Totemic geometric structures. Eldritch sounds. Shifting moods. Stepping into this exhibition at Berlin’s Esther Schipper Gallery initially feels like skipping a dimension or two and arriving in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But whereas Kubrick’s black monolith challenges the viewer’s scrutiny, Bulloch’s twisting, colorful stacks invite the mind to play.

I gravitate towards a far corner, beside five stacked modules, centered before a wall of LED lights flickering on and off. How natural, how easy it is, for the eye to see in the place of algorithmic automations and calculated angles, the towering figure of a feminine deity, lit by a sky of stars.

Animal Mineral Vegetable is Angela Bulloch’s 13th exhibition with Esther Schipper, and features Bulloch’s newest iteration of her signature ‘Stack’ sculptures and ‘Night Sky’ installations, with the addition of a wall painting and digital animation.

Angela Bulloch (photo (c) Andrea Rossetti 2021)

The sculptures, Pentagon Totems — composed of ‘modules’: dodecahedrons in block color, mostly stacked but sometimes singular — mark points on the exhibition floor that wind a path between, choreographed to a 15-minute light and sound display, including a six minute video projected onto the back wall.

‘I started with the model of the space’, Angela says via video-call, ‘I’m interested in measuring the world with myself —comparing space to the body. The room is an industrial type of space, not a domestic one, and it’s also really quite large,so I’ve done certain architectural interventions.’

The room Angela calls me from seems to be a chintzy London hotel, a world away from the spatial aesthetic here in Berlin, where Bulloch has lived since 1999.

‘For example, I have inserted freestanding night-sky pillars, and hidden a doorway and two pillars in this space inside much bigger ones. In the show, there are both acts of erasure and architectural gestures.’

Perhaps the show’s most obvious architectural gesture is the huge geometric wall painting, which spans across one wall and a corner. Tightly overlapping shapes — as if made by a spirograph ruler — stretch on either side like the nucleus of the big bang or as if the shapes splay out at increasing, or decreasing, speeds. Space and time bend in Bulloch’s virtual reality, and on the video projected onto the parallel wall, the universe grinds to a halt, at warp speed.

‘I wanted to make a very dramatic architectural scale wall painting, so that when it would appear in the video, you would get a reference of the size of it and the position of it, so that it locates you in the room’.

The video feels familiar; COVID-19 popularized the use of uncanny virtual exhibition software. This too is a digital mimesis of the ‘real experience’, only, with the addition of a rotating polyhedron with a face on it, a mottled cat and one other unexpectedly charming character.

‘The melancholy cauliflower is made from a cast of a cauliflower and a pipe, and it’s actually a reference within my own oeuvre. I made the original ones in the 80s when I was still a student, then in 2017, I made a revisited edition. So this reference to earlier work is like a step back in time’. 

Watching the video for the first time, I latched onto this floating cauliflower like an irreverent talisman: an assurance that lurking at the heart of this mathematical and calculated exhibition, was a kind of approachable playfulness.

‘I’m working a lot with sound, light, geometric or abstract shapes, the universe, different images of somewhere very far away, and these topics, those different elements of my language, are kind of alienating, cool and detached. I wanted to add a human element or something that was, you know, a bit quirkier, that people can identify with within the film. I kind of like to think of it as a friend of mine.’ 

I have already noted a precision to Angela’s speech; a restrained use of adjectives; a sparse use of metaphor. Angela describes herself as ‘visually organized’, but there is a linguistic neatness too. Talking about this old friend, something softens.

‘The reason why it’s called “melancholy flower” is because its color is melon yellow and it’s a cauliflower — a linguistic slippage.’

The cauliflower is also exceptional in the exhibition for its organic, nebulous shape. I ask Angela to explain her attraction towards geometric shapes.

‘I’ve chosen a five-sided form in all of the pieces in all of the standing sculptures, except for one and that one’s called ‘Twisted Sister’. There’s a series of rhombus modules and I rearranged the order of them, and in that ‘Twisted Sister’ one, I turned one or two of them upside down. But you’d need to know the other works, to be able to realize that. So, it’s kind of like a piece of twisted language that you could only notice if you remember how they look, as there’s only one of them in the show.’

I run my mind’s eye over the edges of each stack, counting, trying to recall ‘Twisted Sister’ and crack the geometric puzzle Angela has set. Walking about a room with totems and stars, I had expected to be told to suspend intellect and analysis, but the more I talk to Angela the more I feel like the show is an exercise in critical thinking, both for the artist, and the viewer.

‘I’ve mainly worked with rhombus shapes, and I wanted to fill the gap differently. There was a part of my brain that wanted to see a different shape. You know, it was really like a fulfillment, a wish.’

She continues, ‘also, you know, the sculptures there, some of them are made with regular pentagon shapes, and some are much more irregular. And the way it looks as you walk around changes because of the way they’re put together — those sculptures look very different from different angles. So the sculptures are really a kind of provocation to walk around and look at them.’

The light display that Angela has designed enhances this phenomena, as shadows scatter over one face to another.

‘It’s a feast for the mind because their appearance changes, so you’re constantly doing adjustments with your eyes. Your eyes are trying to find the similarities, the differences, the irregularities. It’s like scratching an itchy place in the mind.’ 

Angela’s comment about the ‘itchy place in the mind’ jogs my memory of what the exhibition reminds me of. ‘Sensory rooms’, often filled with sound-scapes and calming coloured light displays, are often used to help those with learning difficulties or sensory impairments engage with stimuli and regulate their sensory processing. Animal vegetable mineral is also a kind of therapeutic space; a provocation to slow down and to concentrate — a valuable practice, when technology is eroding our attention-spans.

This concept of sensory play is not only the product of the show, but a fundamental component of the process of making it. In the video, besides the floating polyhedron and cauliflower, is a small, sparkling dark object. Angela speaks animatedly about the process behind creating it:

‘In the summer, I was invited to a glassworks. I put a very hot piece of glass flat on the metal table and then made a kind of dent in it with the end of a metal thing, and I put a small piece of a peanut onto that very hot glass and then put another big blob of hot molten glass on top.’ 

Strange, is this a traditional method?

‘No, it was a very experimental thing to do. I tried it with popcorn, potato, peanuts, different things’

The result?

‘The oil in the peanut burns, blackening the glass with a strange, rainbow, gray anthracite texture, that’s shot through with rainbow-like newton’s rings.’ 

I imagine Angela like a scientist in a laboratory, hyper focused and exacting. Watching the video, with its uncanny animation style, I had no idea the objects were born from real life, or from such a traditional art practice like glass-blowing.

Reading about Angela before the interview, I came across one image that surprised me. During 2010’s Art Basel, Esther Schipper suspended one Night Sky above the altar of a cathedral, the Basel Münster. It’s odd to see a panel of white, electric lights in such a traditional and sacred space, but then, isn’t the Romanesque and Gothic architecture, the stained glass, achieving what the installation does; the human approximation of the divine, the heavenly?

‘I also chose to make one in the rotunda ceiling of the Frank Lloyd Wright building in the Guggenheim. I was invited for an exhibition and I chose to do it in that “church”. It was a many-sided form, and I also I added some frameworks and some kind of architecture to the Ceiling Rotunda so that it was more justified and made parallels to the Parthenon.’

Situated in temples, these installations gesture towards a heightened consciousness. The Night Sky series are an example of technology simulating a reality beyond our reach — a view of the constellations we could literally never see from earth. As corporations like Facebook thrive off toxicity and polarization, it is easy to forget that the creation of the world wide web was in part catalyzed by LSD trips into the ‘expanded consciousness’. These control-panels of constellations seem to me like a reminder of what ‘virtual reality’ can be at its best, what it was hoped to be in the 1960s: not something invasive and homogenizing, but expansive and elevating.

What’s next for Angela Bulloch?

‘Well, there’s this show with Esther Schipper, and one in London with the Simon Lee Gallery and a third show which will be in the museum in Nantes in France. These three shows have a selection of sculptures, wall paintings and a film, so they are all linked by their method of making. But they are also quite different: the museum space is a grand, large atrium which will host the biggest night sky that I’ve made so far. That one will be opening in May, and I will be creating another film about navigating through that exhibition. So really, these are a trilogy of exhibitions’ 

I thank Angela for her time, and before I go, pass round the exhibition space a final time. Christina, from Esther Schipper, joins me. ‘Which one is your favorite’, she asks. Looking at the stacks, with their unique irregularities and color combinations, I find myself searching for personalities to project. As Angela mentioned, when you have a room full of standing sculptures, people very easily anthropomorphize them.

I think about what Angela said, right at the beginning of our interview, ‘there’s a kind of edge where something is related to a human or something is not related to the human, and there’s somewhere in between those two different poles, there’s a kind of line. And I’m very interested in either side of that line.’

The room is full of edges and lines, with divergent answers hinged on either side. Am I dealing with something mystic and celestial, or analytic and mathematical? Should I be responding emotionally, or analytically to the room? And are they even edges at all? Or are they angular curves of a woman’s figure? Light falls on different answers at different times.

Animal Vegetable Mineral plays with this line, this glitch between perception and recognition, where meaning gestates and slippages form. It asks the entrant to look, and to look again and twist the room in your mind’s eye like a Rubik’s cube but without solution.

* Images courtesy Angela Bulloch and Esther Schipper. Portrait of Angela Bulloch by Andrea Rossetti. Melancholyflower by Eberle & Eisfeld.

Furthermore, Saha World Music Group has created a medley, titled “Phantasmapolis,” for the Biennial, interweaving music and melodies to present the diversely cultural vision represented by Taiwan and demonstrating a fresh music style that surpasses national borders and time in world music. Betty Apple’s performance combines sound art and performance art to convey a free attitude of the future and a uniquely undefinable presence. Through splendidly diverse world music and a future party that surpasses imagination, the 2021 Asian Art Biennial opens the gate to Phantasmapolis and invites all citizens to enter this city state and step into the future.

Asian Art Biennale 2021 exhibition view

Highlights of Phantasmapolis: The Transnational Curatorial Team X New Visions of Asian Contemporary Art Creation X Multiple Forms of Extended Projects

This edition of the Biennial is curated by a multinational, interdisciplinary curatorial team headed by Takamori Nobuo with Hou Yu-Kuan, Filipino curator Tessa Maria Guazon, Indian curator Anushka Rajendran, and Thai curator Thanavi Chotpradit. Through the transnational collaboration of emerging Asian curators and with 38 artists and art groups from a total of 15 countries, the Biennial unveils a diverse range of creative perspectives and viewpoints that collectively construct an imaginative city state closest to the future.

Exhibition view, 2021 Asian Art Biennale

The exhibition of this year’s Biennial draws inspiration from Taiwanese architect Wang Dahong’s sci-fi novel, Phantasmagoria, based on which the curatorial team proposes the theme of “Phantasmapolis” and utilizes “Asian futurism” and “Asian sci-fi culture” as the main concepts to explore the importance of sci-fi in the Asian context. The exhibition showcases a total of 417 works, among which 28 are newly created and envelopes an interdisciplinary range of creative diversity that crosses various media, including two-dimensional painting, video art, large-scale installation, architectural project and literature.

To respond to this curatorial theme, the exhibition team has specially designed an imagery of “spacecraft gates,” using light, color and arrangement of traffic route to craft a serene, futuristic atmosphere. As every visitor entering the city state walks through the gates of different exhibition gallery rooms, they become the protagonist of Phantasmagoria by Wang Dahong – Prince Dino in his space drift in the year of 3069 – and tour this unknown city state interwoven with reality and fiction.

Taiwanese artist Joyce Ho brings her new project, entitled DOTS, for the Biennial and creates a distinctive landscape in the city state. Observing the pandemic, the artist re-designs the temporary body temperature check point and the real name registration facility in the museum lobby. By converting them into an entry gateway that resembles a “quarantine lobby,” which not only continues the artist’s creative context but also responds to a future world that has seemingly arrived, the artist provides the audience with a unique pseudo experience of traveling abroad and “arriving” in a future city.

Exhibition view, 2021 Asian Art Biennale

Bakudapan is a food study group from Indonesia with members from different fields and disciplines. Their project, The Hunger Tales, explores political relations involving food crises and re-examines social situations from the production to the distribution of food. Bakudapan transforms the process of studying and thinking about resource shortage into a table game, in which players can play roles like farmers, wholesalers or the mayor. By experiencing the process of circulating and plundering food, players are encouraged to further reflect on the suppression and exploitation of food providers in the overall food supply chain. Using “game-based learning,” the project extends the depth of related issues. Players of all ages are welcome to experience this limited edition of a table game from the future world.

In addition to numerous new works from Taiwanese and foreign artists, audiences will also have a chance to see the classic works of established Taiwanese artists, such as Yuyu Yang, Liu Kuo-sung, Wang Dahong and Cheng Mei while glimpsing into the context of sci-fi text in Taiwanese art history through the works of Shu Lea Cheang, Wang Jun-Jieh, Hung Tung-Lu and many more artists.

Exhibition view, 2021 Asian Art Biennale

In addition, the curatorial team also transcends the form of one single exhibition to extend the exhibition concept to various projects, including the “Archive and Research Project,” the “Video Art Project” and the “Forum and Reader Project,” attempting to reflect on the possibility of Asian futurism based on varied specimens of architecture, archives, texts and videos from different Asian regions. Filipino curator Tessa Maria Guazon and Taiwanese researcher I Chun (Nicole) WANG are also invited to respectively tease out and present the archives from the Philippines and Asian sci-fi queer archives. The video art project, “Phantasmapolis: Looking Back into the Future,” is curated by Indian curator Anushka Rajendran and features 15 important video artists from 13 countries in Asia and North America, utilizing video works of divergent style to showcase the future look of Asian contemporary video art.

The “Archive and Research Project” comprises the first-wave event, the “Songs from the Moon Rabbit—The 2021 Asian Art Biennial Forum,” which will run from October 30 to 31 and the bilingual essay collection, entitled The Midnight Sun and the Owl—Reader of 2021 Asian Art Biennial, supported by Winsing Art Foundation to engage visitors in unfolding unlimited imagination of the future through reading. Curated by Thai curator Thanavi Chotpradit, the forum and the essay collection invite the curatorial team, Taiwanese and foreign scholars as well as the participating artists to explore together issues of various aspects, ranging from sci-fi space, ecology and architectural environment, natural phenomena and so on to expand the cultural horizon of Asian diversity.

Connecting with Phantasmapolis: A Satellite Exhibition X A Satellite Event X Promotional Activities to Release the Biennial’s Fresh Energy

To expand the exhibition site of the NTMoFA and cultivate the public’s attention to and vision of the Asian region, the Biennial especially co-organizes a satellite exhibition with the Ministry of Culture’s Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Center and co-organizes a satellite event with the Digital Art Center, Taipei (DAC). As a special topic of the 2021 Asian Art Biennial, both events further extend the discourses about Asia to Mongolia and Central Asia while broadening the aspects of gender and digital technology issues to render the interdisciplinary perspective of the exhibition richer and fuller. The brilliant exhibition and event will be staged in the spring of 2022. During the length of the Biennial, a series of activities will be presented, including film screenings, guided tours, educational outreach programs for parents and children and for cultural accessibility, to expand public participation and demonstrate the new energy of pluralistic inclusiveness and the interdisciplinary practice of this future city state.

Opening of the 2021 Asian Art Biennale

The NTMoFA director Liang Yung-Fei states that, “through the transnational, interdisciplinary curatorial team, the Biennial successfully displays a new curatorial mode based on transnational connection and collaboration. In the post-pandemic era, the Biennial offers audiences new possibilities of imagining the future and unfolds multifaceted thinking of Asian sci-fi and future through its theme, the diversified curatorial perspectives and the participation of artists from different parts of the Asian region. The NTMoFA will continue to organize the Asian Art Biennial to expand the multilayered and interdisciplinary dialogue of culture and art with contemporary art.”

Phantasmapolis—2021 Asian Art Biennial will run from October 30, 2021 to March 6, 2022. For more information about the activities and events in Phantasmapolis, please follow the updates announced on the official websites and Facebook pages of the NTMoFA and the Asian Art Biennial.

Exhibition view, 2021 Asian Art Biennale

Phantasmapolis – Exhibition Video Online Platform:

The NTMoFA YouTube: https://reurl.cc/NZQYnq
The Asian Art Biennial Facebook Page: https://fb.watch/8vFuY_ybHE/

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA)

Web: https://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntmofa
Asian Art Biennial Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aabntmofa

Exhibition Coordinators: Lin Hsiao-Yu, Liao Chia-Cheng  Tel: (04)23723552 #304、701

Media Contact: Yan Bi-Mei  Tel: (04)23723552 #123

Dates

Dates: 2021.10.30 to 2022.03.06

Opening Hours

To cope with the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum opening hours have been adjusted to Tuesdays to Sundays, from 09:00 to 17:00 (closed on Mondays).

Since August 24 (Tues.), 2021 onward, visitors with reservations will be prioritized for admission (the maximum for group reservation is 80 people). A system of entry times with limited number of visitors is implemented. Each entry time for visitors with reservations is 2 hours. Flexible admission of visitors without reservations will depend on the number of visitors in the museum.

