Contemporary Chinese photography commands our attention

By Susana Iturrioz

The first stage of the journey undertaken by “Zhù Yì! (1) Chinese Contemporary Photography” concluded recently after its debut at the Centro-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo ARTIUM in Álava (Basque Country). In the middle of February next year it will arrive at Palau de la Virreina, a baroque palace in Barcelona’s La Rambla. Thus, six months after this project debuted - until now the most extensive exhibit of contemporary Chinese photography in Spain - it is a great pleasure to be able to say that this “attention” getter has been very well received. 

This exhibition is built around the work of a large group of young Chinese photographers who carry out their work at the present time, a key moment for this country from a political, economic and social standpoint.

They are 33 artists (2) born since 1960, who live and work in China, although in the last few years some of them have also spent extended periods overseas. They represent a generation of creators in which the veterans, educated under the influence of the Cultural Revolution, thus growing up in an environment with tremendous cultural, economic and social restrictions, converge with promising newcomers, raised in an environment ideologically more open and predisposed to contemporary art, and who, as a result, think more globally.

Just as in the economic and social arena, the Maoist era was decisive in the evolution of Chinese art until now. Its prohibition against any artistic form that did not comply with the Party’s propaganda requirements, resulted in a void which only started being filled after the death of Mao Zedong, and, more specifically after the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, who with his open politics recognized art as a means of showing the country’s modernization and thereby continuing its economic development.

In ‘79 movements stimulated by experimental artists started cropping up, but photography still lacked recognition as an art form and it was only considered to have documentary or publicity value.

The events in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989, when students were brutally silenced by the government while they demanded freedom of the press and the right to an open dialogue with entities in power, caused a shift in the cultural development of the country. Strong repression was reinstated provoking a reaction amongst intellectuals, students and artists. Thus, starting in the 90’s so-called Chinese Experimental Photography arose influenced in part by the social transformation of the country, and a change in the very identity of the artists, resulting from the evolution of their conceptual art and other artistic disciplines new to some of them, such as performance art and installation.

We must also keep in mind the importance for experimental photography of the artists established in Beijing’s East Village between 1993 and 1994. They began collaborating on various art projects, thus creating an intimate alliance between performance creators and photographers, using each other as models, audiences, and inspiration.

By the end of the 90’s the work of the new generation of artists revealed international influences: access to the Internet, western contemporary art publications, the introduction of the use of video, digital photography and high-quality printing methods… so that a large number of creators trained in traditional painting and sculpture, began taking an interest in photography as the ideal means of expressing the changes taking place around them.  Furthermore, many performance artists started systematically using this medium to document their work, and, in turn, many professional photographers started developing a more intellectual creative tendency, such as in the case of Rong Rong and Bay Yiluo.

All of the artists selected for this show coincide in their subject matter or reiterate ideas under aesthetic forms which acquire a character of their own at the hands of each one of them. The work has been divided into five areas in accordance with its theme:  (a) history immemorial, (b) identity, (c) man in his environment, (d) economic development and nostalgia for nature, and lastly, (e) the new consumer society; five main issues which are further compartmentalized into separate sections providing order to the show’s ensemble, although the richness of many of the photographs would allow them to fit into many different categories.

The recollection of their immemorial history has a great presence in their photographs, and we notice their interest in showing symbolic places such as the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City… such as Miao Xiaochun does in ‘The Great Wall Two Thousand Years Ago ‘and Hong Lei with the symbolic Forbidden City in ‘Autumn in the Forbidden City ‘. They turn to the iconography of traditional painting, to its poetry, its rituals, and they include them in their works, like Zheng Yicheng in ‘Dancer’ and Chen Qiuling in ‘River, River ‘. Furthermore, on occasion the very formats of the works refer us to traditional painting and more specifically to the Scrolls, so much to the liking of Miao Xioachun, Shao Yinong & Mu Chen and Chen Qiulin. The memory of recent history is seen in the images taken by Shao Yinong & Mu Chen, in the series,  ‘ The Assembly Hall ‘, in which they revisit places where Party assemblies were held, and discover abandoned spaces that have mainly become warehouses and stables. Melancholy caused by the passage of time focuses its attention on more personal themes: accumulated memories from an important part of one’s life as in the work created by Hong Hao, ‘ 10 Years Chinese Contemporary ‘; longing for family living many kilometers away which inspired Zhang Huan to create the series, ‘ Foam ‘; the melancholy of seeing a photo of Sheng Qi’s family when he was little, placed in the unmistakable support of his mutilated hand in  ‘ Family Photo ‘.

The constant search for identity is embodied in the artists’ obvious need to photograph themselves as can be seen in Zhang Huan’s ‘1/2 Text ‘, and in Zhu Ming’s case in  ‘ May 8 ‘, photographed by Ma Liuming at the end of his performance, when he succeeds in getting out of a plastic bubble.  There is also the psychological self-portrait of the artist, Liang Yuanwei, in the series, ‘ Don´t Forget You Say You Love Me ‘, a set of photographs, and although not all of them are of the artist’s face, the portraits of the other women are a faithful reflection of her own sentiments and can also be considered self-portraits of her interior.

