In September 2022, China Central Television released a five-episode documentary about Rongbaozhai, one of the oldest stationery companies and art galleries in China, to celebrate its 350th anniversary. This was part of the global propaganda aiming to reintroduce traditional Chinese cultural brands and their products under Xi’s art and culture policy of ‘telling China’s stories well’. One of the episodes is dedicated to the woodblock facsimiles of traditional Chinese paintings (mubanshuiyin) that Rongbaozhai produced in the 1950s and 1960s following Mao’s literature and art policy. However, the perspective of the storytelling is almost entirely focused on technical details. Little has been mentioned about these exquisitely crafted prints’ political function as specimens to demonstrate PRC’s cultural orthodoxy to traditional Chinese arts and crafts and its resolution of restoring Chinese cultural heritage. Drawing on archival materials, memoirs of former employees and a case study of the first mubanshuiyin reproduction – zanhua shinü tu (Court Ladies Wearing Flowered Headdresses) – this article traces the development of this unique art form during its golden age when it was marketed as both diplomatic gifts and souvenirs and a paradigm of collective craftsmanship by proletariat artisans. As a frequently used gift-giving practice for culture promotion, this article also unveils the contribution of mubanshuiyin reproductions to China’s soft power building and early art diplomacy from the 1950s to 1970s.
{"title":"Rebranding China through facsimiles: A study of mubanshuiyin reproductions in PRC’s art diplomacy and soft power building, 1952–79","authors":"Yitao Qian","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00087_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00087_1","url":null,"abstract":"In September 2022, China Central Television released a five-episode documentary about Rongbaozhai, one of the oldest stationery companies and art galleries in China, to celebrate its 350th anniversary. This was part of the global propaganda aiming to reintroduce traditional Chinese cultural brands and their products under Xi’s art and culture policy of ‘telling China’s stories well’. One of the episodes is dedicated to the woodblock facsimiles of traditional Chinese paintings (mubanshuiyin) that Rongbaozhai produced in the 1950s and 1960s following Mao’s literature and art policy. However, the perspective of the storytelling is almost entirely focused on technical details. Little has been mentioned about these exquisitely crafted prints’ political function as specimens to demonstrate PRC’s cultural orthodoxy to traditional Chinese arts and crafts and its resolution of restoring Chinese cultural heritage. Drawing on archival materials, memoirs of former employees and a case study of the first mubanshuiyin reproduction – zanhua shinü tu (Court Ladies Wearing Flowered Headdresses) – this article traces the development of this unique art form during its golden age when it was marketed as both diplomatic gifts and souvenirs and a paradigm of collective craftsmanship by proletariat artisans. As a frequently used gift-giving practice for culture promotion, this article also unveils the contribution of mubanshuiyin reproductions to China’s soft power building and early art diplomacy from the 1950s to 1970s.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139292694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This introduction for the Special Issue establishes and substantiates China as a timely case study for the understanding of cultural diplomacy and nation branding. It traces the country’s mobilization of creative expressions, including contemporary art, to recalibrate its international image in line with its expanding power, but also more often, to offset what it perceives as hostile representations and critique of its authoritarian rule. We first disentangle the overlapping objectives and strategies between cultural diplomacy and national branding, then how they are rendered through artistic expressions to both redeem and – sometimes unintentionally – undermine China’s reputation. Finally, we mark the relationship between the assembled papers which explore a variety of cultural diplomacy and nation branding activities that have emerged out of different artistic traditions, geopolitical contexts and economic motivations. These papers pursue diverse themes, for instance, the misalignment of nationalist branding messages and actual cultural relations on the ground, or the shifting of China’s external image as dictated by the evolving agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. The particularities of these approaches and discoveries, nevertheless, coalesce to underscore that knotted relationship between politics and aesthetics which China must manage and manipulate continually to sway global perception.