Full list of the 38 participating artists/artist groups

(listed according to alphabetical order of last name)

Catalina Africa (The Philippines)

Bakudapan Food Study Group (Indonesia)

Bang & Lee (South Korea)

Shu Lea Cheang (Taiwan)

CHEN Chen Yu (Taiwan)

CHEN Chun Yu (Taiwan)

Genevieve CHUA (Singapore)

Sharbendu De (India)

Mattie Do (Laos)

GAN Siong King (Malaysia)

HE Kunlin (China)

HIRATA Minoru (Japan)

Joyce HO (Taiwan)

HUNG Tung Lu (Taiwan)

ISOMURA Dan + UNNO Rintaro (Japan)

KIM Ayoung (South Korea)

KIMURA Tsunehisa (Japan)

LÊ Giang (Vietnam)

LEE Yung Chih (Taiwan)

LI Yi Fan (Taiwan)

LIN Shu Kai (Taiwan)

LIU Kuo-sung (Taiwan)

LIU Yu + WU Sih Chin (Taiwan)

Yuko MOHRI (Japan)

Hootikor (Lama Motis & Cheku Chelagu, Taiwan)

UuDam Tran NGUYEN (Vietnam)

office aaa (Taiwan)

OGINO Shigeji (Japan)

Pad.ma (CAMP & 0×2620, India / Germany)

Monira Al Qadiri (Kuwait)

Mark Salvatus (The Philippines)

Chulayarnnon Siriphol (Thailand)

Lim Sokchanlina (Cambodia)

TAN Zi Hao (Malaysia)

WANG Jun-Jieh (Taiwan)

Yuyu YANG (Taiwan)

Tuguldur Yondonjamts (Mongolia)

Alvin Zafra (The Philippines)

Special projects

Prospecting: Archival documents from the Philippines

Curator: Tessa Maria Guazon

Beyond Time and Sex: An Opsis of Queer Sci-Fi in Asia

Researcher: I Chun (Nicole) WANG

Participating artists:

Shu Lea Cheang, KU Kuang Yi, LIN An Chi (Ciwas Tahos), Thunska Pansittivorakul,

Very Theatre & ActNow Theatre, WU Tzu Ning

This project is co-organized by the Cultural Taiwan Foundation and in partnership with SEA plateaus.

Video Art Project

Phantasmapolis: Looking back to the future

Curator: Anushka Rajendran

Artists:

Abdul Halik Azeez / Sri Lanka

Vibha Galhotra / India

Ayham Jabr / Syria

LI Kuei Pi / Taiwan

Mariah Lookman / Pakistan / UK

Umber Majeed / USA

Tuan Andrew Nguyen / Vietnam

Afrah Shafiq / India

Karan Shrestha / Nepal

Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn / Thailand

Angela SU / Hong Kong

Natasha Tontey / Indonesia

UTAMURA Hanae / Japan

Paul WONG / Canada

ZHANG XU Zhan / Taiwan

Satelite Events

“Life in-betweens: Mongolia and Central Asia through the Perspective of Contemporary Art” Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: 2022.02.19 (Sat.)~2022.07. 23 (Sat.)

Venue: 1F & 2F, Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Gallery (No.3, Ln.8, Qingtian St., Da’ an Dist., Taipei City

Curators: Takamori Nobuo, Chen, Hsiang-wen

DAC – “JELLY BABIES feat. Asian Art Biennial Day”

Date: 2022.02.25 (Fri.)~03.06 (Sun.)

Venue: Digital Art Center, Taipei (https://dac.tw/)

Guided Tours

Curator Talks

Speaker: TAKAMORI Nobuo, HO Yu Kuan

Time: 2021.11.06 (Sat.)

2021.12.12 (Sun.)

2022.02.20 (Sun.)

Expert Guided Tours

Speaker: WU Cheng Hsuan, WEI Tze Chun, I Chun (Nicole) WANG, CHEN Hsiang Wen

Sign Language Guided Tour

Time: 2021.11.07 (Sun.)

Audio Description Tours

Time: 2021.11.25 (Thur.)

Learning Programmes

Special Education Resource Program

Time: 2021.11.11 (Thur.)

2021.11.18 (Thur.)

“Creating Future Metropolis” – Parent-Child Creative Activities

Time: 2022.01 ~ 2022.02

* For dates and information of activities and events, please see subsequent announcements on the NTMoFA website.

If we say that art styles and artistic trends are often used to identify the characteristics of a generation, the method and morphological appearances of the exhibited works by the participating artists reflect how an artist evolves to a better person through changes in the method which culture has no boundaries and professions has no exclusiveness. As the curator, Cui Cancan stated: “A new way of working inspires artists to explore new identi-ties and new artistic directions. These novel directions redefine and create a new life for the artists themselves. New identities and possibilities are the core of methods of the new generation.”

The formation of such a new generation comes from their sensibility to the society they are currently in. The latest creation of Chen Tianzhuo (born in 1985, now lives and works between Beijing and Shanghai) responds to the well-received concept of NFT in the digital art market, while retains the medium of fine art in the forms of installation, performance, video, painting, and photography. “I do whatever I am interested in, whether it is my main or side job,” Chen Tianzhuo explained. The works of artist Ni Youyu who currently lives in Shanghai include acrylic on canvas, woodcuts, installations, sculptures, and photographic collages. His method is to break through the limits that he perceived. Works such as “Domino of Space” and “Trio” construct multiple spaces that are deeply inward in antique frames, and “Pagoda” uses wood and stainless steel to implicate the idea of scale.

“To Be A Better Man” and “Six Pack”, created by Li Liao (born in 1982, now lives and works in Shenzhen), embody the changes in the city and the environment with the most intuitive approach by using his body. The artist concluded that his semi-fictional autobiographical works principally record his day-to-day life and the method resembles polishing or waiting in consumption. Tong Wenmin (born in1989, now lives and works in Chongqing), who makes good use of the body as a creative element, believes that she has no fixed methods. Her works often focus on stimulating visual poetry and inspiring action through behaviors that at first seem counter-intuitive. Through often simplified or regulated movements, her work hints at the allegorical character of the body and action within a semantically rich context. In “Breeze”, paint-stained branches leave a mark upon her back and the canvas like a breeze. In “Wave”, her body moves with the waves on the beach.

From the “Cola Project” and the “Palate Project”, to the “Lemon Project”, the art practice of He Xiangyu (based in Beijing and Berlin) often begins with his observation of a particu-lar object, event, or phenomenon, working towards the unique and relatively frenetic core. In this exhibition, he creatively combines his introspection and observation of the others in the form of games. Mei Shuzhi founded 702design in Beijing in 2010 and serves as its art director. He is constantly seeking novelty from life, to discover more possibilities of design in everyday life. He demonstrates that through his work of “like a bug which slowly moves with its perception.” Mei Shuzhi’s work “Typography Exit 2” allows the exploratory “watching” experience to break through the limitations of text as a conventional reading media.

Ge Yulu (born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1990, and now works and lives in the area around Beijing) uses art as an excuse to apply for approval of day-off for the museum staff in the work “Holiday Times” presented in this exhibition. The price is that he needs to cover for the staff during their day-off to complete the work originally arranged for them. In his opinion, the new generation consists of the ones who do not agree with any of the existing orders. In his work “Michelangelo’s Gift”, Zhou Yilun, an artist currently living in Hangzhou, extended the possibilities of everyday materials through multiple techniques such as splitting, reorganization, and simulation. In his view, the way of working is a life-style—he is someone who cooks every night, but also someone who often drinks in clubs until dawn.

The work “Shop Window” presented by Zhao Zhao, who lives and works between Beijing and Los Angeles, is similar to an autobiographical film. His exhibited cabinet shows the reference of his creative ideas. He claimed that his working method is mixed with multiple concerns, and there is no division of time. Architect Wang Zigeng (born in 1984) once served as the architectural history consultant for the director team of the film “Hidden Man” by Jiang Wen. In his work, he uses art to release out his superfluous mental energy. “1994” is a theatrical installation expounding a personal narrative, in which the artist turns the display of stylized architectural projects into an exploration of places and memories. Liang Chen (born in 1987) describes the series of “Spatial Hypnosis” as “the method of discovering and intervening in the spatial subconscious with space as the main body”. Applying the universe to be the new spatial-temporal coordinate, Liang’s analysis spans the Big Bang from the formation of the earth, to the geology of his hometown Dandong, the constitution of its landscapes, neighborhoods, and streets, and finally ends in the residential building where he grew up, manifested in its three interior decorations from three different periods. Through a sub-conscious recapitulation of childhood city and architectural space, Liang Chen intends to depict a sub-consciousness of substance and space.

Zhu Sha (born in1988), a graphic designer and curator who works and lives in Beijing, has begun to intervene in the contemporary art field through curatorial practice in recent years. For him, he aims to establish more links through designing, and the video “Talk and Design” displayed in the exhibition shows how Zhu Sha as an artist completes his “work diary” in a casual and personal way. Drawing Architecture Studio (DAS) (founded in Beijing in 2013 by architect Li Han, born in 1978, and designer Hu Yan, born in 1978, dedicated to architectural drawing, architectural design, and urban study) believes that “honesty” brings along with more practical and hands-on experience. “The Complete Map of Capital Beijing” presented in the form of an architectural diorama serves as a con-temporary copy of its original version from the Qing Dynasty. In the scope of 700 x 700 meters, some of most iconic Beijing architecture are collaged, mixed, and blended: from the Yonghe Temple of the Qing Dynasty to the Chinese Anglican Church built in China’s Republican Era; and from the socialist mansion An Hua Lou around the founding period of PRC to the residential areas developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Through a personal reinterpretation, the architectural models are presented in a distant yet familiar form.

In recent years, these most active and representative artists from the new generation have presented a pluralization seen in their diversified identities and works. Cross-cultural, cross-media, and cross-field practice have amplified their uniqueness. In this re-gard, Cui Cancan stated: “This phenomenon is unfolding with changes in the work pro-cess of the new generation. They are redefining the scope of professions—artists no longer simply make art, architects no longer only build houses, and designers no longer work merely graphically. They have a wide range of interests and more diverse occupa-tions that barely show hierarchy and distinction among each other. Their mindset is not just liberal but also ambiguous, and they are always vigorous, imaginative, versatile, and inventive. The style of ‘there is no single style’ has become their style.”

The features of the new generation truly denote the development of a certain era. When we take a closer look at the eclectic methods of these artists, the styles are the manifestation of the domestic development of cities and cultural life in this epoch of globalization. This new generation has also turned out to be a trace of changes that took place in our times. These revolutionary changes are exactly what Wind H Art Center is pursuing to capture in its practice. As a young art institution, since its establishment in 2020, Wind H Art Center has held numerous exhibitions and public education activities that cover multiple disciplines including contemporary art, architecture, and design. Not complying with the inherent value judgments, Wind H Art Center aims to serve as a platform for diversified cultural exchanges and discussions. Through different projects, the art center presents a wider, more connected, and more inspiring art world to the public to enrich the booming contemporary art today in China.

About The Curator

Cui Cancan is an independent curator and writer active in various fields. He has curated nearly 100 exhibitions and events since 2012. His group exhibitions include Walking the Dark Bridge at Night, Country Coiffure, FUCKOFF II, Not Acting in Images, The Sixth ring is One Ring More Than the Fifth, Ten Nights, and High-Rise from the Ground, 2015-2019 New Year’s special project series, Curatorial Classes, Nine-Story Tower, etc. The solo exhibitions he curated include Ai Weiwei, Bao Xiaowei, Chen Danqing, Chen Yufan, Chen Yujun, Feng Lin, Han Dong, He Yunchang, Huang Yishan, Jiang Bo, Li Binyuan, Liu Wei, Liu Gangshun, Liu Jianhua, Li Qing, Li Ji, Li Zhanyang, Mu Er, Ma Ke, Mao Yan, Qin Ga, Qin Qi, Sui Jianguo, Shijiezi Art Museum, Shi Jinsong, Shen Shaomin, Tan Ping, Wang Qingsong, Xie Nanxing, Xia Xiaowan, Xia Xing, Xiao Yu, Xu Zhongmin, Xu Xiaoguo, Zong Ning, Zheng Chunban, Zhang Yue, Zhao Zhao, etc.

About Wind H Art Center

Wind H Art Center is located at the south gate of Beijing’s contemporary art landmark, 798 Art District. It was designed by the renowned architect Dong Yugan. In the interior space, the architect utilized gardening to create contemporary imagery of Mountain-and-Water landscapes.

The Wind H Art Center integrates ideas of incubation, academic research, art exhibitions, collaborative innovation, humanities education, and cultural creativity. The goal is to establish a diversified research-oriented art institution and to create an academic platform for international art exchanges.

The Exhibition Center is committed to discovering and presenting artists and creators’ art practice that explores the academic frontier and the contemporary context. It emphasizes experimentality to demonstrate Chinese contemporary art’s new vectorial development. Simultaneously, the Art Center emphasizes the integration and exchange of different disciplines to build a bridge between art and life, revealing, exploring, and developing the creative potential of human beings.

See+ Gallery, Beijing, China

December 05, 2015–January 30, 2016

Organizer: Hua’er, Director of See+ Gallery

Moderator: Antonie Angerer

Translator (Chinese): Zwei Fan

Date: December 04, 2015

Q (aka Kyoo Lee, hereafter Q): Thanks, everybody, for being here. Special thanks to Hua’er for organizing this event, Antonie and Zwei for moderating and translating, and Gabriela for creating this beautiful work so that we can all come here talk photography and philosophy! We will have a general conversation first and then open the space up for you all to participate later.

When I first saw Vanishing Deconstructions, I asked Hua’er: “How did you get to meet Gabriela, how did this encounter happen?” Hua’er told me this micro-story of their first meeting—she walked into a photo exhibition in Paris, saw this wonderful work, and spoke with the artist, who ended up saying, “we don’t need words because images connect us.” Indeed, images somehow travel in such a way that we become connected by what we see before or without what we say.

In this show, we encounter so many images. In particular, what we encounter photographically is not only intersubjective in itself but perhaps the inter-subjective itself, as in an inter-view. A communication happens in such an interim space, between the viewers, that is, through this work: now then, how? I will ask this first question, against that background.

As the title of our conversation today indicates, we begin by reflecting on the philosophical and poetic aspect of photography, a kind of philophotopoetics, on a photograph that makes itself or herself: what does this photographic scene see and show? Gabriela, as a photographer, you take or create a photographic image, you create something you saw or something you see, and you make the work show that seeing. How is this act of photographic seeing different from the usual seeing? What is a photographic vision?

Gabriela (Morawetz, hereafter G): That is a great question. I think that the first important thing for me is to get pictures which are not perfect because in that case there is a new field, an open space. I don’t consider myself a photographer in the usual way photographers define themselves but it’s important to note that indeed my point of departure is photography. While I am working with my camera, my negatives, and my chemicals in my darkroom in a very usual way, the approach is still paradoxical because I would like to get out of this photographic kitchen, to cross its boundaries. For me, the point is how to see what I want to see.

We can also start from that paradoxical affirmation of the moment we see (something) we don’t see. This is because we mostly see what we know already but we don’t understand it even when we can see it. My approach would be like to get close to some kind of feelings or thoughts, and following the path like it is Ariadne’s thread. So the question, the challenge, is how to get this thread to get to the place you want to get in. I always try to do this by observing elements from nature, the sphere of being, along with material particularities there.

Q: A great way in. Now then, we have this cliché, our usual metaphor, almost dead, that a photograph “captures a moment.” This phrase is very intentional—almost like animal hunting—and it’s a fairly universal concept, or at least universalized. What Gabriela is saying is countering that notion of intentional framing, right? Intentional in the sense of getting at what you want to see or have already seen in the form of knowing. The point Gabriela is highlighting is rather to let the images appear in such a way that we will be able to see what is left to see instead of what we intend to see. Such elements of contexts and accidents, those otherwise invisible or visible, become very important, “elementarily” significant.

I like to link this counterpoint on “envisioning the invisible” to the very concept of the “photographic.” Photographia or photography, in its Latinic sense, is light-inscribed, something via or with light. Photo-graphy uses light to have or keep an image appear … almost like the command “let there be light.” Just a while ago, Zwei and chatted about the Chinese notion of photography, which is more like “shadow-tracing (摄影shè-yǐng, trace-shadow).” These two aspects complement each other—light and shadow. Curiously, we use different faculties to approach the same thing: the “photo-graphia” looks at the light while “shadow-tracing” turns to the shadow.

Now, to turn to the very idea of inscription or re-presentation too: there is a subtle yet significant difference between representation and re-presentation, about which Vanishing Deconstructions says a lot. If you think about all the tracks, like animal tracks and things left behind, the artistic animals like us—many in this room—also tend to track them again.

So here is my second question. One of the things that captured my imagination and attention in the first place was the very title of the show, Vanishing Deconstructions. As a scholar of contemporary French philosophy where the word “deconstruction” is one of the key terms, I have my own sense of what de-construction usually means or has come to mean in more “academic” senses. In this context of a photographic gallery aptly named “See+,” some other lively meanings of “deconstruction” do appear too, and yet, to remind ourselves, it is about and performing Vanishing deconstructions. So now, it’s your turn, Gabriela, to explain what it could mean.