Gender issues with their multiple implications are approached under different formats and frameworks in that process of exploration, where artists, investigating the configuration of their own identities, once again appear in the photographs, baring their bodies and souls, as in the case of Chen Lingyang in the series, ‘ Twelve Flower Months ‘. Cang Xin approaches the theme of identity in a much more ironic and whimsical way in his series, ‘ Identity Exchange ‘, upon dressing himself in the same clothing as the people he is photographed with, making them pose next to him in their underwear.

Capturing real, critical and suggestive context, we can see images of city life, where not everything is beautiful, where the wealth and welfare of some live alongside the poverty and misery of many others. The artists seek reflection as Yang Fudong does in the series, ‘ The First Intellectual ‘, and Wang Qingsong in ‘ Follow Me ‘ and in the triptych, ‘ Past, Present and Future ‘ with living gold statues, glimpsing a successful future; the girls of Weng Peijun, look at the horizon, at tomorrow… in summary, looking at what they are, what they do not like, and their desires and concerns.

The rapid transformation of the cities carries with it the dizzying change in habits, and the loss of the notion of what the city was like just a decade ago, and this is the theme addressed by Zhang Dali and Liu Jin, using spaces in demolition as inspiration for their photographs, while Xu Zhen, in his work with a decisively interrogative title, ???????????, which he names with that succession of question marks, photographs the dizzying construction of skyscrapers.

On occasion this urban pressure leads them to communicate with nature through their photographs, by reproducing idyllic landscapes. This is Huang Yan’s case when in the series, ‘ Face ‘, he photographs his face on which he has painted traditional Chinese-style motifs which represent the four seasons. The images remind us that there exists a world other than the one made of iron, concrete and glass, metaphors for capitalism. Meanwhile, Zheng Yicheng in the series, ‘Respiration‘, warns us of an artificial future in which humanity and nature mutate and are transformed into metal and plastic monsters.

The allusions to the powerful world of advertising which in the Orient results in a particular type of urban landscape, saturated in neon and billboards, along with the proliferation of the almost-sacred multinational icons like Coca-Cola and McDonald´s, also coincide. Miao Xiaochun and Wang Qingsong reproduce them brilliantly in photographs like ‘Enjoy and Commercial War ‘, respectively. In this type of society money is indispensable in achieving advertised happiness, and that is why Hong Hao, Bai Yiluo and Wang Jin devote some of their works to it.

Thus, we arrive at this inevitable consumer society in which many products, which were unknown until recently, have become necessary glamour icons as Miao Xiaochun demonstrates in  ‘Image ‘, Wang Qingsong in  ‘ Buddha I ‘ and Li Wei in ‘ Falls Through the Car ‘. They are especially concerned with youth and Yang Yong, for example, in the series, ‘ Cruel Daily of Youth or Fancy in Tunnel ‘, gathers images of girls who feel lost despite having attained the desired material objectives, since they feel the lack of something, making them immensely unhappy. It is possible to maintain a traditional Chinese lifestyle and at the same time follow western fashion, but the lack of internal development and the speed imposed by this world of consumption does not make it easy.

The attraction of this exhibition is rooted in the desire to show the level of artistry along with the unquestionable sociological contribution of the images this group of artists offers us. In their tireless analysis of the world which surrounds them they address different types of issues in an attempt to reflect what is occurring in China at the beginning of the XXI Century.

 “Zhù Yì! Chinese Contemporary Photography” has gained the widespread recognition of the press, art experts, the general public… which is very exciting and flattering, especially since the initiation of this project was complex. It started with the idea of an exhibition which fascinated me, and, as curator, I worked on it willingly and enthusiastically; however, continued attempts to show it in different institutions appeared to only provoke indifference. Fortunately, ARTIUM in Álava (www.artium.org) and later thanks to the exhibition’s coproduction, the Palau de la Virreina (www.bcn.es/virreinaexposicions), were successful in unveiling this project. They had the ability to see what was already well demonstrated: the artistic quality of contemporary Chinese art and in this case, its photography, and as with ‘ Zhù Yì! ‘, they command our “attention.”

Susana Iturrioz: Psychologist and Art Historian; Doctoral Candidate - ” The Influence of Japanese Art in the Basque Country.” Curator of Contemporary Art specializing in the Far East; Artistic Advisor. 

 

This essay was published by Wynwood. The Art Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 2, October 2007

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(1) Word taken from Mandarin Chinese that most literally means: “watch out.”

(2) Artists participating in this show: BAI Yiluo, CANG Xin, CUI Xiuwen, CHEN Lingyang, CHEN Qiulin, HE Yunchang, HONG Hao, HONG Lei, HUANG Yan, LI Wei, LIANG Yuanwei, LIN Tianmiao, LIU Jin, MA Liuming, MIAO Xiaochun, RONG Rong, SHAO Yinong & MU Chen, SHENG Qi, SHI Guorui, WANG Jin, WANG Qingsong, WENG Peijun, WU Gaozhong, XU Heng, XU Zhen, YANG Fudong, YANG Yong, YANG Zhenzhong, ZENG Yicheng, ZHANG Dali, ZHANG Huan, ZHAO Bandi y ZHU Ming.