{"title":"China’s cautious ‘facetuning’: The art of cultural diplomacy and nation branding1","authors":"Jenifer Chao, Christopher S. Browning","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00084_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00084_2","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction for the Special Issue establishes and substantiates China as a timely case study for the understanding of cultural diplomacy and nation branding. It traces the country’s mobilization of creative expressions, including contemporary art, to recalibrate its international image in line with its expanding power, but also more often, to offset what it perceives as hostile representations and critique of its authoritarian rule. We first disentangle the overlapping objectives and strategies between cultural diplomacy and national branding, then how they are rendered through artistic expressions to both redeem and – sometimes unintentionally – undermine China’s reputation. Finally, we mark the relationship between the assembled papers which explore a variety of cultural diplomacy and nation branding activities that have emerged out of different artistic traditions, geopolitical contexts and economic motivations. These papers pursue diverse themes, for instance, the misalignment of nationalist branding messages and actual cultural relations on the ground, or the shifting of China’s external image as dictated by the evolving agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. The particularities of these approaches and discoveries, nevertheless, coalesce to underscore that knotted relationship between politics and aesthetics which China must manage and manipulate continually to sway global perception.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139291979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I analyse the TAZARA Memorial Park in Zambia, which opened in 2022 and commemorates the Zambians, Tanzanians and Chinese who died while building the TAZARA Railway in the mid-twentieth century. Although the memorial is on Zambian soil and recalls a trinational history, it is largely driven by China as a form of Chinese nation branding and soft power. ‘International friendship’ typical of historic Afro-Asian solidarity permeates the memorial’s narratives, and is expressed through large bronze statues as well as museum dioramas, which have loaded museological histories. Zambia, however, was never a tabula rasa onto which this ‘friendship’ was simply imposed, and contemporary attempts to resuscitate historical solidarity are complex. Through interviews with Zambians who live close to the heritage site or worked on the construction of the railway, I demonstrate that there are multiple Zambian responses ranging from frustration and anger to deep feelings of camaraderie. Moving beyond the language of mainstream international relations, I embrace the performativity and generative creativity of culture itself, developing what I refer to as ‘creative power’. In doing so, I analyse two performative interventions that form part of the series, Tulelosha (‘We are mourning’) (2022–23), and which register the gaps and oversights of the memorial.
{"title":"From the dilemma of Chinese nation branding and soft power to the performativity of creative power: The TAZARA Memorial Park and artistic intervention in Zambia","authors":"Ruth Simbao","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00085_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00085_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I analyse the TAZARA Memorial Park in Zambia, which opened in 2022 and commemorates the Zambians, Tanzanians and Chinese who died while building the TAZARA Railway in the mid-twentieth century. Although the memorial is on Zambian soil and recalls a trinational history, it is largely driven by China as a form of Chinese nation branding and soft power. ‘International friendship’ typical of historic Afro-Asian solidarity permeates the memorial’s narratives, and is expressed through large bronze statues as well as museum dioramas, which have loaded museological histories. Zambia, however, was never a tabula rasa onto which this ‘friendship’ was simply imposed, and contemporary attempts to resuscitate historical solidarity are complex. Through interviews with Zambians who live close to the heritage site or worked on the construction of the railway, I demonstrate that there are multiple Zambian responses ranging from frustration and anger to deep feelings of camaraderie. Moving beyond the language of mainstream international relations, I embrace the performativity and generative creativity of culture itself, developing what I refer to as ‘creative power’. In doing so, I analyse two performative interventions that form part of the series, Tulelosha (‘We are mourning’) (2022–23), and which register the gaps and oversights of the memorial.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139292628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines how the China Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale attempts to reimagine a new ontology between contemporary Chinese art, artificial intelligence-generated art and artistic practices, as well as the official Chinese discourse on technological positivity. It argues that the China Pavilion can be read through the lens of a Sinofuturist discourse and how the pavilion is spatially and temporally situated in contemporary digital Chinese art. Taking the title ‘Meta-Scape’, the China Pavilion can be understood as a futuristic phototype that the Chinese state mobilizes in formulating a rhetoric of a cohesive digital civilization. This underlines the ways the pavilion not only generates technological inquiries to imagine new paths for artistic practices but also manifests the role that Chinese new media art has on rendering the nation’s international image. In exploring one of the AI-generated artworks titled Streaming Stillness (2022), this article investigates how the ‘techno-turn’ in contemporary Chinese art illuminates the digitalization of cultural memory in relation to the dynamics and discontents between technological aestheticism and China’s national image building process.