G: I understand your question on the dichotomy between vanishing and deconstruction. When we use the concept of deconstruction we should be conscious of Derrida’s theory. But what I want to explore is just more of the idea of vanishing, disappearing. I use no words, but instead images. To make images, there is a combination of elements, some well-known objects, sometimes human bodies or nature. They compose an environment which eventually can be interpreted by each of us in a different way. That construction of the world, which is individual, is vanishing through the perception from each one of us. When I do “deconstruction” I am trying to construct my own system of understanding.

“Deconstruction” sounds a bit like “destroying,” but also like constructing something else through the elements of what was “destroyed.” In that flurry of words, there are many meanings of “deconstruction.”

From my point of view, that title is based on the construction of something like spaces which would contain a possibility of metaphor—something that complements. I start with a very minimal material, almost nothing. If you put only one point in an empty space, it is something very important. If you contextualize it through other elements, some kind of narration emerges.

Framed images in my work look very rational because of the geometrical forms, but, at the same time, they are absolutely intuitive and the inner structure is reflected outward.

Q: Again, your description vividly points to this paradox you talked about: the ability of the photographic surface to indexicalize this co-existence of moment and movement. The moment becoming movement and vice versa—such a layered imposition and exposition, each time, becomes Gabriela’s signature “move” or “moment.” Each time, we see what we might call a kinetic photograph, always moving. Something is becoming almost nothing and nothing is becoming something. We have a fairly clear and distinct, semi-Cartesian “rational” moment of focus, and then it goes out of focus at the same time. Such a layered vision in and of space and time is also richly explored in the 20^th century contemporary French philosophy, phenomenology in particular, where this dialectic crossing of the visible and the invisible—I am also thinking of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in particular—produces a constant and productive tension.

And before we invite questions and comments from the audience on what is “photographic seeing” or work, I want to ask you, Gabriela, if you could talk a little about how you would contextualize this exhibition in relation to your works in the past and something you will do in the future. Where do you think you are with your work, the one we see in the gallery today?

So my question is about the philopoetic “spatiotemporality” of your work, your meta-and or intra-photographic focus, so to speak. Martin Heidegger says that everybody has one thought they try to figure out all their life, just like one body, one body of thought. What is that one thought you have, if there is one, any “one”? That one, of course, doesn’t have to be strictly “one,” which has many meanings, itself richly layered and resonant. So what I mean by “one,” especially in your case, would be something like Adriane’s thread of yours we talked earlier: where is that thread, where does it come from, where does it leave, what is its trajectory?

G: I am searching for the way to get into the very inner space which we cannot describe just with words. It is about a desire to enrich the essence of what is impossible to get. The concept of Das Ding is probably something to define and be defined constantly.

Let’s say that I am interested in the mental sphere and in the energy of the unknown.

Q: What or where could be that core that keeps unfolding?

G: I think the creative process is like a destiny. You must continue and search for all kinds of possibilities but it is not a linear process. Once you get into the work, the material character of the things will suggest other dimensions and it is important to be sensitive to those signs. It is like trying to listen to some shimmering voices.

Q: This is a perfect moment to let some other waves to intervene.

P1 (a person, an unidentified interlocutor from the audience): You mentioned the idea of light and shadow, which is obviously the main matter in photography. There is a comparable pair of concepts: emptiness and play. It’s coming to me because just before our meeting we were talking with a group of students of photography. It appeared as a concept because I was talking about the idea of emptiness and its generosity as mirrored in this series of work.

Does the generosity of emptiness mean that emptiness is producing more emptiness, like feeling emptier? Or does emptiness generate plenitude, a plane?—the idea being that, in your culture and art, emptiness is an essential part of the image. I would say that from the occidental point of view emptiness is a kind of fear and we have a fear of emptiness, so we deal with that.

Q: It’s like we want to avoid the void. If I may add, the “cultural” or intercultural point aside, what you’re talking about touches on the absolutely essential, irreducible space in and of art. There is a space for art that cannot be filled in but must be kept empty. A space of freedom. For instance, modern mathematicians and physicists including the “foundational” philosopher Descartes, they debated on the existence of a vacuum. Our ability to imagine the world beyond the visible frame of space is reflected in our avoidance or fear of emptiness. In some sense, then, the photographic reproduction of worldly materials in the form of images, along with its differential constancy, is a fascinating counter-example of this plenitude, the fullness of this life.

G: I think about the image, what it should tell us about the emptiness or fullness. Should it show emptiness as a physical space or rather as a mental state of mind? Should it suggest something like the idea of emptiness? But how? Should that be like a white page? Why white instead of black? It’s obviously not about representation but rather a metaphor of the void. Creating emptiness is creating a possibility of filling it with something which has never been before and is not, either. Then, in order to find that “nothing” we must see through the screen of reality, which is hiding all kind of other spaces.

Q: Through the physical do we access something like the metaphysical. For the sake of comparison, in traditional Chinese paintings the empty space is not simply vacant. The empty space is part of the composition. To give space to that empty space is part of the artistic imaginary. We must bear that point in mind when discussing the importance of the empty in a photographic reproduction of the present. One example from mythology is Pandora’s Box, where the first evil woman was condemned. There is an interesting group of theorists writing about how the camera is like that box. It captures everything, anything (Pan-dora); if you unlock it, everything comes out. It’s a reproduction machine into which emptiness is built, as a condition for the possibility of reproduction. In other words, it itself has to be empty—or to empty itself (or herself) out.

G: It’s a very nice metaphor for the ancient type of Camera Obscura. But does it work for the digital type?

Q: So, has Pandora now gone digital too!

That is about machines, about how they capture the present and how they affect the way we think about photographic materials too. There is a very interesting book by Elissa Marder, The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, looking at photographic reproduction from “maternal” viewpoints. It’s a mother-metaphor, a mother’s womb, for instance. It itself, its “self,” is empty, through which figures get reproduced. This is a classical model of the camera. What is the mother in the age of mechanical reproduction? And how does she “figure”? That’s another, endless line of philosophical debate that touches on not only aesthetics but philosophy of and around the “sexes.” We have to pay attention to the material and maternal metaphor because literally this is how the mother’s body is employed and deployed as a camera. It itself should remain empty, pregnant with emptiness—also meaning potentiality.

Another point of interest, even the word, concept, suggests that: to conceive is to get pregnant. So light-writing and shadow.

P2: What I like about this conversation is that it concerns the negative. It is not about making a beautiful image but trying to show the background, an opening that sets your emotion, a certain condition of attentiveness toward something beyond any pre-conceived ideas; these days we are constantly bombarded with pictures. So instead, I wanted to stress the practice of setting yourself into an emotional stage, into a certain mood, through staging the thing. Or even just getting up brings you into a position of being able to be empty without feeling empty.

G: The idea is how to make emptiness radiate in a positive way. Usually its meaning is associated with some kind of negative feeling. While we are talking, I also sense how the process and series of work, so rich with all kinds of elements, maybe even too many, also illustrate my own fear of emptiness. There are two opposite states: emptiness and fullness. But the question could be the “emptiness or fullness” of what? What is the vessel which contains them?

There is poetry by Gherasim Luca who wonderfully developed that concept.

But the process I am interested in is the transition between the state of emptiness and the moment of taking a creative action.

Q: And not just what this emptiness means but how emptiness functions.

G: It’s very important, probably for everybody, but especially for the artist to arrive at that moment of “floating states.” Take on those eternal questions such as: Where are we? Who am I? What am I doing? Where is the sense of the existence? All of those questions are essential and they are coming from the anxiety in front of the emptiness of the universe.

Q: Running with this theme of paradox, this show offers an intriguing example of how remembering and forgetting are paired. In order for us to remember anything, we should almost be able to forget, so to speak. To re-member is to be able to make it a member of something. The human beings are those animals who keep promising because we have a sense of future and of failure. I will meet you tomorrow at 2 o’clock! I promise! I owe you $5, I will pay you back! I will do this and that—a promising animal. But that requires us to be able to forget, to get beforehand. Nietzsche, too, saw that jagged paradox coming: if we do not forget, we cannot remember. The process you relate to resonates with that. An example of this emptiness in a more performative sense would be: you reset yourself through a happy new year, or shall we say, “empty” new year. Likewise, there is a kind of existential dynamic in a photographic vision: something else gets freed when an image freezes (the moment)—in a sort of serial syncopations.

P2: I like the concept of the camera as the mother’s womb. But then, what is the image? In the end, the image is not a reality. The image is also flattening things. The three dimensionality of a certain body is described by the shadow that is moving, so the kinetic aspect is very important. When Gabriela’s images offer a view, they perform the viewing in an objective way.

This is a motherly emptiness, the actual ritual of taking the camera, putting it in position where you could get into those in-between moments. What are the different aspects among the camera, the body, the image, and the woman? What are the parallels in these metaphors?

Q: Precisely! What you’re pointing to is the mystery of photographic transition, transposition, transference, anything that moves. Something is on a plane of consciousness, carried along and over (also as in meta-phor). Like a mother’s womb, we think about the metaphor, we think about generosity in the gene, genre, gender … as Derrida also points out. It is what it is, what we cannot see.

P2: And its potential.

Q: Yes, so that’s why there’s a constant repetition of that which re-appears and re-presents. It’s a series of mediations at the heart of which is the mother’s body. I joke to my students in my gender philosophy class or dis-seminar that the word “reproduction” should be banned! It’s not re-production, it’s production.

G: That’s why I want to defend the idea of uniqueness even while using a technology of reproduction. A unique piece in photography means that it returns to its materiality. It becomes also an object—the image’s own materiality. There is only one “product” related to the mother’s body as a unique child.

Q: The mother’s body is not a Xerox machine! But somehow patriarchal politics treats the woman’s body as if it were or could be just that. The idea here is to honor and value the uniqueness of each being, in the sense of and with respect to its potentials.

P4: I believe the standard of the arts is measured by their philosophical quality. I just came to see the exhibition and I also see how the highest standard of the arts is met by these philosophical questions!

I hear wonderful metaphors, especially the photographic kitchen. In the kitchen it’s always a lady, that’s always the one reproducing also as in “social reproduction.” I see the connection you mention between the mother’s womb, the reproduction and the kitchen—it’s a lady that links.

In Chinese, we have a clear sense of an artistic birth, the birth of a work. Even a male artist, we do not tell if it is female or male. In Chinese even when we talk about a male artist, if the talk is about a creative moment, we would say that the baby is “stuck” at the moment or in the process of birthing, something to be “pulled out of the womb.” All artwork is like giving birth to a baby.

I see this connection across different cultures. In terms of that emptiness, in the Chinese context, the “hundreds” of everything coming together as a unity is also in a state of emptiness. Everything comes together and gets integrated. This state of emptiness is also Wu—there is something and nothing. Emptiness is related to nothing as in Wuwei (non-striving, inactive activity), so in the time-space, it has an original time and also the end of time. Emptiness is a background to consciousness; beginning of time, end of time, through lines.

G: I was also interested in the idea of the term, “in illo tempore.” It’s a Latin term which can be translated as “in that time” and Myrcea Iliade develops that idea of archetypes. That time means time without any time. It could be in the beginning of time, throughout, or in the end. It’s about the vision of the receptacle which contains emptiness but is not really empty. It’s filled with concepts, symbols, metaphors…from the beginning of time.

Q: It’s also about a bodily immersion, as we say in the middle of.  Of doing things, of being, so the ego has to be evacuated. I’m thinking of the Chinese notion, Zhong (middle), which for me also means something like a quietly orchestrated con-temporaneity of the concurrent.

Now, I want to loop back to the beginning of your talk, how you say you are trying not to frame things in advance. To let things be in the middle. That’s the magical, soft “catch” we are looking for. This emptiness and nothingness or middling. Middling without meddling. It has ancient resonances, both Greek and Chinese. “Middle Voice’ is like that in ancient philosophy—it is neither this nor that. In your work, I see it happening as a quiet, photographic pitch in the middle (of nowhere). You pay closer attention to where the baby’s head is stuck. A labor of meta-or intra-photographic midwifery, this kind of visual poetry, philosophy, artistic creation, that’s really helpful. The emptiness there also enables an inner shift of focus from the negative to the positive, trans-generating a sphere of creativity. That requires a certain resignation of agency, literally the agent, the “one” doing this or that or rather dying this way and that…you have to let the work work.

P5: The first word that comes to mind is an egoless perspective. All the past, present, future, design—they all start dissolving. I would see it as quite positive, similar to chemicals that lots of members from British art world take to gain emptiness, to gain exploration and space. Complete emptiness, an extreme state from which to create a new art of painting or music. So that’s another perspective on emptiness. Emptiness could be quite abstract, so I’m wondering: from your experience, how do you visualize that part of the visual layers of emptiness?

G: If I understand, you would like me to tell you the process, how this work of mine happens that way. I could answer like this: At the beginning of all, there is nothing, then some small element appears, which becomes a central point of the construction of the space. At that point, the empty space is not empty any more. It is already constructed, designed with lines, squares or circles. The objects can be really very ordinary, but at the same time I care about and take care of the emptiness of their own. Their shape should also express emptiness.

Such a constructed space at that initial stage is a kind of envelope for the other, an inner-theater. So talking about materials, there is still a symbolism of emptiness because of the in-betweeness of both layers. The idea is to convince the space to become symbolic at that point. Earlier we were just talking about it, comparing it to the fruit or an object from which you are taking out its mass. Then, the container is getting empty and gets filled again with new images, new realities. I don’t like to use the word “image” because it is flat. Rather, reality has all kinds of forms.

P5: Your remark illuminates how you construct layers, which is quite hard, and it is why, I think, your work creates distortions, using different tools to strike a new reality, an image’s own reality.

Q: So the procedural dynamism of emptiness is also quite literal, right? Such kinetic connections between pictorial spacing and photographic timing we have been exploring also help us move onto the next and final phase of our discussion, which is to look at some specific examples of Gabriela’s work. Let us see how those themes we discussed materialize, how they matter there.

Following on that question of emptiness, the life itinerary, your biography, exhibitions and locations where you worked, if we look at your work, so far it involves a lot of travels, moving around. You have various experiences in different locations. There are also artists who literally never leave their nest, but as you lived and passed through various spaces, I am interested to hear your thoughts on the role of memories, experiences and travels in your art. I imagine that these series of forms of life would force you to empty yourself out of your comfort zone. How does that “produce” your mind? Well, to experience is to live OUT OF the limit, to ex-perience.

It means you have to trust that emptiness, that space you are jumping through and sometimes into. It’s a fascinating image. You have to allow space in your lifeboat. For those of you who travel a lot, every time you travel, you must pack the absolute minimum and then you have to empty it out. Or at least that’s how I try to travel. When you leave for a new place, you must also leave some room in your luggage. If your suitcase is full, you won’t be able to add anything else when moving to a new place. Again, the wisdom of leaving some space is about underdetermination. From the way I experience your work, that kinetic, convex mirroring, that space works like a slightly empty suitcase. So the photographic kitchen itself is on the move. It enables a constant mirroring so that you won’t lose that inner eye, that inner core space, as you’re going on a space-trip, too.

So how does this literalized movement of ex-periencing impact the way you produce work? I ask this question because the work you produce is almost ritually layered and materially evocative in ways that seem to reflect and even stress various traces of time and space. There is an allegory.

G: I really agree: you have to trust that emptiness, that space we are jumping through. It is an essential feeling in every displacement and a real experience as in crisscrossing the sky. It means also: don’t be afraid, go ahead.

I don’t feel that I belong to some particular space. Although I have been living in France for a long time, enough to feel home there, it doesn’t mean that it produces something like lightness. Yet, not being attached to some particular space or community in a very tight way doesn’t produce strength, either. Still, my main working studio is in Paris where I live, and I must say that that is the material space where my ideas are taking shapes.

When traveling, being somewhere else, on the move, open to understanding others as well as others’ understanding of you … such is always a huge invasion of your own comfort zone. But this is exactly that idea of emptiness. You become the vacuum space in order to receive all kinds of new experiences—you must make space for that. Coming back to my own space, I see there is an issue of how to classify all those experiences and how to absorb all of that space, of emptiness-fullness.

Q: From what we’ve heard so far, along with many wonderful images and ideas, I feel like I am beginning to have a photographic memory of what you have been describing on that space of emptiness and that emptiness is an envelope of the other.

P3: An envelope is a space, so actually it offers a particular space and fold.

G: Something I think about is the concept of not knowing. There are moments in life and particularly in every artist’s practice of getting to the point of doing something without knowing why and what it is. How can you understand it? You probably become very afraid of that unknown object created by yourself, and you just need to follow that work. The idea of getting deeply inside this unknowledge is very interesting.

P4: Your idea of unknowing is about self-consciousness or lack thereof?

