China China China!!! Chinese Contemporary Art Beyond the Global Market
Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
CHINA China China!!! is as engaging for its commentary on dramatic changes within the visual arts in this vast country as for the actual objects on show. Until nine years ago, for instance, the use of video by artists – one of the most popular art forms in the West – was forbidden or just not shown. As attitudes began to loosen, video slowly began to emerge – although without the authorities necessarily condoning it. Now, as in many other countries, video is one of the preferred art forms by artists wanting to free themselves from the past in order to deal with the here and now. Videos make up a large part of China China China!!!
Setting the background to the current show, one installation shows videos documenting eight exhibitions that attempted to break out of rigid government control. In 2000, in the MSG space in Beijing, students graduating from the National Art Academy and the Central Academy of Fine Arts presented experimental and mixed media work. With its topsy-turvy combination of temporary theatre, art in space, performance, installation and media-related practice, it placed the artist at the centre of the work with its autobiographical approach mixing the personal and the political – a far cry from the conventional, more distanced concerns of Chinese art.
Not to be out done, another exhibition, entitled F**k Off, was equally revolutionary within the Chinese context. With no Mandarin translation directly equivalent to the expletive, the emotive phrase translates roughly as “non-collaborative attitudes”. The show, notable for its emphasis on the individual artwork, was closed by the authorities within a day. Some radical exhibitions were shut by cutting off the electricity, while others were condemned after being classified by the mystifying description “unstable”.
Within the past three years, art has been one of the great boom industries in the country, fostered by the growth of a wealthy middle class and by Western dealers seeing an untapped market. The credit crunch has brought this seemingly unstoppable growth to a grinding halt – a situation exemplified in Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s sculpture The Angel, a life-sized figure with wings resembling those of a plucked chicken, lying dead on the floor. Seen as a response to the current world economic crisis the, emotive piece captures the sense of fallen markets. It can also be seen as a representation of the collapse of the ideal society.
Other artist’s in China China China!!! look more directly at the history of the country. Zhao Liang’s video, Return to the Border, details the edgy relationship between China and its neighbour, North Korea. Set in Zhao Liang’s hometown of Dandong on the border, the video discusses the artist’s youthful ideals inspired by the communist state and the disillusionment of today.
Space, either inter-galactic or physical, is the theme of Wu Ersham’s installation Nomadic Plan in Outer Space. A dominating giant moon, made up of hundreds of electric lights, casts its brilliance on sculptures that morph a wolf and a doe and the outfits of space explorers and traditional soldiers’ uniform. It outlines parallels between the Mongolian conquest, as exemplified by Genghis Khan, and the space explorers of today. Drawing on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey, the work brings together the mighty if terrifying conquests of Genghis Khan, the spiritual dimensions of Eastern Buddhism and China’s desire to compete in space.
At a time when China, like most other countries, is suffering severe recession, China China China!!! offers an intelligent and investigative look at art in this complex and contradictory country.
Emmanuel Cooper
China China China!!! continues until May 3. A well-illustrated catalogue gives a useful context for the work.