{"title":"Digital China and its discontents: On the politics of Sinofuturism and image building at the Venice Biennale","authors":"Gigi Wai-Chi Wong","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00086_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00086_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how the China Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale attempts to reimagine a new ontology between contemporary Chinese art, artificial intelligence-generated art and artistic practices, as well as the official Chinese discourse on technological positivity. It argues that the China Pavilion can be read through the lens of a Sinofuturist discourse and how the pavilion is spatially and temporally situated in contemporary digital Chinese art. Taking the title ‘Meta-Scape’, the China Pavilion can be understood as a futuristic phototype that the Chinese state mobilizes in formulating a rhetoric of a cohesive digital civilization. This underlines the ways the pavilion not only generates technological inquiries to imagine new paths for artistic practices but also manifests the role that Chinese new media art has on rendering the nation’s international image. In exploring one of the AI-generated artworks titled Streaming Stillness (2022), this article investigates how the ‘techno-turn’ in contemporary Chinese art illuminates the digitalization of cultural memory in relation to the dynamics and discontents between technological aestheticism and China’s national image building process.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139301574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores structure, motivations and cross-cultural mechanics of operations of alternative cultural diplomacy in China, performed by K11. The K11 Art Mall franchise, opened in Hong Kong in 2008 by Chinese billionaire Adrian Cheng, has established its visible presence in the global arts markets by supporting contemporary Chinese artists and sponsoring major international arts residencies and large-scale events and exhibitions. Deconstructing and exploring the neo-liberal multilateral nature of K11 diplomacy, the research questions how K11 operates and navigates the international communication complexities within the global arts market. It analyses how this diplomacy is different from government-led bilateral cultural diplomacy of China and why it creates less frictions and contradictions on the international level. The article reveals that the rapid integration of K11 into the international art market is a combination of different factors. Beyond the economic power of K11 to sponsor major international events in collaboration with prestigious partners, it also possesses more flexibility and tolerance to navigate the normative environments of the ‘epistemic community’ of the global arts world, which do not always work well with national authoritative regime’s pressures. However, positioning itself as an apolitical player with a global vision, K11 is dominating a niche within the national art market, where it does not compete with state authorities. Moreover, it generates a high economic and cultural capital in China by nurturing contemporary Chinese arts and raising their prestige and value on the international level.
{"title":"K11 alternative diplomacies: Penetrating the global arts markets","authors":"Natalia Grincheva","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00090_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00090_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores structure, motivations and cross-cultural mechanics of operations of alternative cultural diplomacy in China, performed by K11. The K11 Art Mall franchise, opened in Hong Kong in 2008 by Chinese billionaire Adrian Cheng, has established its visible presence in the global arts markets by supporting contemporary Chinese artists and sponsoring major international arts residencies and large-scale events and exhibitions. Deconstructing and exploring the neo-liberal multilateral nature of K11 diplomacy, the research questions how K11 operates and navigates the international communication complexities within the global arts market. It analyses how this diplomacy is different from government-led bilateral cultural diplomacy of China and why it creates less frictions and contradictions on the international level. The article reveals that the rapid integration of K11 into the international art market is a combination of different factors. Beyond the economic power of K11 to sponsor major international events in collaboration with prestigious partners, it also possesses more flexibility and tolerance to navigate the normative environments of the ‘epistemic community’ of the global arts world, which do not always work well with national authoritative regime’s pressures. However, positioning itself as an apolitical player with a global vision, K11 is dominating a niche within the national art market, where it does not compete with state authorities. Moreover, it generates a high economic and cultural capital in China by nurturing contemporary Chinese arts and raising their prestige and value on the international level.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"120 12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139297752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, film has been regulated in terms of Mao Zedong’s proclamation that ‘art serves politics’. This article argues that in the 2010s, Hollywood science fiction films serve Chinese politics as nationalistic propaganda and nation branding as part of the soft power initiatives of China’s public diplomacy efforts of ‘going global’ and ‘telling China’s stories well’ in exchange for access to China’s lucrative box office. While most Hollywood films do not include any representations of China, this article identifies a trend in Hollywood science fiction films from the 2010s where entities of China play major roles in the narrative. The article applies narrative and textual analysis to illuminate national image building in five Hollywood films: 2012 (2009), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), RoboCop (2014), Arrival (2016) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018). These films realize the goal of China’s film policy for positive images of China, such as the world’s leading political and industrial power. The depictions of China are shown to reflect the Made in China 2025 initiative for securing global dominance in technology and manufacturing and links these depictions to the China Dream. The article concludes with a comparative analysis of the Chinese science fiction films Reset (2017) and Shanghai Fortress (2019) and finds that the Hollywood films contain the same national images and narrative roles of China as these domestic films. While this article sheds light on one case of the impact of China on the content of one nation’s films, it is just a small example of the impact of China’s film policy on national cinemas as there are 22 countries with Chinese co-production agreements resulting in over five hundred Sino-foreign co-production revenue-sharing films in the 2010s from countries around the world whose content has been regulated by the Chinese government.