G: No, it’s really about not knowing. Something appears in front of you because you are going forward but you don’t understand why, what its real content is, what the real meaning of that object is. There is a paradoxical situation in that because if you are doing that it means you know but you don’t know why. It seems like the two sides of the brain get disconnected at that point. It is important to consider that space-time of not-knowing as a fully valuable process. It is probably something related also to emptiness as a condition of creation.

P3: I have a friend who immerses herself in a room or a strong force gives her an inspiration, so she is somewhere just writing, and unconsciously producing, whether it’s writing or not, in a state where she create something because she us possessed or emptied, I’m not sure.

G: There is something like a third thing, a third space, which is AVIDIA, something to study more about. It’s about space, this particular space in between where you can see the shape of things but you don’t know what’s inside and what it means.

Q: I think it is linked to the question of the exteriority of the envelope, the difference between bribery and the present, for instance. Consider the notion of gifting: when you give someone a gift and also when you are “gifted.” You don’t know what it is you’re given when gifted, and what you’re gifted in. It’s a kind of pure thanking, and, as with Heidegger, Danken, to think is to thank. The difference between bribery and a gift is this: I give you ten yuan so you do something nice to me, you know what you’ve given and are receiving in return; but, I give you a gift in an envelope, you just take it, just receive it, don’t question it, and you don’t actually or fully know what could be inside, metaphorically and literally or both, even after you’ve opened it or think you have. It could be a bomb, too, including a time bomb you don’t see now; Derrida talks about this in the classical Greek, “pharmakonic” parable of writing as a gift given and to be disseminated as such, as both a medicine and a poison. That’s the limit and risk of it. That’s the aporia of gift-giving. It’s also an artistic notion, an artistic “gift” inseparable from the notion of freedom. An artist as one who responds to a call, you just follow it but you don’t know what it is.

That ties back into beginning of our discussion of not trying to do this or that, but the question then comes down to framing. All the frames in these photographs, as you say, are not very intentional. It’s there to leave the space of not knowing, leaving it active and let it speak. That seems to be the ethos, character and the momentum of your work of “shadow-tracing.”

This notion of passively powerful “gift” is very important especially today. What is the space for the arts in this hypercapitalized world of micro-transactional calculations? We talked about reproduction, some people will produce something with the preexisting model of what is acceptable, what is popular, what “sells,” what is “catchy,” etc. There is something about unknowing as a value of and vehicle for irreducible freedom no one can take away from us, which is really real. This also reflects, it must be said, a discursive tension as well as reciprocal tie between the critic and the artist, where the critic wants to know everything about a piece, taking it apart, wanting to know every move, every sign, while rendering it more visible.

G: The idea of freedom and space tied to unknowing is very intriguing. There is a great freedom for all the interpretations when there are no any instructions for understanding but it becomes also a source of anxiety because you cannot access the essential and hidden meanings.

Q: Oh, don’t worry, I will sign and seal your envelope! I can sell it for you! (Laughter) So, leave that envelope sort of half-open so that it can interact with this otherness you also describe through your own experiences.

Speaking of such deconstructive “framing,” I’m also intrigued by the geometrical figures in your work, the free-floating, naked bodies, and the very mathematical, superimposed work. It’s also your own body. Are we seeing images of your body sort of naked or semi-naked? If you are interested, would you mind talking a bit about what you have given us in that regard?

G: Maybe I am thinking about this particular idea of geometry; or maybe I am thinking against the geometry? Once again, I am in the opposite side of what it looks like! Explored here is a sensitive approach to geometrical shapes which are by definition rule-bound. But how to construct such a space with minimum elements and without mathematical calculations: my approach is a bit random without any particularly sophisticated structures and necessary systems, and it is also an autobiographical process because all those elements used here belong to my familiar environments, as they also become part of other works or part of collected objects. Why do I collect things? I am like a magician always surrounded by some artifacts to play with. Sometimes human beings take sensual approaches to the question of existence, which are important to them. And there are shadows of all those elements, another space inside the image. We have been talking about deconstruction and its meanings, all those elements penetrating one another and all those things even include something that does not exist in fact since it is an illusion or ephemeral effect, basically light and shadow.

About the process: it’s very important for me to be emotionally creative and to be able to arrive at the synthesis of everything at such emotional moments.

Q: Listening to you, I realize your work is also about the unframeable richness of framed ambiguities. We all carry our coffees or cages around, which could also be a window that frames and frees you, all sort of portals into another world within a world, both portable in themselves. In that connection, something about the rectangular, the surface of life that annexes itself, is really interesting, its inherent metaphoricity: I mean, it is and carries its own frames. That self-reflexive or self-referential tension is what remains so arresting, what forces us to look. Look! And shadows are this photographic work … another layer of ambiguity.

G: Maybe the next exhibition could be the installation of emptiness and its shadows!

P6: I want to ask about the glass you have, also the mirror. Did you deliberately choose your own materials?

G: Yes, the materials are important—it’s all about my approach to photography. It’s not only the matter of image. The image is absolutely connected with the surface because each material is producing a perception of what we can see, each time differently. It can be cold, warm, soft, pleasant, or unpleasant to touch, and so on.

P6: I notice you use a mirror a lot. Can you speak about that?

G: You are right and there are other reflecting materials like water or the black surface of shining glass, etc. There is something about something (else) being reflected inside but it’s mostly about creating another possibility of perceiving the real. Also there is certainly something from the myth of Narcissus, which always appears when we talk about the mirror. When you are reflected in something, you still see the surrounding world, so you are included in the whole image and sometimes it is much stronger to show that through a mirror than to show it frontally. It’s kind of turning everything upside-down and inside-out.

P7: I have one final question and then we can go for dinner! It is about the perception and moment of illusion or irritation. I remember the first time I saw your works on the wall and thinking: is it a shadow, is it not a shadow? We talked a lot about how the works are expressions of your inner emptiness and how your creative unknowing of what you see creates a kind of original moment that is this emptiness where you, without thinking, constantly get and get out of such images. So, I wonder how much of this is part of your working process.

G: I’m always searching for the magic moment. An important thing in general is the emotion of being close to some new, unknown point where the habitual perception reaches another level. The motion between the matter and the psyche generates those emotions, the main elements in my creative process. So such a material emotional translation has a big influence on the image that results, along with the clear and confused perception of it. This moment is crucial.

Q: Most importantly then, this is the moment for us to say: thank you! 

Kyoo Lee, a member of AICA-USA,the author of Reading Descartes Otherwise (Fordham University Press) and a forthcoming book on visual culture (The MIT Press), is a transdisciplinary philosopher, writer and critic, who currently teaches at the City University of New York where she is Professor of Philosophy. A recipient of fellowships and visiting appointments from Cambridge University, CUNY Graduate Center, KIAS, the Mellon Foundation, the NEH, Seoul National University and Yanbian University among others, her philopoetic texts have appeared in AICA-USA Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, PN Review, Randian, The Volta and the White Review as well as various standard academic venues.

An editor active in various fields, she is the chief co-editor of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of transContinental Feminism, and serves on the editorial boards of Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics, Derrida Today,Open Humanities Press, Simon de Beauvoir Studies and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is also on the board of directors at Litmus Press. Her Mellon-funded anthology, Queenzenglish.mp3: poetry | philosophy | performativity, with contributions from 50+ poets, musicians, theorists and performance artists from across the globe, has recently been published (2020).

Throughout her site-specific cogitographical practices and collaborative projects, Q Professor Lee explores co-generative links and zones between critical theory and creative prose.

Gabrieal Morawetz, born in Rzeszów, Poland, is a photographer and visual artist based in Paris, France, who also works in painting, graphic design, sculpture, installation, and video. A graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and the Instituto Nacional de la Cultura in Caracas, Venezuela, her works that are richly liminal, metaphorical, and dynamically intercultural, have been exhibited internationally at prominent art institutions such as Chicago Cultural Center, San Antonio Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Art Center, Rubin Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas (MACSI), Fotomuseo in Bogota, Te Papa Museum, and Art Museum in Kathmandu, as well as art fairs such as Art Paris, ARCO Madrid, Art Bologna, Paris Photo, Photo Shanghai, Aipad, and Photo London. In 2011, Descartes Et Cie published Gabriela Morawetz: Ne faire qu’un (PUBLICITÉ) as part of its celebrated AREA series, documenting her pieces from 1992-2011, with text by Anne Tronche, Marek Bartelik, Serge Fauchereau, Edward Glissant and Joanna Sitkowska-Bayle.

The upcoming exhibition of Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA) will be featuring the works of 17 finalists of the “Taoyuan International Art Award,” the very first international award from the city that eyes on promoting artistic creations from around the globe and to build up an exchange platform for the participating artists.

TMoFA is the foremost and the long anticipated art institution of the growing city of Taoyuan. With the city being part of the 6 special municipalities in Taiwan, the importance of the award is undeniable, and it will only be the first step among the museum’s future programs to connect with the international art scene. The opening ceremony of the exhibit will take place on 13 March 2021 with the announcement of the grand prize winners. The “Taoyuan International Art Award” exhibition is scheduled to open to the public from 13 March to 18 April 2021, at Taoyuan Arts Center.

CHIEN Yu Jen (Taiwan), Workers Holding Placards – a Portrait Project No.6
簡佑任 (臺灣), 舉牌工人肖像計劃#6

“Taoyuan International Art Award is in the foreground of the development of the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, and even more so, that of the vision of Taoyuan city toward the international art scene. We look forward to building a new dynamic art hub to nurture contemporary art creations. At the same time, we also aim at providing artists with another professional exhibiting platform, in the hope of opening up the possibility for dialogues and cooperation through the holding of the award.” says the Director of Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, LIU Chun Lan.

Mizanur Rahman CHOWDHURY (Bangladesh), LAND
Mizanur Rahman CHOWDHURY (孟加拉), 土地

The 1st international award from the city to promote the power of contemporary art creations

Taoyuan International Art Award, organised by TMoFA, is an award that aims at encouraging a diversified development of art practices and cultivating talents in contemporary art. With an expectation to strengthen international exchanges and to provide full freedom of expression, the award accepts application worldwide. The entry to the competition is not limited to material, category, or size as long as the submission would be a new work that has yet been exhibited nor recognized by other awards. As a result, the open call has successfully drawn the attention of more than 600 artists from 46 countries to submit their applications. The number of submissions received has set a new record for the award, and also, an important milestone for the vision of TMoFA and its subsidiary art centres to come.

The organizer will cover the finalists’ expenses for the basic exhibit build-up and transportation. Their selected entries will be exhibited in Taoyuan Arts Center for one month while going through an on-site review to decide one winner for the “Grand Prize,” three winners for the “Honorable Mentions” and one winner for the “Sojourn Award”. With the announcement of the winners on the opening day of the exhibition, the medallist is entitled to a prize of NTD$500,000. Honorable Mention artists will receive a prize of NTD$ 120,000 each, and  Sojourn Award artist will receive a prize of NTD$ 150,000.

TING Chaong Wen (Taiwan), Going Home
丁昶文 (台湾), 魂归故里

A creative dialogue: 17 artists to showcase together in Taoyuan and to reflect on the issues of our time

17 selected artists from across the continents will be showcasing together. Their works come in different practices includes paintings, installations and new media artworks. They invite the audiences to re-discover and reflect on the various issues from cultural identity, community, history, global politics, the notion of time, and to re-experience how the artists express their thoughts and feelings through different materials and methods of creation.

The finalists of the Taoyuan International Art Award are: LEE Tek Khean(Malaysia), WANG Yi Wei (Taiwan), KOO Bon A (Korea), Ray KIANG (U.S.A), CHUANG Li Hao (Taiwan), Ana MENDES (Portugal), LIN Yan Xiang (Taiwan), CHANG Chih Chung (Taiwan), Lewis COLBURN (U.S.A), Takahiko SUZUKI (Japan), Liva DUDAREVA (Lativia), Sara WU (Taiwan), Maria VARELA (Greece), CHIANG Chun Yi (Taiwan), TING Chaong Wen (Taiwan), Mizanur Rahman CHOWDHURY (Bangladesh), CHIEN Yu Jen (Taiwan). Further details of the artists and their submitted works can be found in the Appendix.

The awarding ceremony will take place on 13 March 2021 following the opening of the exhibition. The event will be livestreaming at the Facebook and Youtube page of TMoFA at 14:30 (GMT+8). During the period of exhibition, the museums will also be launching a series of onsite events to invite the audience to have further engagement with the artists and artworks.

The Taoyuan International Art Award is organized biannually, and the upcoming open call is scheduled to be in June 2022. For more information on the exhibition and future open call, please visit here.

Ray KIANG (U.S.A), The Invisible
Ray KIANG (美国), 不可见之物

About Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts

The Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA), an upcoming cultural marker, is an institution with multiple venues consisting of one main museum and three subsidiary art centers. The main art museum is located in the Qingpu area of Zhongli District, and the three subsidiary art centers are the Taoyuan Children’s Art Center, the Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center, and the Chunglu Art Center.

The architectural design and landscaping of the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts combines aquatic views and green zones, with history and culture integrated. The design echoes with the regional features of Taoyuan, a city that is known as the Land of a Thousand Ponds. Applying its diverse functions, the museum is going to link the heart of the city with its communities and form local and international ties. With Taoyuan as its foundation and together with an international outlook and a vision for the future, TMoFA is going to serve as a driving force for the promotion of art and become a dynamic base for innovative experimentation and cultural development. For more information on the museum, please visit this link.

CHIANG Chun Yi (Taiwan), Holobiont Project: Ji-mi
张致中 (台湾), 作鸳鸯

Maria VARELA (Greece), Rugs of Life
Maria VARELA (希腊), 生命织毯

Sara WU (Taiwan), Lived Absence of Objects
吳依宣(台湾), 事物不在场

Liva DUDAREVA (Lativia), V_br ⃤ nt* m ⃤ tt3r*
Liva DUDAREVA (拉脱维亚), 活跃的物质

Takahiko SUZUKI (Japan), Global-store.info : Taoyuan 2021

Lewis COLBURN (U.S.A.), Disposable Monument II (After the Boys Who Wore Gray)
Lewis COLBURN (美国), 抛弃式纪念碑II（仿照”穿灰衣的男孩们”

CHANG Chih Chung (Taiwan), Fabricating Mandarin Duck
张致中 (台湾), 作鸳鸯

LIN Yan Xiang (Taiwan), If Mountain Has Deities
林彥翔 (台湾 ), 山若有神

Ana MENDES (Portugal), The People’s Collection
Ana MENDES (葡萄牙), 人民的收藏

KOO Bon A (Korea), Teeth of Time.
具本妸 (韩国), 时间的牙齿

WANG Yi Wei (Taiwan), Running Fast and Slow
王译薇 (台湾 ), 快慢奔跑

Credits: all images courtesy the artist and by TMoFA

Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dewdrop
Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia) Oct. 2 2020– Feb. 28, 2021

Replicas, postmodernism and ‘bad copies’

I vividly remember seeing Lindy Lee’s early works when they were first exhibited in Sydney in 1985 in ‘Australian Perspecta’ and 1986 in the ‘6^th Biennale of Sydney’. Grainy, velvety black photocopies of famous faces – portraits by Jan Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Ingres, Artemisia Gentileschi and others from the western art historical canon – were arranged in rows or grids.  They gazed out from behind layers of acrylic paint, or wax that had been partially scraped back. Hints of darkened visages emerged through cobalt blue or deepest crimson pigment, unfamiliar and mysterious, their characters both concealed and revealed by the artist’s manipulations.

These shadowy works powerfully conveyed a sense common to artists and writers of my generation (and Lee’s): we were far from the action, on the other side of the world. The cultural centres, the ‘real’ art hubs, or so we thought then, were London, Paris, Florence, New York. We Australians were exiled to the periphery, inhabiting a postcolonial shadow world, a simulacrum – a pale photocopy, faded by the tyranny of distance. The art history we studied was almost entirely European and American; we feasted on images in reproduction, leafing through books with color plates of Renaissance masters, and queued for the (very occasional) blockbuster exhibition of works loaned from overseas collections at the state galleries. In that 1980s heyday of postmodern theory Lee’s works were discussed by critics and academics invoking Walter Benjamin and Baudrillard, but for me their interest lay in the connection forged between the artist and the mechanical reproduction. They suggested the angst of someone searching for a relationship across differences of time and culture.

Untitled (After Jan van Eyck), 1985, Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore

Lindy Lee, The Silence of Painters, 1989, Museum of Contemporary Art, gift of Loti Smorgon AO and Victor Smorgon AC, 1995

Lindy Lee, Book of Kuan-yin, 2002, Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

But there was more to Lee’s search than the general Australian awareness of the colonial ‘fatal shore’. Lindy Lee was born in Brisbane in 1954 to parents who had immigrated from China. She grew up in the (then) stultifyingly parochial suburbs of Brisbane during the era of the racist White Australia Policy; just a few years earlier, in 1947, Labor politician Arthur Calwell had notoriously ‘joked’ in parliament that ‘Two Wongs don’t make a white’. This immigrant upbringing, and her experience of being the only Chinese child in her school, left Lee uncertain of her identity. Like other children of Australia’s post-war migrants, she felt she was somehow inauthentic – not quite Australian, nor quite Chinese. Her early, experimental work with photocopies examined her own sense of being a ‘bad copy’, an altered, faded reproduction of the ‘real thing’.(1)

Lee loved the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of primitive 1980s photocopiers, with their frequent accidental spillages and smears of carbon, and the increasingly pale images they produced when the toner was running out. The seductive blackness and loss of detail intrigued her. Even in those early experiments she was, quite unintentionally, exploring the same materiality as Chinese ink painters. The chemistry of carbon and the aesthetic impact of blackness appealed to the Literati whose carbon-based ink created subtle gradations of tone, from deepest black to the palest hint of wash, just as the sooty black replicas of Old Master paintings held infinite expressive possibilities for Lee.

