials. Behind his projects that seem to question the infinity of the sky lurks a scarred feeling that results from a historical wound that afflicted the Chinese people for two centuries. For Cai Guo-Qiang, a dialogue with the West is impossible because the two worlds are not on an equal level. In his work using gunpowder, we can notice a change from form to no-form. The moment of the explosion not only reminds us about a simple breath – the primordial breath Qi (元氣 yuanqi) – but also evokes Laozi’s famous thought: The Great Image Has No Form (大象無形 daxiang wuxing). It is through this emptiness, this simple Qi, that Cai Guo-Qiang brushes aside the asymmetric relationship between the West and the Far East. He succeeds in directing the impossible dialogue to a cosmic dimension that assures an equality in the emptiness (空 kong, 玄 xuan) of Dao. Since living and working in the United States, Cai Guo-Qiang has continued exploring this approach. Discovering the shape of the mushroom cloud allowed him to sketch the small clouds working in the register of flatness (淡 dan) that binds the polluted Qi (邪氣 xieqi) – mushroom cloud and the upright Qi (正氣 zhengqi) – the Basidiomycota mushroom. Since these disjunctions are at the same time conceived as being opposed and complementary, they become exchangeable. In the works that followed, the artist has similarly engaged with a set of reversals inspired by history, geography and world economy. By consequence, he manages to overcome the impossible dialogue with the West, when implying the use of flexibility and the resting on the strength of opposite to explore its dynamics (以柔克剛 yirou kegang). Thus, Cai Guo-Qiang’s artistic approach that fits into the international contemporary art scene indeed also follows an old trail of ancient Chinese concepts.
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Between a rock and a tall pine: The ‘grotesque’ as an expression of irony and identity crisis in Chinese art
More LessAbstractI would like to suggest that the genre of the ‘grotesque’ represents a recurrent strategy in the way Chinese artists deal with major changes in the political, social and economic arenas. This article will discuss resonances between the contemporary and the historic, as corresponding epochals of turbulent times, as social commentary, and as a critique of art. The use of the term ‘grotesque’ refers to such strategies employed by artists that have stepped out of the zone of established conventions and acceptability, through exaggeration, distortion and sometimes visceral shock, with irony as a salient quality, by challenging convention and the framework of the time. We will draw on the ‘Eccentrics’ of the Ming dynasty, who dealt with disillusionment using grotesque caricatures of traditionally idealized subjects. The main example is Chen Hongshou (1598–1652), and discussion will be supported by art criticisms of distinguished Chinese art historians James Cahill and Andrew Plak. For the contemporary period, we will discuss grotesque strategies based on modernist tactics by way of creative destruction, to circumvent, ameliorate and negotiate between the past and the present. The grotesque is once again predicated upon exaggerated and expressionistic styles as well as graphic and gratuitous depictions of violence. I will be discussing Qiu Zhijie’s Copying the Orchid Pavilion Preface a Thousand Times (1986–1997) and Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog (2013).
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The Taiwanese artist Mei Dean-E and the concept of Chineseness
More LessAbstractThe artist Mei Dean-E (born in 1954) constantly questions the identity of Taiwan and especially of its Chinese component. In an era of de-Sinicization of Taiwan, to which Chineseness does this second-generation mainlander refer? Mei Dean-E, a Dada and Pop Art artist, challenging mental habits through a deconstruction of signs and symbols, gives multi-layered answers. I will argue that he never gives up his emotional relationship to Chinese culture and reinvents a form of Chineseness which is much more related with personal feelings than with official slogans or international opinions.
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Border praxis: Negotiating and performing ‘Hong Kongeseness’ and ‘Taiwaneseness’ in contemporary, political ‘Chinese’ art practices
More LessAbstractThis article draws from an AHRC-funded research project on the topic of Chinese borders in contemporary art practices, entitled Culture, Capital and Communication: Visualizing Borders in the 21st Century (CCC:VCB). The research is contextualized in the article in relation to the concept of ‘Chinese-ness’ in Contemporary Art Discourse and Practice, as addressed in the corresponding conference at the University of Lisbon – http://chineseness.fba.ul.pt. The physical and political borders that demarcate the straits of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are signifiers of the identity struggles that they contain. Art practices that address issues of Hong Kong-ese-ness and Taiwanese-ness in relation to the limitations of Chinese borders for defining their sovereign political and socio-historical identities, can, therefore, be considered as border art. Often, such explorations of identity are counter-posed with the presence of China and Chinese-ness as a cultural, economic and political hegemonic force, and ideological barrier. Artists who examine Chinese borders within their work tend to interrogate, represent and, often, contest or counter, the perceived political and cultural restrictions imposed by the Mainland. This article considers socially engaged artistic practices – including art spaces and events – encountered during the research laboratories, summative conference and site visits, which work on micro levels to both interrogate and counter the influence of Mainland China through instigating social undercurrents. I suggest that the combination of politicized theorizing and physically demonstrative or precarious art activities create a form of artistic praxis that works to expose and, in turn, traverse the limitations of border presence or absence across the Chinese straits.