In the next phase of her work Lee turned from appropriating European paintings to digitising and manipulating family photographs and images borrowed from Chinese rather than Western art history. These became her earliest representations of her Chinese heritage. She began with a photograph of her mother, a strong matriarch who had escaped the post-1949 persecution aimed at those from the hated ‘landlord class’ to join her husband in Australia. It was a long and arduous journey via Hong Kong, with two small children and a suitcase with a false bottom hiding the family’s gold. The courage of a woman who was forced to spend years apart from her husband, who had arrived in Queensland years earlier, is repeated in the daughter’s journey to rediscover her Chinese ancestral roots, developing a transdisciplinary and transcultural practice that celebrates her hybrid identity.

Buddhism and the Ten Thousand Things

It was only after many trips to China exploring her family heritage, and a deep immersion in the practices of Zen (Chan) Buddhism and Daoism, that Lee felt secure enough in her Chinese/Australian identity to produce her mature body of work grounded in East Asian philosophy and aesthetics.(2) A comprehensive survey exhibition of her work at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, ‘Moon in a Dewdrop’ (the title is a reference to the writing of 13th century Japanese Zen master, Dōgen) sourced from private and public collections, and the artist’s own archives, covers the full gamut of her practice. The more than 70 works brought together in the MCA demonstrate Lee’s versatility, from her earliest explorations of the photographic replica to recent experiments in ‘flung bronze’ developed from the Zen painting tradition of ‘flung ink’.

Lindy Lee, Listening to the Moon, 2018, stainless steel, image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Singapore, © the artist, photograph: Ng Wu Gang

At the entrance to the concrete monolith that is the new wing of the MCA, the first work we encounter is ‘Secret World of a Starlight Ember’ (2020), a curved ovoid form of stainless steel pierced with thousands of tiny holes. Reflecting the harbour with its passing ferries, the blue of the sky, and the faces of passers-by, its minimalist beauty is intended to reference the Buddhist belief that human beings and the universe are one. Lit from within at night it recalls a map of constellations. The void at its centre, while an irresistible lure for the Instagram selfie and the narcissistic gaze into its reflective surface, reminds us that Buddhism and Daoism are replete with paradox; simultaneously symbolising materiality and immateriality, it represents tian xia – everything under heaven – as interconnected.

Lee told Elizabeth Ann MacGregor, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator of ‘Moon in a Dewdrop’, that a work created in 1995 (and recreated for the exhibition) marks her self-discovery. ‘No Up, No Down, I am the Ten Thousand Things’ was made when Lee had returned from China and was ‘released from the imprisonment of being either Chinese or Anglo or this or that’.(3) The installation of approximately 1200 small works made with ink ‘flung’ over photocopies covers the walls, floor and ceiling with blue, red and black rectangles. The Chinese and Japanese technique of ‘flung ink’ was practised by Zen monk painters following meditation. The apparent paradox of finding purpose and meaning in what at first appears spontaneous and random is a metaphor for seeing patterns in the universe and recognising the connection between the self and the natural world.

Without question there is a trace here of Lee’s early interest in the pure abstraction of Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, seen also in the modernist grid presentation and strong reds and blues of her earlier photocopy works. More importantly, though, this was the first work Lee made with the explicit intention of exploring her relationship to Buddhist philosophy and practice.

Paradox and duality recur in Lindy Lee’s work, and in her life. The art writer Julie Ewington describes Lee as an artist who has had, essentially, two careers, ‘remaking’ herself during the year of her Asialink residency in Beijing in 1995. Intending to study calligraphy, Lee realised that being unable to read Chinese characters she was drawn instead to the sooty materiality of ink itself. Ewington cites a conversation between the artist and Suhanya Raffel: ‘The notion of ‘darkness’ in her work began to take on another meaning altogether: here the dark might begin to signify, in consonance with Buddhist philosophy, “the void that holds everything and nothing”’.(4) The ‘ten thousand things’ (a phrase found many times in the Dao De Jing, attributed to Daoist philosopher Laozi) refers to everything in the universe, to the fluxing, see-sawing, reciprocal relationship between yin and yang that contains this void holding within it ‘everything and nothing’. Polarities of masculine/feminine; light/dark; past/present; eastern/western; Australian/Chinese – the ‘this or that’ that Lee described in recounting her uncertain hybrid identity – are thus no longer binary opposites but, rather, relational aspects of qi (the breath, or the life force).

These ideas are further developed in Lee’s experiments with flinging molten bronze, a breathtakingly physical, difficult, and dangerous process. The ladle containing the liquid metal (at 1200 degrees centigrade) weighs 10 kg and the artist is suited up in heavy protective clothing as she ‘flings’ (slowly, deliberately, and following meditative breaths) the bronze onto the concrete floor of the UAP foundry in Brisbane. A documentary video of the artist at work reminded me of observing groups practising tai chi in Chinese parks. Inevitably, too, there is a faint echo of the film of Jackson Pollock at work shot by Hans Namuth in 1951 – Lee’s actions are similarly performative, but much less self-conscious. Her measured gestures result in ethereally beautiful works such as ‘Seeds of a New Moon’ (2019), a collection of solidified, burnished bronze shapes carefully arranged on the wall.  They suggest a view through a microscope of biomorphic forms, tiny component parts of an enormous universe, moving in unknowable rhythms, quite oblivious to human attempts to control nature. 

Lindy Lee, No Up, No Down, I Am the Ten Thousand Things , 1995/2020, Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Metal

Lee’s immersion in her ancestral Chinese culture has influenced numerous public sculpture commissions in Australia and in China. In ‘Moon in a Dewdrop’ this aspect of her practice is represented by ‘scholar rock’ forms from the ‘Flame from the Dragon’s Pearl’ series, in mirror-polished bronze. ‘Unnameable’ (2017), recently acquired along with a suite of 12 large works on paper for the collection of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), references the traditional appreciation in China for gongshi, or scholar’s rocks. Limestone shaped by elemental geological forces (sometimes assisted by perforating rocks with holes and immersing them in the waters of Lake Tai for hundreds of years) developed into elaborate, fantastical shapes. Large rocks were an integral part of garden design, a metaphor for the mountain homes of the Immortals. Small rocks were highly prized ornaments in the studies of scholar bureaucrats, symbolising the transformational forces of nature.(5) Lee’s scholar rocks are shaped by fire and water when molten bronze is poured and cooled to produce fluid, organic-seeming shapes.

One of the most peaceful rooms in the beautifully designed exhibition spaces contains a series of suspended paper scrolls which have also been altered by exposure to fire and water. The 2011 ‘Conflagrations from the End of Time’ series references the teachings of Buddhist masters who likened the universe to an infinite net. Intricate patterns are created by holes burned in the paper with a soldering iron, casting lacy shadows on the wall behind them. They curl up very slightly at the bottom edge, appearing weightless, shifting very slightly in the slightest movement of the air. They suggest the passage of constellations across night skies. Burnt and stained surfaces reveal the processes of their creation – Lee sometimes left these scrolls of paper outside in the rain and the sun allowing time and natural phenomena to make their marks. They are echoed by more recent works in which mild steel is cut into lacy patterns. These too reflect the teachings of Daoism: they are both material and immaterial, form and void, shadow and substance. 

The Moon in Water

Lindy Lee’s deceptively minimalist works are underpinned by great discipline and knowledge, like the master calligrapher dashing off apparently effortless characters that belie the lifetime of practice. Lee has practised a form of meditation called zazen – sitting meditation – for many years. It was the foundation of Dōgen’s Zen practice; he called it ‘without thinking’, a pathway to freeing oneself from anxiety and confusion.(6) Through her deep immersion in the theory and practice of Zen, following the teachings of this 13th century Japanese monk who brought Zen Buddhism from China to Japan, Lee fused the Australian and Chinese aspects of her identity that had so troubled her when she was young. She is looking both inwards, seeking self-knowledge, and outwards to the natural world – another Zen paradox, perhaps.

The poetic image of the moon reflected in the tiny sphere of a dewdrop was a metaphor for the state of meditation, a kind of effortless/effortful approach to enlightenment through which the individual can perceive the entirety of the universe. Lee’s body of work reveals her search for this desired state of wholeness that she describes as finding ‘one’s true north’.(7)

As Dōgen said of himself watching the moon:

‘Sky above, sky beneath, cloud self, water origin’.(8)

Notes

1. See the text relating to The Silence of Painters (1989) on the website of the Museum of Contemporary Art https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/1995.191A-O/ [accessed 10.12.20]
2. Lee began to study Zen Buddhism in 1993, taking Jukai, the formal initiation into Zen Buddhism, in 1994. For more see Jane O’Sullivan, ‘Lindy Lee: The Original and the Copy’, Vault Issue 30, May/July 2020. https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/assets/Uploads/VAULT-Issue-30-Feature-Lindy-Lee-compressed.pdf [accessed 9.12.20]
3. ‘A Conversation between Elizabeth Ann McGregor and Lindy Lee’, in Lindy Lee Moon in a Dewdrop, exhibition catalogue: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2020. p. 17
4. Julie Ewington, ‘In Praise: Concerning Anne Ferran, Judith Wright and Lindy Lee’, Eyeline 84, 2016, available at https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com/assets/Uploads/Julie-Ferran-Wright-essay-for-Anthology-22-June-2017.pdf
5. For more information see the textual information produced for the exhibition, ‘The World of Scholar’s Rocks: Gardens, Studios and Paintings’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2000/world-of-scholars
6. Yokoi, Yūhō (with Daizen Victoria), Zen Master Dōgen: An Introduction with Selected Writings. New York: Weatherhill Inc., 1976
7. ‘A Conversation between Elizabeth Ann McGregor and Lindy Lee’, in Lindy Lee Moon in a Dewdrop, exhibition catalogue: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2020. p. 21
8. In 1249 Dōgen wrote a poem for his portrait, a painting now known as the ‘Portrait of Dōgen Viewing the Moon’. For more see Kazuaki Tanahashi (ed), Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985. This text has been digitised and is available at https://terebess.hu/zen/dogen/Moon-in-a-dewdrop.pdf

Jointly sponsored by China Arts and Entertainment Group (CAEG) and Evergrande Tourism Group, organized by China International Exhibition Agency (CIEA) and Ocean Flower Island Museum, co-sponsored by the Co-Innovation Art Creation and Research Center on Silk Road of Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and with academic support from CAFA, the media briefing for “The Tides of the Century – 2020 · Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition”, was held at the CAFA Art Museum on December 22.

View of the Media Briefing

Fan Di’an, Chairman of the China Artists Association, President of CAFA and Chairman of the Exhibition Academic Committee, Li Baozong, General Manager of CAEG, Li Denghai, Vice President of Evergrande Tourism Group and General Manager of Ocean Flower Island Company, Euthumios Athanasiadis, Press and Public Diplomacy Counselor at the Embassy of Greece in China, Zhang Zikang, Director of CAFA Art Museum, Liang Anna, Curator of Evergrande Ocean Flower Island Museum, Liu Zhenlin, Director of CIEA, Sui Jianguo, Artist and Academic Committee Representative, and curators including Wang Chunchen and Yue Jieqiong were in presence.

Fan Di’an, Chairman of the China Artists Association, President of CAFA, delivered a speech.

Li Baozong, General Manager of CAEG, delivered a speech.

Li Denghai, Vice President of Evergrande Tourism Group and General Manager of Ocean Flower Island Company, delivered a speech.

As a large modern marine museum built by Evergrande Group with huge investment, the Ocean Flower Island Museum covers an area of about 74,000m₂, including about 23,000m₂ for gross building area. The museum is composed of eight modern buildings. The inauguration ceremony “The Tides of the Century – 2020 · Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition” will be started on February 8, 2021, and the opening ceremony and academic activities will be held in May 2021.

More than 140 works of diversified cultural backgrounds, made by over 80 artists from 23 countries including Greece, France, South Korea, Cameroon, USA, Japan, Thailand, Venezuela, Singapore, Iran, Italy, India, UK, Vietnam, and China, will be displayed during the exhibition.

Wang Chunchen, Vice Director of CAFAM and the Main Curator of this Exhibition, introduced the exhibition.

At the critical moment of global fight against COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide artists have actively responded to the invitations from China. The premium works from all over the world gather at Hainan Ocean Flower Island, expressing the unanimous efforts and wishes for helping each other and fighting against the pandemic.

Xu Bing, Background Story: Thousand Li of River and Mountain,  450x932x30cm,  2014  Provided by the artist studio.

Sui Jianguo, Cloud Garden, Handprint #3, Photopolymer 3D Printing and steel frame, dimensions: 700×300×600cm, 2019 Provided by the artist studio.

Zhang Xiaogang, The Drawer of Time, composite materials: cement slabs, electronic industrial screen, color printing photos, etc., dimensions: 300 x 868 cm (variable as per site), 2018 Provided by the artist studio.

The prestigious artists, such as Tony Cragg (UK), Marc Quinn (UK), Xu Bing, Tatsuo Miyajima (Japan), Leandro Erlich (Argentina), and Loris Cecchini (Italy) will display their works, while Gabriel Dawe (Mexico) and Kedgar Volta (Cuba) will make their debuts in China. And Gabriel Dawe (Mexico) will display his brand new “rainbow” work specially made for the exhibition.

Gabriel Dawe, Exhibition View of Rainbow, Courtesy of the Artist.

In addition, the installation created by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot with Danzhou Diaosheng, one of China’s national intangible cultural heritages, as core elements, will provide groundbreaking local tactile experience for audiences. The artists, including Wang Jianwei, Song Dong, Choi Jeong-Hwa (South Korea), Sinta Tantra (Indonesia), and Liu Jiayu will display their new works for the exhibition.

For the “Youth Resident Artists”, six artists, namely Cai Yaling, Yue Yanna, Li Linlin, Hu Qingyan, Tian Xiaolei, and Li Yuanchen, will perform resident creations by focusing on the Ocean Flower Island Museum to express their thoughts on marine environmental protection, life, consumerism, natural environment, etc.

Greece is the guest-of-honor and a main part for the exhibition. The part is planned and designed by Katerina Koskina, a well-known curator. Her concept is based on the theory of Socratic dialectics, namely the cognition changes of things are generated through three stages: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is both the theoretical basis of Greek philosophic thinking and the origin of modern western philosophy, complying with China’s notion of respecting history and the dialectical thought of keeping pace with the times.

Portrait of Katerina Koskina

The Greek guest-of-honor section for the exhibition has obtained substantial support from the Embassy of Greece in China as well as the confirmation from Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China. Important works, created by over 30 Greek artists from the 1970s to present, will be displayed during the exhibition. Many of them are collected by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece and have participated in numerous international exhibitions such as Venice Biennale and Kassel Documenta on behalf of Greece.

As the miniature of Greek contemporary art, the exhibition displays the works of the late artist TAKIS, George ZONGOLOPOULOS, Costas VAROTSOS, Aemilia PAPAPHILIPPOU, and Theo TRIANTAFYLLIDIS, the backbone forces of Greek art as well as the latest highlights of Athens Digital Art Festival. Besides displaying the contemporary art development achievements of Greece in a distinctive and multidimensional manner, the exhibition responds to the dialogues between China and Greece as two civilizations.

Aemilia PAPAPHILIPPOU, Chess Continuum

Costas VAROTSOS, Horizons

Marianna STRAPATSAKI, Invisible Places- The Vast White, 2008

George ZONGOLOPOULOS, Tel-Neant, 1997

Theo TRIANTAFYLLIDIA, Nike, 2018

THEODOULOS, Aftofota—Eterofota, 1996

Planned by Yue Jieqiong, Vice Director of Co-Innovation Art Creation and Research Center on Silk Road of Central Academy of Fine Arts, “An Azure Rendez-vous” section has invited the artists from Venezuela, USA, and Austria. The artists will jointly make an installation on the basis of the blue “seawater” installation made by Lu Yuanzheng, a Chinese artist, to present the concept of a Community of Shared Future for Mankind connected by the oceans.

The Ocean Flower Island Museum is located in Danzhou, the final workplace of Su Dongpo, a famous poet in China, as well as the origin of Hainan’s culture. For this purpose, Xu Jialing, a curator at CIEA, has invited the famous Arabian poet Adonis and seven Chinese poets and artists, Lyu De’an, Che Qianzi, Dai Guangyu, He Canbo, Tian Wei, Jia Qiuyu, and Fu Xiaotong to display their paintings and installations for the event themed by “Oriental Poetics” and respond to the historical context of Su Dongpo by demonstrating the evolution and development of oriental poetics in contemporary works.