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‘Chineseness’: The work of Lo Yuen-yi in memory of the women of nüshu
More LessAbstractOne of the difficulties facing art historians and curators when approaching recently produced artworks is how to interpret such works within the dominant narrative of art history and its traditional axis of historical time and geographical place. Often such works are interpreted as ‘global’ and effectively reduced to a western interpretation of the artworks. While this is a helpful approach for many artists and artworks, it can be less helpful to the interpretation of works that seek to address local issues that the ‘global’ approach might miss. Moreover, the criteria of the ‘global’ might exclude such works from being perceived as ‘contemporary art’. The problem today is acute when dealing with artworks in East Asia, especially China, because so many works have been accepted as ‘global’ only occasionally mentioning that they are ‘Chinese’. Hence the uneasy term ‘Contemporary Chinese art’ and the debate between its interpretation as ‘global’ and/or ‘Chinese’. If the latter perspective is applied, some form of ‘Chineseness’ will explicitly or implicitly be applied. This article takes the ‘local’ perspective in order to interpret a group of works by the Hong Kong/Macau artist Lo Yuen-yi in memory of the rural women who practised nüshu (women’s writing) through chants, embroidery and writing in Hunan province, China. In so doing, Lo can position herself within an alternative narrative of female literate and artistic ancestral narrative from which she is not excluded as a Chinese female artist. The article argues that the work cannot be fully understood from the ‘global’ perspective and thus requires a perspective that would necessarily adopt a strategic concept of ‘Chineseness’.
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Research praxis in drawing: The visible and the invisible ‘Chineseness’ – an exploration through Chinese language and the matriarchal writing script, nüshu
By Yuen-Yi LoAbstractDrawing is the core of my practice. While drawing may have appeared ‘secondary’ in the western fine arts tradition, its ‘marginal’ status intrigues me. To draw through appropriating some gendered Chinese characters and a dying ‘secret’ matriarchal script nüshu, my practice is deliberate and exploratory. Working with the symbolic Chinese signs into undefined graphs and representations, I have attempted to break away from the original registrations; employing nüshu, a set of inventive writing script practiced by some women as opposed to the official language, I have examined possibilities of articulating outside the dominant culture and language of man. My ‘Chineseness’ may manifestly be ‘visible’, its ‘invisibility’ yet lies beyond the visible. It is through acts of repeated drawing and its extended manifestations that the body of work is evolving and developing. My exploration through language has led me realize that drawing, being a practice, also acts as a strategy to ‘uncover’ something that are ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’.
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SPSL/A–Y (revised)
More LessAbstract97 Proofs – After Words – Altar Notes – Art Vapours – Awards – Chorus / Mobile Chorus – Citius, Altius – DIY Biennale/Ballroom/Live – Faster, Higher – FCHKUK – Five/Six Women – Golden (Ballroom/Hour/Lessons/Notes/Songs/Vistas/Years) – Lean To – Lightness – Making Ways – Mobile Ballroom – Mobile Chorus – Monumental Bargain – NEWS/REEL – RoCH Fan / RoCH Fans & Legends / Trailers / Trilogies – Witness
SPSL / A to Y (revised) offers a partial and a-chronological index of my practice across moving image, installation, performance and text over some twenty years – less a narrative of progression or arrival, than one of sometimes awkward returns. In relation to the notion of (In)Direct Speech, A – Y might also be seen as a series of momentary tactics that speak directly and indirectly to ideas and contradictions of ‘Chineseness’.
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Ai Weiwei’s exhibition On the Table 2014/2015 in Barcelona: A review in light of its local media reception
More LessAbstractAi Weiwei is one of the artists with greater relevance outside China. In Spain, he is one of the Chinese artists to have attained more visibility with the media and art centres, as exemplified by the first exhibition Resistencia y tradición/Resistance and Tradition at the Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre of Seville (2013), and with On the Table: Ai Weiwei at the Palau the la Virreina in Barcelona (2014–2015). It is worth noting that both exhibitions by Ai Weiwei have become the most visited in the history of the aforementioned institutions. With the aim to expand on the reception of the prolific and heterogeneous trajectory of Ai Weiwei in Spain, I will analyse the exhibition’s discourse of On the Table and its impact on the local and national media. The article will take into account the political aims of the Palau de la Virreina’s director in relating Ai Weiwei’s public persona with the political message that the Catalan institutions wished to convey in connection with the right to self-determination for Catalonia and the terms of their relationship with the Spanish state. The Palau de la Virreina opted for an artist who symbolizes – in the western media – the fight for democracy and freedom of speech. In order to delve deeper into such ideas, I will focus on the controversies and expectations that Ai Weiwei generates as an artist, as well as his role as a political activist.
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Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Christine Vial Kayser and David CarrierAbstractTHE ARTIST AS ACTIVIST AS ARTIST: AI WEIWEI AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON, 19 SEPTEMBER–13 DECEMBER 2015
WANG DONGLING: NEW WORKS, CHAMBERS FINE ART, NEW YORK, 12 SEPTEMBER–24 OCTOBER 2015
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