The “2020 · Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition”, previously scheduled for the end of 2020, has been postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Academic Committee and curators, the exhibition title will remain unchanged even it has been postponed.

Georgios Iliopoulos, Ambassador of Greece to China, delivered a speech via the video.

Liu Zhenlin, Director of CIEA, hosted the media briefing.

Leaders of The Art Department of Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, the Bureau of International Exchange and Cooperation, CAEG and Evergrande Tourism Group, submitted appointment letters to academic committee representatives and curators (Fan Di’an, Zhang Zikang, Wang Chunchen, Sui Jianguo and Yue Jieqiong).

As Chairman of the Academic Committee for “The Tides of the Century – 2020 · Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition”, Fan Di’an has invited 10 experts at home and abroad to be the committee members, including Zhang Zikang, Sui Jianguo, Wang Duanting, Zhu Qingsheng, Adrian George, Caitlin Doherty, Paul Gladston, Nanjo Fumio, Chiba Shigeo, and Tatehata Akira. Wang Chunchen, Vice Director of CAFA Art Museum, acts as the main curator; Dr, Katerina Koskina, former Curator of National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece and Culture Counselor of Athens Municipal Government, acts as the curator for the Greek guest-of-honor section; Yue Jieqiong, Vice Director of Co-Innovation Art Creation and Research Center on Silk Road of Central Academy of Fine Arts, and Xu Jialing, a curator at CIEA, are the curators for other sections.

Fan Di’an, Chairman of the China Artists Association, President of CAFA, answered to the reporter’s question.

Li Baozong, General Manager of CAEG, answered to the reporter’s question.

Li Denghai, Vice President of Evergrande Tourism Group and General Manager of Ocean Flower Island Company, answered to the reporter’s question.

Wang Chunchen, Main Curator of this Exhibition, answered to the reporter’s question.

Artist Representative Sui Jianguo answered to the reporter’s question.

About the Exhibition:

Organizational structure:

Academic supporter:

Central Academy of Fine Arts

Sponsors:

China Arts and Entertainment Group, Evergrande Tourism Group

Organizers:

China International Exhibition Agency, Ocean Flower Island Museum

Co-sponsor:

Co-Innovation Art Creation and Research Center on Silk Road of Central Academy of Fine Arts

Chief media supporter:

CAFA ART INFO

Academic Committee:

Chairman: Fan Di’an (President of China Artists Association, President of CAFA)
Members:

Zhang Zikang (Director of CAFA Art Museum)

Sui Jianguo (Professor at CAFA)

Wang Duanting (Director of Foreign Fine Art Research Laboratory, Institute of Fine Arts, Chinese National Academy of Arts)

Zhu Qingsheng (Professor at Peking University)

Adrian George (Associate Director of Exhibitions, ArtScience Museum, Singapore)

Caitlin Doherty (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville)

Paul Gladston (Professor at University of New South Wales)

Nanjo Fumio (Special Advisor of Mori Art Museum, Japan)

Chiba Shigeo (Researcher, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Professor at Chubu University, Japan)

Tatehata Akira (President of Tama Art University, Curator of Yayoi Kusama Museum)

Organizing Committee Members:

Liu Zhenlin, Liang Anna, Fang Qi, Ma Ruiqing, Hong Ning, Chen Xiangning

Curators:

Chief Producer: Liang Anna

Chief Curator: Wang Chunchen

Greek guest-of-honor curator: Katerina Koskina

Section curators: Yue Jieqiong, Xu Jialing

Exhibition planner: Zhang Jinhao

Guest-of-honor curator assistant: Wang Ying

Exhibition affairs: Liu Wenbin

Operation & maintenance: Zhang Xiujun, Yuan Ye

Public educational activities: Gao Yue, Li Yunyun

Promotion: Zhang Yaowen, Zhu Li, Zhuang Zhuang, Li Tiantian, Yang Yanyuan

Logistics: Liang Yufei, Fan Chuangeng

Assistants: Chen Gengjiang, Chen Siyu, Gong Jian, Huang Lei, Huang Yutao, Jiang He, Li Chaoshi, Liu Yang, Lu Shengqiang, Na Xu, Qiu Yukui, Tang Shunguo, Wang Jianxing, Wang Jingbo, Wang Wanqi, Wang Wenbin, Xue Lijia, Yang Jie, Yang Lai, Zhang Mengyi, Zhang Xinxin, Zhou Bingxue (in alphabetic order)

Dr Alex Burchmore is Sessional Lecturer at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the Australian National University, Canberra. In 2013-14 Alex lived in Beijing after receiving a Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Postgraduate Award.

Exhibitions of Chinese art outside China tend to confirm certain assumptions about the country’s history, culture, politics, and people. At first, ‘XU ZHEN®: Eternity Vs Evolution’ at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra, seems no exception to this rule, promising viewers a proven combination of two enduring preconceptions about China’s past and present. On one hand, the ‘Eternity’ of the title evokes fantasies of a civilization distinguished not only by antiquity but by an apparently unbroken lineage of cultural florescence, inspiring flights of fantastical chinoiserie as well as stereotypes of Oriental despotism and stasis. ‘Evolution’, on the other hand, evokes the ceaseless metamorphoses that have come to define contemporary China for many of those who have made a career of watching the country’s transformation from afar. In the eyes of these ‘China Hawks’, those who rule the People’s Republic have betrayed an ancestral birthright in their relentless pursuit of profit, degrading the environment in the name of industrial advancement, denying human rights to those disenfranchised by their rule, and destroying architectural and material heritage in their efforts to remould the face of the country.

XU ZHEN®
Shouting (stills) 2009
single-channel video, sound, duration 3:42
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
© the artist

‘Eternity Vs Evolution’ could be compared in its juxtaposition of these assumptions with the comparable pairing of ossified antiquity in ‘Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality’ and contemporary metamorphosis in ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape’ at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, in 2019. In contrast to the artefacts of China’s early imperial rulers showcased in ‘Guardians of Immortality’, however, remnants of classical civilization on display in ‘Eternity Vs. Evolution’ are visibly artificial, culturally ambiguous, and irredeemably compromised by the artist’s creative manipulations or distortions of history. In Melbourne, the First Emperor’s sentinels and the ‘gunpowder-paintings’ of one of China’s most renowned contemporary artists were shown in proximity but remained self-contained. In Canberra, no such separation has been enforced. Present and past are inextricably combined in Xu’s intentionally contradictory and confounding installations, paintings, textiles, and mixed-media assemblages. Additionally, while ‘Guardians of Immortality’ grew from an ongoing partnership with a provincial arm of the Chinese government, and ‘Transient Landscape’ comprised a series of commissions from Cai Guo-Qiang himself, ‘Eternity Vs. Evolution’ has been drawn almost entirely from the collection of the White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney. As such, a closer comparison could be drawn with ‘A Fairy Tale in Red Times: Works from the White Rabbit Collection’, also at the NGV in 2019.

In his analysis of the role that White Rabbit has played in mediating Chinese culture for Australian audiences since opening in 2009, David Bell attributes the gallery’s success to its ‘accommodation of the challenging, discomfiting, and dislocating.’ White Rabbit’s exhibitions have become known for their strategic use of ‘shock, humour, gaudiness, or subtlety [to] transport viewers beyond their … comfort zones,’ compelling a reassessment of assumptions derived from prejudice or preconception and thereby challenging the frequently clichéd representations of contemporary China found elsewhere. The gallery has been greatly enabled in this mission, Bell explains, by its independence from conventional sources of patronage in the Australian arts community as a not-for-profit charity financed entirely by founder Judith Neilson, whose appetite for Chinese art has been guided since her first purchase in 1999 by a taste for the provocative.(1) Neilson’s fortune and the formidable size of her collection, now estimated to contain over 2000 works by almost 700 artists, have also allowed the gallery to avoid cooperation with state-owned arts institutions and therefore to openly critique government agendas.

XU ZHEN®
Dah…Dah…Dah…Dah… 2009 (ed. 1/5)
steel
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney © the artist

XU ZHEN®
In Progress #180×131 2012
plywood, inlaid wood veneers
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
© the artist

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view

Nevertheless, while challenging prejudice and preconception, the works represented in Neilson’s collection can also serve to confirm other prevailing assumptions about the art of contemporary China. Their frequently controversial or subversive content, for example, supports a view of such art as an inevitably oppositional statement on adverse socio-cultural and political conditions. This is especially true when these works are shown, as at the NGV, alongside artefacts of a past China – many visitors to the gallery in 2019 may have found their assumptions confirmed as they moved from the promise of ‘Eternity’ in the display of Terracotta Warriors on the ground floor, to the visions of contemporary ‘Evolution’ furnished by White Rabbit on the top floor. ‘A Fairy Tale in Red Times’ also illustrates the extent to which the transposition of Neilson’s ambitions to a state institution presents curators with something of a double bind. It is perhaps inevitable that some of the transgressive potential of her collection is lost, while works deemed too controversial or inflammatory are rarely shown beyond White Rabbit’s walls. Yet institutional affiliation also has its advantages, foremost among which are the benefits of increased space, a larger install team, and a broader audience. The challenge for exhibitions like ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’ and ‘A Fairy Tale in Red Times’ therefore lies in the need to strike a balance between these competing objectives: to cultivate blockbuster appeal while overturning convention and stereotype.

XU ZHEN®
Immortals’ Trails in Secret Land 2012
real and synthetic fabric, leather, feathers
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
© the artist

XU ZHEN®
Spread b-041 2010
synthetic fabrics, cotton, faux fur
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
Image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Collection, Sydney
© the artist

Entering ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’ from the NGA’s Asian Art galleries, visitors are introduced to (or initiated into) the exhibition with ‘Rainbow’ (1998), one of two videos that stand as representative expressions of the first of three phases in Xu Zhen’s career. Philip Tinari, art historian and director of Beijing’s UCCA, has identified Xu’s work of the 1990s as a product of ‘the tail end of the underground era’ in Chinese art, when ‘a sense that art could challenge … mainstream values’ remained possible.(2) The four-minute video shows the exposed back of an anonymous performer against a stark white background that accentuates the gradual reddening of skin when struck repeatedly by an unknown assailant, the impact of an open hand heard but not seen. No context or reason is given for these blows, yet the immobility of the performer suggests complicity and implies that what seems to denote punishment, torture, or abuse may signify the fulfilment of a masochistic pleasure or a playful test of endurance.

The choice of this as the opening work for the exhibition is equally ambiguous. On one hand, it could be a rite of passage, a transformative shedding of the self through ritualised exposure to pain that simultaneously initiates the performer into a heightened awareness. On the other hand, it could merely be a display of bravado, a time-honoured hazing that must be endured to join a secretive and hedonistic fraternity. This blending of slapstick and sincerity reappears in ‘Shouting’ (1998) in the first gallery, the second video representing this phase in Xu’s career. In this work, rather than a voyeuristic observer, we take the cameraman’s perspective, sharing his mirth as the crowds occupying the lens turn around in surprise at the sound of his repeated exclamations, quickening their steps as they return to their aims. The NGA’s caption explains Xu’s screams as ‘a way of asserting his individuality in a society that prioritises community and conformity,’ enlisting the work as a combatant in the struggle of democratic values against authoritarianism that many critics outside China identify as the primary content of the country’s art.(3) Like ‘Rainbow’, however, ‘Shouting’ might also represent little more than an expression of youthful exuberance, a prank or dare between friends.

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view featuring Eternity – Longxing Temple Buddha Statue Part Three, Tang Dynasty Buddha Statue, Longxing Temple Buddha Statue Part Five, Northern Qi Amitabha Statue, Vairochana, the Cosmic Buddha, Hebei Northern Qi Dynasty Standing Buddha Torso, Parthenon East Pediment, 2013-14

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view featuring Eternity – Longxing Temple Buddha Statue Part Three, Tang Dynasty Buddha Statue, Longxing Temple Buddha Statue Part Five, Northern Qi Amitabha Statue, Vairochana, the Cosmic Buddha, Hebei Northern Qi Dynasty Standing Buddha Torso, Parthenon East Pediment, 2013-14

In the context of the exhibition, these works introduce a theme of noise, alternately contained and released, that also appears in ‘Calm’, ‘You’re Going to Heaven Tomorrow’, and ‘Dah… Dah… Dah… Dah…’ (all 2009), installed opposite ‘Shouting’. Rather than human cries of pain (or pleasure) and excitement (or anxiety), these works embody the aftermath of what we are led to believe would have been deafening blasts of rhetoric and explosive detonation, made eerily silent by entombment within mute metal and rock. The caption for ‘Dah… Dah… Dah… Dah…’ and ‘You’re Going to Heaven Tomorrow’ identifies these jagged sheets of corroded steel as material records of gunfire and ‘the soundwaves of a speech made by a politician or terrorist … a visible echo of the violent reality that those words can create.’ Yet the onomatopoeic title of the former is a deliberate misnomer, likely intended to heighten this sense of violence – both pieces are ‘voice-graphs’ taken from political figures associated with conflict in the Middle East.(4) ‘Calm’, a mass of twisted metal and stone on the gallery floor, also invites association with conflict, recalling the ruins that war inevitably leaves in its wake. In contrast to the lifelessness of the latter, however, the almost imperceptible, undulating motion of a concealed waterbed imparts Xu’s wreckage with a tenuous vitality marked by the rasp of stone against stone.

The solemn dignity of these conflict-laden works may seem antithetical to the sardonic abandon of ‘Shouting’, despite a shared emphasis on the containment of sound. Yet their apparent sincerity and ideological rigour, like that of the earlier video, is not as straightforward as it seems. As some of the earliest products of MadeIn Company, an ‘art corporation’ that Xu founded in 2009, these works also stand as representatives of a second distinct phase in his career. The trading name of this corporate entity is a nod to the ubiquitous label ‘Made in China’ stamped on mass-produced commodities across the world – an ironic statement, perhaps, on the quantity of contemporary art from China saturating the market when Xu decided to incorporate. The Chinese transliteration for this term, on the other hand – meiding (没顶), meaning ‘without a head’ or ‘without limit’ – implies both ‘[a] submersion of the ego and individuality … a sacrifice of the self in favour of the final product,’ and the infinite extension of this production ad nauseam.(5) The transformation of his independent artistic practice into a corporate endeavour therefore allowed Xu to disguise his personal investment in the process of creation while at the same time multiplying the range of identities that the products of this process could represent.

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view featuring European Thousand-Armed Classical Sculpture 2014 (ed. 2/3)

This capacity for masquerade and multiple identity found clear expression in MadeIn’s inaugural exhibition, ‘Seeing One’s Own Eyes: Contemporary Art from the Middle East’ (2009), for which ‘Calm’, ‘Dah… Dah… Dah… Dah…’, and ‘You’re Going to Heaven Tomorrow’ were created. The central conceit of this exhibition, as the title indicates, was the misleading assertion that works included had been created by young Middle Eastern artists with the intention of ‘dissolving any monolithic views’ about the art of this region and assembling ‘a representative – if never comprehensive – sample of what Middle Eastern art wants to be about today.’(6) Those who visited the show found a range of stereotypical motifs on display, from chadors and mosques to oil derricks and razor wire, ‘generically evocative forms spiced with enough ethnic detail to make their consumption feel like a border crossing, albeit a very smooth one.’(7) The aim, as the accompanying text makes clear, was to ‘provoke the viewer to think about issues of cultural perception’ and to expose ‘the tendency of the West to create a neat package for art from other cultures.’(8) Hence the apparently missing preposition: we are not expected to see with our own eyes, drawing back the veil to bear witness to the unadorned truth, but to recognise that our vision is always already compromised by prejudice and preconception – we see what we want to see. Impartiality is an impossibility.

For those unfamiliar with Xu’s artistic career, this subtext in ‘Calm’, ‘Dah… Dah… Dah… Dah…’, and ‘You’re Going to Heaven Tomorrow’ is not immediately apparent in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’. A clue to their contrived exoticism is provided, however, by the inclusion of ‘In Progress #180×131’ (2012), a Persian rug recreated in plywood that both confirms the Middle Eastern theme while exposing its fabrication. The implied substitution of soft woollen fibres for a more inflexible medium also draws attention to another unifying theme in the exhibition: an attention to material contrasts. This is evident as well in the combination of masonry and silicon rubber in ‘Calm’, but especially in the pairing of the steel ‘voice-graphs’ with ‘Under Heaven 20121018’ (2012) and ‘Under Heaven – Black Light 0302VS0137’ (2013). Xu (or rather his staff at MadeIn) created these and other works in the ‘Under Heaven’ series by using a chef’s piping bag to apply oil paint in icing-like swirls and daubs so thick that they can take months to dry and must be rotated when hung to prevent slumping. The visceral effect of this application has been diminished at the NGA by their display behind glass in a poorly lit corner of the gallery, preventing a full appreciation of their three-dimensionality. Nevertheless, the contrast of voluptuous excess and unyielding rigidity created by their juxtaposition with the other works in the room remains in evidence.

The material contrasts continue in the third gallery, in which sculptural and textile works of monumental proportions imbue the recurring tension between hard and soft with an air of faded luxury. The excess of the ‘Under Heaven’ canvases finds an echo here in the visually and materially ostentatious tapestries ‘Spread B-041’ (2010) and ‘Immortals’ Trails in Secret Land’ (2012). The former is a variation on a series first shown in ‘Seeing One’s Own Eyes’ in which European and North American caricatures of Middle Eastern politics are combined in feverish collages of fear, hatred, and prejudice. The eclectic cast of characters populating this tapestry, on the other hand, are drawn from popular cartoons and animated series, their garish and crudely embroidered forms overlaid to the point of illegibility. ‘Immortals’ Trails in Secret Land’ is equally unintelligible, juxtaposing a haphazard assortment of figures, motifs, and symbolic objects drawn from various cultures with marine animals, birds, and a writhing serpent. The spectacle and inscrutability of both works are heightened by their installation above eye-level and their overwhelming scale, enticing the viewer to search for some key to unlock the mystery of their composition, only to discover that this mystery lies entirely in their resistance to any attempt at understanding. There are no complex allegories here waiting to be uncovered by a worthy initiate, only an absurd and vacuous palimpsest calculated to mislead and deceive.

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view

XU ZHEN®: ETERNITY VS EVOLUTION
installation view

The same fusion of vacuity and spectacle animates the final three works in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’, imposing sculptural assemblages that dominate both the exhibition design and branding. These works exemplify a third phase in Xu’s career, created following the inauguration in 2013 of his XUZHEN™ brand among MadeIn’s growing range of art-products. For Monika Szewczyk, this most recent self-commodification signals a final metamorphosis of the individual into the corporation, ‘[devoid of] biography, personhood, or personality [yet acting] as a kind of super-subjectivity.’(9) David Elliott has identified a resemblance between this super-subjectivity and the incarnations of Daoist and Buddhist deities, the diversity of which both embodies and obscures the multiplicity of the divine.(10) Once again, Xu is demonstrating his capacity for infinite transformation – with Walt Whitman, he celebrates the ambiguities of his artistic practice: ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).’(11) Characteristically, however, the artist himself has dismissed his self-branding as little more than another stage in MadeIn’s development as a business, driven by market demand: ‘Over the years we have found that people want a person to focus on rather than a group.’(12)

The three monumental sculptural works included in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’, marketed under the XUZHEN™ brand, exemplify this apparently contradictory combination of the divine and prosaic. ‘European Thousand-Armed Classical Sculpture’ (2014), when viewed head-on, conjures an illusion of unity – or perhaps of super-subjectivity – in which a procession of sculptural icons embodying European and North American deities or allegorical figures are incorporated into a composite facsimile of Guanyin, the thousand-armed bodhisattva of compassion. The unity of this figure immediately dissolves, however, as soon as the viewer moves around the sculpture and discovers the fractured artificiality of its construction, a material echo of those equally fragile and contrived dreams of geopolitical harmony or universal syncretism of belief to which so many idealists have dedicated their lives. ‘Eternity – Longxing Temple Buddha Statue Part Three, Tang Dynasty Buddha Statue, Longxing Temple Buddha Statue part Five, Northern Qi Amitabha Statue, Vairochana, the Cosmic Buddha, Hebei Northern Qi Dynasty Standing Buddha Torso, Parthenon East Pediment’ (2013-14) embodies another fusion of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the decapitation and reassembly of sculptural icons standing in for classical Greece and China, inexplicably fused at the neck.

These works appear, at first, to confirm the conventional separation of these regions as distinct spheres of cultural development, home to diametrically opposed forms of religious and political civic life. Xu’s use of the Parthenon pediment as a sole support for the inverted Buddhist figures in ‘Eternity’ can even be read as a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the enduring association of the West with a grounded materialism and the East with groundless spiritual fantasies. Yet in the context of Xu’s broader artistic practice, and especially in conjunction with the other works in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’, their fusion of sculptural vocabularies speaks instead to his desire to transform material artefacts of the past into ‘information objects’ or carriers of coded ‘cultural genes’. When shown in unison, Xu explains, ‘their relationship seems very natural, as if they were meant to be together … re-determined and re-combined.’(13) Speaking with Philip Tinari in 2015, he associated this recombination with a breakdown of singular cultural identification in the post-internet era, to the extent that ‘it becomes … difficult to distinguish who made which work, or … if a work was made by a Chinese or a foreign artist.’(14) Ornamented with these ambivalent icons of transcultural (con)fusion, the Brutalist architectural void of the NGA’s galleries takes on the universalizing proportions of a conqueror’s vault, where trophies of the vanquished jostle for attention, stripped of all previous meaning and specificity.

Keeping watch over this motley hoard, the voluptuous coils of ‘“Hello”’ (2019) take pride of place in ‘Eternity Vs Evolution’, towering over the viewer and following their every move with a baleful gaze that threatens consumption by the emptiness of the void (and note the inclusion of quotation marks in the title). The caption for this work draws attention to the historic prestige of the Corinthian column that Xu has chosen for the body of his serpent, ‘first created in ancient Greece [as] a symbol of power, prestige and western civilization.’ Yet the flaccid immobility of this automated guardian, save for the hesitant and creaking sway of its pediment-head when activated by the approach of the viewer, inspires more pity than dread. Carved in soft and yielding Styrofoam, this is a column devoid of all function, a structural support incapable of supporting its own weight, spectacular in scale but hollow within. As such, ‘“Hello”’ offers a clue to the underlying message of the exhibition: that which seems invulnerable and eternal is often little more than an artfully contrived illusion, while the evidence of our own eyes is rarely as straightforward as it seems and inevitably colored by the assumptions that structure our view of the world. The eager insistence with which Xu’s column forces viewers to look upon its hollow face seems to mark an impatient desire for us to join in the joke – to realize that the spectacle of this exhibition and the archetypal narratives of Chinese eternity and evolution on which this spectacle rests are contrived, reductive, and devoid of substance. The responsibility for this realization remains, however, as always in Xu’s work, on our personal commitment to the questioning of our most cherished values and our readiness to admit that we are all complicit in the upholding of certain stereotypes.

Alex Burchmore

Alex Burchmore

Notes

1. David Bell, ‘White Rabbit, Contemporary Chinese Artists and Soft Power in Sydney’s Chippendale,’ in China in Australasia: Cultural Diplomacy and Chinese Arts Since the Cold War, edited by James Beattie, Richard Bullen, and Maria Galikowski (New York: Routledge, 2019), 136-40.

2. Philip Tinari, ‘Moving in a Bigger Direction,’ Parkett, no. 96 (2015): 149.

3. In this respect, it seems telling, that both works were chosen to feature in the Venice Biennale – ‘Rainbow’ in the 49^th Biennale in 2001 and ‘Shouting’ in the 51^st Biennale in 2005 – where they would undoubtedly have served to reinforce such assumptions for many viewers.

4. Chris Moore, ‘Chris Moore on MADEIN at ShanghART, Shanghai,’ in MadeIn, Seeing One’s Own Eyes: Contemporary Art from the Middle East (Shanghai: ShanghART Gallery, 2009), unpaginated.

5. Travis Jeppesen, ‘Art, Inc. Shanghai,’ Art in America (April 2013): 91.

6. MadeIn, Seeing One’s Own Eyes, unpaginated.

7. Monika Szewczyk, ‘MadeIn Heaven,’ Parkett, no. 96 (2015): 164-5.

8. MadeIn, Seeing One’s Own Eyes, unpaginated.

9. Szewczyk, ‘MadeIn Heaven,’ 166.

10. David Elliott, ‘In the Face of History: Chaos and Rectitude in the Work of Xu Zhen,’ in Xu Zhen, edited by Chris Moore (Berlin: Distanz, 2014), 35.

11. This line appears in Whitman’s magnum opus, ‘Song of Myself’, first published in Leaves of Grass (1855).

12. Xu Zhen, cited in Michael Young, ‘Where I Work: Xu Zhen,’ Art Asia Pacific, no. 88 (May/June 2014): 185.

13. Xu Zhen, in Rajesh Punj, ‘Information Age: A Conversation with Xu Zhen,’ Sculpture 37, no. 3 (April 2018): 27-31.

14. Xu Zhen, in Tinari, ‘Moving in a Bigger Direction,’ 154-5.

This article is only available in Chinese at present
文/张小意

一楼展示的米利亚姆·卡恩 (Miriam Cahn) 作品犹如神典的开篇，创作者在雾中迷失、低吟高唱，在她以感官展开的画卷里，山体长着血脉，表现在痛苦中挣扎的情感；房屋是毕露的线条，释放出包裹或缠绕的明亮；动物们目光空洞、身体脆弱，多半没有耳朵。同样，她以缤纷的色块和线条声张她简明而灿烂的直觉领域，然而她情感的世界却深沉而阴郁，与身体的感官联系深刻，不能轻易的揣度。

1949年生于瑞士巴塞尔的艺术家米利亚姆·卡恩大抵传承了天主教的记忆，“耶和华神阿，我要称谢你，因我受造奇妙可畏。我在暗中受造，在地的深处被联络，那时我的形体并不向你隐藏，我未成形的体质，你的眼早已看见。”这成为了艺术家的表现手法，在一幅命名为《挡道躺》【Im Weg liegen （Lying in the Way）】的油画中，一条混沌的地下暗道，号称躺着的女人头发履面，看也似倒伏，用来生殖的阴户没有隐藏下方反倒在上方，观者随着艺术家，莫名地混淆了正反，女人身边婴儿的大小比例也失调——有可能艺术家在告诉我们，母与婴破碎的血肉和形象，困顿于冥夜 的产道，正在一起艰难的形成，也或是死亡。而另一幅《我的路》【Meine Wege（My Ways）】，赤色的山体宛如洗净的大块肉堆积而成，脉络呈现出渗出的血色，或这也是艺术家以血色引领观众，引领我们在另外的空间、不一样的时间，与她同行这上坡下坡的血路，无论何时，上空天的蓝明亮而清澈，下方水的蓝幽深而神秘。这一套意象的表达方法，沿着斯宾诺莎 “在永恒的相下”（sub specie aeternitatis），由康德在《纯粹理性批判》和《未来形而上学导论》中区分现相和幻相从而精确了传统现象的概念，他坚持现象不是简单的幻相，即感官知觉欺骗性的表象，而是人类时空直观限制内的经验。

米利亚姆·卡恩油画作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

Sifang Art Museum founder Lu Xun with Dr Uli Sigg

米利亚姆·卡恩油画作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

七、八十年代女性主义席卷欧美大陆，对卡恩的影响不可避免，在她的早期创作中，就此将身体加入了创作，有时裸体作画，有时闭目作画，消弭外界对心神的干扰。她将一切体质，不论男、女、动物、植物、房屋、山水，通通剥去了表面 (appearance)，让五脏肺腑的内里自行发光，承载强烈的物理能量 ，成为观众能看到的现象 (phenomenon)。圣经中的未成形体质【Golem】，在希伯来文的解说中，即为没有灵魂的躯体，是魔像。只消一个字母之差，定下了真理与死亡的分歧。若在魔像额头上写emeth（真理），魔像便能成活，而若抹去为首的字母e，只留下meth（死亡），魔像便失去行动的能力。在灼热、封闭的二楼回廊里，观众仿佛沿着炼狱上坡，顺应身体的感受去照见卡恩上世纪七、八十年代的美苏冷战记忆，她描绘核爆炸的蘑菇云，美艳不可方物，吟的是空，落的是烬。

米利亚姆·卡恩油画作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

米利亚姆·卡恩纸本作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

米利亚姆·卡恩油画作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

而后我们路过她的《躺》【Liegen (To lie/lying)】，在那黄昏的空间下，埋在冥思的暗夜里的未成形的体质，脆弱的骨架和空洞的形态；路过《闭着眼／尘中读 我三层楼的家》【 M.G.A./L.I.S. Mein 3-stöckiges Haus】(M(it). G(eschlossenen). A(ugen)/L(esen). I(m). S(taub). My 3-storey House)，路过她赤着身体、闭着眼，在潜意识的暗示之下，以纸页和粉笔表达出来的尘归尘、土归土，以及杂乱的幽灵缠绕的画面；路过上空悬挂的《无题》中温柔中弥漫血色的女性面目，恰好在俯瞰旁边的《吮吸》【Säugen (to suckle)】，未成形的茫然母体只有乳房似血一般鲜明，照应婴儿尚未成形可能的通明，恰好在俯瞰下方的《（不得不）爱》展现的两个不完整生命胚胎，他们纠葛的肉体、一张面孔朝没有面目的对方展露红色的牙床和白色的牙齿；我们还路过了那么多栅栏一般遮挡人体的面纱、断裂笔触形成的面孔、结实的墙壁透出鲜明的光、残肢断臂和未形成的动植物，男人、女人、孩子惊惧或空洞的眼神——这上坡的回廊鲜有温柔，盘旋不去的是痛苦的力量。卡恩拥有的不光是天主教的传承，她还拥有但丁灵魂之旅的记忆，她这断断续续、跃跃欲试的一曲，似欲谱一曲女声《神曲》的长久意志，同样跋涉于记忆、知识、视觉、欲望、感受、思想和灵魂集合的一体，赞美经由肉身而来的精神，从地狱到天堂的历程收割肉身最沉痛的悟得，越来越非物质化、愈加轻盈的灵魂指望一个刹那，在这个灵光乍现的瞬间摆脱地心的引力，凡人界入神的界。

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊，创造者（局部），2019，艺术家与GRIMM画廊（阿姆斯特丹、纽约）惠允；“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

Claudia Martínez Garay, El Creador / The Creator (detail), 2019, courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York; installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊，抱着婴儿的女人，2019，艺术家与GRIMM画廊（阿姆斯特丹、纽约）惠允；“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

Claudia Martínez Garay, mujer cargando bebe / woman carrying baby, 2019, courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York; installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

四方当代美术馆的呈现，不仅仅以一楼呈现来自瑞士卡恩的现实，二楼回廊渐渐攀升到米利亚姆·卡恩《闭着眼／尘中读 我三层楼的家》——这一趟感官、情绪被刺激得极为不安、荡气回肠的旅途，还以盘旋的形式交错摆放克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊（Claudia Martínez Garay）的思索型作品。

1983年生于秘鲁阿亚库乔的克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊的编织、雕塑、视频作品，无一不呈现出思索，年轻的她以继承而来的记忆和大脑习得的思索方法，试图与世界认真对话。美术馆以地下室来呈现她的冥界，埋在幽暗中的亡灵，以15’37’’铭刻的反复呓语《我会活得比你久》，拾阶而上一步步展现的，《小小的家》是她以陶泥捏制的印加文明的生活形态，喝醉的男人洒落的酒瓶、静默的厨房角落仿佛欲行进入的鞋、包裹孩子的女人、侧身而立的奶牛、盛放食物的古老瓶罐墩实而笨拙，而高悬的玉米以超自然的状态呈现壁画、簇绒挂毯上，以及强行空降的鹰和死亡，凌空而视的双眼流下的泪水。离开了她的冥夜，来到一楼她的现实，她提出的作品是藤编的斗牛和斗鸡雕塑，直接揭示以西班牙为代表的基督教文明入侵南美的动物性斗争，一件摆放在地下室的入口，一件被来瑞士的米利亚姆·卡恩描绘的茫然失明的动物、情感迷失的自然景观环绕——两个国度、两个女性从两个时代传承下来的民族记忆、情感、思考、图景，在这儿贯通。

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊，倒吊的鸭子，2020，四方当代美术馆委任作品，艺术家与GRIMM画廊（阿姆斯特丹、纽约）惠允；“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

Claudia Martínez Garay, Jalapato / pulling duck, 2020, commissioned by Sifang Art Museum, courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York; installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊，卖奶酪的女人和她的奶牛，2019，艺术家与GRIMM画廊（阿姆斯特丹、纽约）惠允；“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

Claudia Martínez Garay, mujer vende queso con su vaca / woman selling cheese with her cow, 2019, courtesy of the artist and GRIMM Amsterdam | New York; installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊隶属的印加文明，玉米是行道之食，他们的众神摸索造人，第一轮造出的是动物，它们不会说话，无法心领神会，于是被神扔在杂草和破烂中，自相残杀、毫不留情，肉被即将诞生的更有理智的人宰割食用。第二轮制作的泥人，盲目无光，遇水便化为一滩泥。第三轮木头人因为没有心脏，感情不通，而遭受厨具和家畜的反抗。直到最后，由玉米制作的人因为走遍了千山万水，情感饱满、富有智慧，因而获得了完整的生命，然而他们倚侧大小的分别之心，仍牵引他们觊觎神的地位和智慧，惹出祸乱——印加的众神用自然器具造人的历史，与米利亚姆·卡恩的“未成形的体质”【golem】不谋而合，成为艺术表达的隐喻，成为教育和抚养的启示，来自不同国度的艺术家们，各自沿着祖先的神灵制作不同的艺术品，她们制作了自己，也制作了融汇的血泪和冥想路，她们试图经由自然的体现而凝聚出一条人类同感的天路来。

观众从劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊的地下室开始，随着死者们的亡灵以及活人的苦思冥想，经过了米利亚姆·卡恩随着意识扔在画面上的身体残缺和情感苦痛，穿行于以情而动的天地造物之间，经过她杂乱无章的《三层楼的家》、血肉相连的《吮吸》、面面相觑的《（不得不）爱》，犹如类似的母体脱胎，抵达克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊以18’49’’指示的数码视频《以及，他们从没能杀得了他》，失神的眼睛絮絮叨叨地祈求神的授命。安第斯宇宙观的“帕查库提（Pachakuti）”，意指玉米人们在时空的轮回中回到最初的起点——她们，两位不同国家、出身不同时代的艺术家，跨越时空，在2020年11月8日来到古老的中国南京，并肩应答人类发生的暴力、创伤、冲突的集体记忆，运用她们内在的感受、情绪、意识、思索、领悟，剜去现实生活伪造的外观，整合表达观众得以自己的智识和通感解读的图景，描绘个人的、社会的，以及人类整体的浴火重生。

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Claudia Martínez Garay, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Claudia Martínez Garay, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Claudia Martínez Garay, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

相对于男性外化、线型的逻辑，女性的逻辑是内化的、婉转的，对应于两位女艺术家的联展，这儿的性别、身份看起来靠近了一个女性主义在国际当代艺术中的位置命题，文化表达以及承载的路，一样也是广泛繁殖的器，在女性抢夺社会权力的外观之下，更为根深蒂固、错综复杂的女性斗争是体内的暗中受造、两性的彼此消解，即为以内在的器官孕育情感，以柔弱的感官融合结实的思索，得以滋养的灵魂借以消解身体内的暴力与欲望。谈到这里，必须要提及的是卡恩作品的命名。圣经称文字由上帝的呼吸形成，每一个词语都会发光。在有人类记录以来的漫长时空，每种语言的每个词都形成了复杂多样的内涵，可以差异化解释，犹如天然巧合，既可以流畅地表达对神明的赞美，也可以相反形成叙事的遮蔽，即正反、阴阳的颠倒，与她画作的表现手法如出一辙——这到底是上帝为了惩罚人类觊觎登天之心而建的巴别塔，抑或有人故意纂改语言，方方面面错误引导，不让具有不同文化的人们获知真相本体——语言的蔓生和错领，如镜像般对照展览方描述的克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊，“她以研究为基础的实践，探索权力和暴力如何通过殖民主义编纂的叙事得以持续存在。”似乎也同样解释了为何艺术家们要以符号、画面、感官、现象反复迂回，暗中表达共通情感，试图以别外的面貌建构讲着不同语言的人们可能抵达的心领神会。

米利亚姆·卡恩纸本作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

米利亚姆·卡恩纸本作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

米利亚姆·卡恩影像作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

米利亚姆·卡恩纸本作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Miriam Cahn, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊作品，“灵与景”展览现场，四方当代美术馆

work by Claudia Martínez Garay, installation view at ‘Ten Thousand Things’, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing

灼热的弯道上坡，拐弯处终于迎来了透光的阳台，观众们经过泥堆积的生命遗迹，即克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊命名为《创造者》的泥土和陶土物件，人们推开阳台的门，迎来裹风来的一片阳光，站在阳台上的观众，在阳光的照耀下，从高处俯瞰通透开阔的山林远景，来自圣经伊甸园的史前树、来自印第安民族史诗《波波尔乌Popol Vuh》的史前树，和当下南京老山阳光下仍旧生长的树。这一路视觉、感官、直觉、思索的光合作用，犹如美术馆设计点化、感染观众们渐渐靠近艺术家的内心，获知迷失但终于抵达天堂的但丁，“至此，我崇高的想像力缺乏能力了，但在爱的作用下，我的欲望和意志仿佛受力相等的轮子转动起来，正是这爱推动了太阳和别样的群星。”由此，二位艺术家觊觎登高的想像力到达了巅峰，不再与神的意志较力，心生敬畏，转而在爱的推动下，领会太阳照耀万物、土地滋润生命的时空恩典，集古老经典丛书为一身，穿越地点、时代的创造者们相互接力，济济一堂，座标与魔像不尽相同的人类群星。

米利亚姆·卡恩
Miriam Cahn

Claudia Martínez Garay
克劳迪娅·马丁内斯·加拉伊

Curator Weng Xiaoyu at the opening

Zhang Xiaoyu 张榷景 2020

By Kyoo Lee

Chinese Translation by Huang Jingyuan and Liang Shuhan
 

If writing is the mother of the comatose archive,
I wonder if exhibiting could be the rehearsal hall for a brief spell of somnambulation.

— Huang Jing Yuan, Right to Write

Tucked away in the left corner of the third floor of the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, between Francis Alÿs’s video Rehearsal I (1999–2001), in which a Volkswagen Beetle continues its Sisyphean exercise of ascending and descending a hill, and Wu Chi-Yu’s video Reading List (2017), in which the underbelly of transnational capitalism incisively rescales itself, is another “third world,” Huang Jing Yuan’s own hybrid gallery, Right to Write (2018). Her writing room, a co-writing space with three of her own paintings interspersed with calligraphic pieces by others, some close to calligraffitis, is situated between those two videographic loops of the modern, post or hyper. Set up like a construction site under construction, Huang’s work is — or inserts itself like — a ruggedly analog, analogically layered contrarian zone in between, where expressively inscribed surfaces are grafted, seemingly randomly, onto the inner dividers of the space such as PET sheets, semitransparent PC sheets, tall green curtains, long canvases, etc., turning the whole room into a half-closed exit, a passage out of the textual site into another sort, sortie, of third-worlding.

Huang Jing Yuan, “The Right to Write”, Installation view at “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Courtesy of the Power Station of Art.

How so?

So I am walking in, wandering through this dimly lit, shack-like choral site, a sort of khôrā (χώρα), the territory outside the polis also rooted in it as an invisible receptacle, a housing house. The site is sliced and staged in five “steps on the ladder of writing,” as Hélène Cixous might say: (1) an alley-like corridor at the entrance to (2) a center-stage-like living room semi-open to (3) a backstage-like backroom that, with a set of three display cabinets and chairs, whispers “this is an archive” to (4) a cave-like bedroom long and narrow, where five books on a small plastic table party with nineteen balloons crowded around the corners, all invited by two pillows at the end of the room, a silhouette of which is visible from (5) the reception, also an exit from/to Wu’s darkroom, the only access point.

“The Right to Write”, participants and floor plan, “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Huang Jingyuan. Courtesy of the artist.

So this port of dreaming is portable and porous, an ex libris, where the dreamwork, part of the book, also departs from itself, with the x of ex, its own outwork. In an exhibition leaflet, Huang writes:

The project tries to synchronize different kinds of isolation, to create a narrative for segregated worlds to mirror each other (no, they don’t explain each other, nor can they save each other). It invites viewers to ask: What is the ordinary Chinese person’s experience and expression as they negotiate the vortex of changes and ubiquitous inequality? What do these instances of picturing the world say about the time we are in? How may we empower ourselves when faced with the past and the reality in front of us, and the world yet to come?

“The Right to Write”, entrance, “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Kyoo Lee.

The layout that literalizes this democratic, cramming, clamoring, and choral spacing stays circular, which renders this documentary project multilayered as well as multilingual, and its discursive realism materially imperative: it is what it is. What you are entering and exiting into at once is a transient cocoon for the dispossessed in transit that can be — and was — constructed in just a couple of days. An interstitial crossbreeding of the words and the worlds across the board, a concurrent sighting-citing of the contingent “coming-together” (Huang’s words) on-site of what matters materially: that is what is happening in this counter-show of the sociopolitical hierarchy and intricacy of existence in China.

“The Right to Write”, entryway (right: Ma Yongjin part; Left: TST part), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Jiang Wenyi. Courtesy of the Power Station of Art.

Held here is an unmanicured display of the messy, messily precise assemblage of wor(l)ds. This democalligraphic utopia is littered with not only letters — a kinetographic mix of Chinese, English, German, slogans, clichés, quips, among others — but an eclectic array of homey materials such as florescent lamps, blankets, foam padding, and vinyl sacks.

There are scraps on the bedroom wall, including a sheet from a college-ruled notebook bearing the logo of Beijing’s Tsinghua University over which an un(der)recognized migrant worker-calligrapher, one of the fifteen invited, has written his lines quite elegantly — a sign of education. The letterhead signifies something for the letter-writer otherwise insignificant; see how such a socially significant space, Tsinghua, one of the highest seats of learning in China, was used as an interface, as a practice paper. What makes this otherwise ordinary note noteworthy is the psychopolitical incongruity between the two different use values held by that inscriptive surface, one utterly functional and the other overly symbolic. Those blank lines inviting aspirational inscriptive practices routinize the small, private pleasure of playing on a (reproduced) public property, which would also be inconsequential — or is it? Such a transposition does seem to effect transvaluation, however micro. In this shabby dreamscape, like a roomy coffin, the glass ceiling could also shelter the nanotransgression of a writer enjoying his own calligraphic (with)drawing, a room of his own.

“The Right to Write”, Installation view (Xu Liangyuan part), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Kyoo Lee.

So what?

Looking back, what initially attracted me was this concept behind the current edition of the Shanghai Biennale: “proregress,” a curious head-scratcher from poet-painter-playwright E. E. Cummings, whose works countered the ideology of progress, the discourse against which one is supposed to feel under- or over-developed or still developing. At the Biennale, the curatorial team has brilliantly recontextualized proregress as the correlate to a mystical dance step, 禹步 (yubu), in the ancient Daoist ritual: a twisted bi-directional movement composed of stepping forward once and backward twice. In its contraction, proregress holds together the scrambled eggy steps of choreographic time across this chiastic zone of modern/postmodern/spatiotemporal contemporaneity and simplexity, “actually absorbing,” as the biennial’s chief curator Cuauhtémoc Medina aptly puts it, “the weight of this moment in time,” all the complications and entanglements that time itself seems to endure now and nowadays as if forever.

“The Right to Write”, floor, “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Huang Jingyuan. Courtesy of the artist.

Huang’s Right to Write is, again, an illuminating case in point, a vibrant work in proregress. An imaginatively populated and democratically polyvocalized why-not, this choral space for an archival future honors without trying to harmonize the life experiences of the xiaorenmin (xiao small, renmin people as in People’s Republic of China). She choreographs their microsignatory gestures by unleashing and rechanneling their expressive, and at times lyrical, potentials — through and toward the collaborative platforming of their auto-ethnographic or auto-documentary work. This mode of socially participatory art is literally process-oriented since the work in network, at every step, materializes through co-creative dialogues; the artist is there not to validate or authorize but as a sort of midwife. As a series of counter-proscriptive and co-scriptive experimentations in open-ended collaborations, Right to Write (or to read) becomes a site-specific, descriptively proregressive exploration and analog data-visualization of a polycentric democalligraphic utopia — pregressive, even (walking along as if ahead/around/back and forth).

“The Right to Write”, Installation view (Chen Jianhe part), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Huang Jingyuan. Courtesy of the artist.

What is the condition that makes progressive and regressive moment, itself so ambivalently (with)held, possible? Such a Kantian quest could be recast in the spirit of daoist proregressivity too: pushing for “pregressing,” I’m transporting this idea that dao (way/route 道) is “in the making” (道行之而成), not simply made, as in the second chapter of the Zhuangzi (莊子), which showcases the egalitarianism of Daoist philopoetics. Pregress (道行), a Daoist practice of “following” Dao, is an instantaneous auto-spacing and pacing, an improvisational performance per form (of its own), which is not to say that the pregressor is an “avant-garde” walker or mover, for she “advances” not. Rather, yubu-ing more or less, she lingers with her neighbors and moves with or without them, as necessary, while passing through various walls, connecting the dots here and there. In short, pregress points to choral timing and spacing itself — or herself — embodied in its vehicular dao, namely, passages and processes including protocols in motion.

So why bother?

I am interested in further resemiologizing the eco-echo-spacing mode of socially engaged art and articulating such in a more site-specific, sinographic set of idioms. I focus on the dynamic ambience of Huang’s translingual and social dreamwork, inseparable from her teamwork as well as her own artwork, because there I see how the pregressive level of its praxis also mirrors and reinforces its formative bioenergetics (qi 气/気), not just its morphology; this way, the framing and the framed become reciprocally generative.

Perhaps this is how a Daoist sensorship works as a mode of (counter-)demonstration too. See how a critical intervention happens through and concurs with a counterbalancing perceptual move: observe the convoluted yet stabilized shaking, the shake-up in the middle of it, swift and quiet, potential or actual, literal or metaphoric, the phenomenological and material presence of the other move, its necessary messiness, however mini or contained. What prompts all that jazz, this network of collaboration, if not the work of netting and knitting per se? Huang’s structurally contingent, makeshift production of proletariat calligrammatology through socially synergetic artistic practices presents a matrixially autographic “X” without presetting or representing “it” (X) while proregressively renewing each one in the form of auto-archival backtracking and recasting.

“The Right to Write”, Installation view (Song Chengbao part), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Kyoo Lee.

Involved here is a constant passive-active glancing back and forth, the active gaze of the artist, also visually metonymized in the two (pair-able) paintings of a tight-lipped, stubborn-looking little girl at the back leading to the reading room of the house (Next to the water 01, 2016) and a middle-aged woman in front framing the living room, who looks like a world-weary Chinese Athena today (Next to the water 03, 2018). “If writing is the mother of the comatose archive,” as the artist writes, “exhibiting could be the rehearsal hall for a brief spell of somnambulation,” where that girl turning around to look at you, that haunting one, could be you, any one of, in the past or future, just as that lady resting there for a while in the middle of some group tour could be anywhere, anyone.

“The Right to Write”, Installation view (Oil painting “Next to the water 03” by Huang Jingyuan), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Huang Jingyuan. Courtesy of the artist.

Further telling is the position of those two paintings triangulated by one in between, an image of a (pregnant?) girl and a boy holding each other (Next to the water 02, 2017). The pregressive circularity of and bordered connections among three female figures, only visually signified here, functions like an ur-text (of contemporary China in the making?) that seems already fragmented as if pre-indexed. By proactively staging counterfragmentations as a series of shout-outs, however small or seemingly secondary, Huang’s anarchive, along with the pregressive vacating of its own vocal subjectivity, effects the autocuration of an eclectically free “we”, the sort of intersubject not as strongly present in more elitist and individualistic “other Western” figures such as Emily Dickinson or Walter Benjamin, those also focused on the fragment(ed)o(nto)logy of documented lives.

What would those writers from other shores have seen in this “other” writing?

“The Right to Write”, Installation view, “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Kyoo Lee.

The rustic, quietly irreducible residency of the graphic bodies dynamically distributed and detailed in small pieces of papers and big pictures held together in their chrono-diverse proregressivity, pregressively intensifies the very blurry overlap between the visual and the “verbal” which, in the case of Chinese characters, is close to visuo-musical. Right to Write as a right to play de-monolingualizes and re-quotidianizes the very norms, practices, and scenes of writing, and the artwork itself, the platform that looks but is not flat, unfolds through a serially inclusive, transformatively collective aesthetic democratization, especially an asynchronic reminification with other “Chinese characteristics,” of a Right to Write.

This could perhaps be one way to split open and empower alternative social (including socialist or is it now post-socialist?) tracks within China today, in and outside her hyper-controlled politico-economic landscapes and turbo dreams. This idea of a democalligraphic u-topia remains highly speculative and yet it is at least an idea. On my way out of the Shanghai Biennale, right past Museums, Money and Politics (2018), Andrea Fraser’s map of the US shown in China today, another visualization of the “verbal,” I thought, yes, “right: to write _____” alone together would be an idea — especially to write along with others in a corner room of ones’ own belonging to a stately house that used to be a power station, yes, power.

“The Right to Write”, Installation view (Xu Shida part), “the 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress”, Power Station of Art, 2018. Photography by Huang Jingyuan. Courtesy of the artist.

Kyoo Lee, a member of AICA-USA, a Professor of Philosophy, Gender Studies and Justice Studies at the City University of New York, and the author of Reading Descartes Otherwise and Writing Entanglish, is a transdisciplinary philosopher, art/cultural/literary critic and writer.

A recipient of fellowships and visiting appointments from Cambridge University, CUNY Graduate Center, KIAS, the Mellon Foundation, the NEH, Seoul National University, Yanbian University, among others, her philopoetic texts have appeared in AICA-USA Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, PN Review, Randian, The Volta and the White Review as well as numerous academic journals and anthologies. Her Mellon-funded anthology, Queenzenglish.mp3: poetry | philosophy | performativity, with contributions from 50+ poets, musicians, theorists and performance artists from across the globe, is forthcoming.

The co-editor of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of transContinental Feminism, she also serves on the editorial boards of Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics, Open Humanities Press, Simon de Beauvoir Studies and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

Throughout her site-specific cogitographical practices, Q Professor Lee explores co-generative links between critical theory and creative prose including “art writing”.