{"title":"2010s Hollywood science fiction: Telling China’s stories well to the world","authors":"Stephen Andriano-Moore","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00088_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00088_1","url":null,"abstract":"Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, film has been regulated in terms of Mao Zedong’s proclamation that ‘art serves politics’. This article argues that in the 2010s, Hollywood science fiction films serve Chinese politics as nationalistic propaganda and nation branding as part of the soft power initiatives of China’s public diplomacy efforts of ‘going global’ and ‘telling China’s stories well’ in exchange for access to China’s lucrative box office. While most Hollywood films do not include any representations of China, this article identifies a trend in Hollywood science fiction films from the 2010s where entities of China play major roles in the narrative. The article applies narrative and textual analysis to illuminate national image building in five Hollywood films: 2012 (2009), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), RoboCop (2014), Arrival (2016) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018). These films realize the goal of China’s film policy for positive images of China, such as the world’s leading political and industrial power. The depictions of China are shown to reflect the Made in China 2025 initiative for securing global dominance in technology and manufacturing and links these depictions to the China Dream. The article concludes with a comparative analysis of the Chinese science fiction films Reset (2017) and Shanghai Fortress (2019) and finds that the Hollywood films contain the same national images and narrative roles of China as these domestic films. While this article sheds light on one case of the impact of China on the content of one nation’s films, it is just a small example of the impact of China’s film policy on national cinemas as there are 22 countries with Chinese co-production agreements resulting in over five hundred Sino-foreign co-production revenue-sharing films in the 2010s from countries around the world whose content has been regulated by the Chinese government.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139303599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Founded in 2018 by Hong Kong heiress Queenie Rosita Law of the Law family apparel brand Bossini fame, Q Art Group is a private art initiative between Hungary and China that, in the words of its Hungarian artistic director, promotes Central and Eastern European art ‘within the dynamics of the Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). Hungary was the first European country to sign onto BRI cooperation, and it leads the 14 + 1 initiative promoting investment between China and Central and Eastern Europe. The country’s national-conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán uses Hungary’s position as a BRI gateway to bolster an ‘illiberal’ agenda within the European Union. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Q Art Group – comprising the Budapest private museum, Q Contemporary, the Hong Kong gallery Double Q and Q Studio, an art studio that works with luxury properties – is rebranding both Central and Eastern Europe and China in a mix of cultural diplomacy and art market strategy between Hong Kong and Budapest. The article considers the co-constituting images of the Greater China and Central and Eastern Europe that Q Art Group presents in Hungary and Hong Kong by positioning itself as a discourse maker in Central and Eastern European art. What is the ‘post-communist landscape’ – as Q Art Group calls Central and Eastern Europe – mobilized in this endeavour and how does it serve China’s cultural diplomacy and nation-branding? Mapping the social, economic, juridical and political conditions that Q Art Group negotiates, this article asserts there is no ‘good’ way of curating art for cultural diplomacy, but that the exchange of what is called ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ under cultural diplomacy is but an operation of mutual branding among privileged forms of state capital that use art to circulate the violent philosophical logic behind cultural difference.
{"title":"Curation-as-branding and the problem with cultural diplomacy: The case of Q Art Group","authors":"E. V. Bovino","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00091_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00091_1","url":null,"abstract":"Founded in 2018 by Hong Kong heiress Queenie Rosita Law of the Law family apparel brand Bossini fame, Q Art Group is a private art initiative between Hungary and China that, in the words of its Hungarian artistic director, promotes Central and Eastern European art ‘within the dynamics of the Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). Hungary was the first European country to sign onto BRI cooperation, and it leads the 14 + 1 initiative promoting investment between China and Central and Eastern Europe. The country’s national-conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán uses Hungary’s position as a BRI gateway to bolster an ‘illiberal’ agenda within the European Union. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Q Art Group – comprising the Budapest private museum, Q Contemporary, the Hong Kong gallery Double Q and Q Studio, an art studio that works with luxury properties – is rebranding both Central and Eastern Europe and China in a mix of cultural diplomacy and art market strategy between Hong Kong and Budapest. The article considers the co-constituting images of the Greater China and Central and Eastern Europe that Q Art Group presents in Hungary and Hong Kong by positioning itself as a discourse maker in Central and Eastern European art. What is the ‘post-communist landscape’ – as Q Art Group calls Central and Eastern Europe – mobilized in this endeavour and how does it serve China’s cultural diplomacy and nation-branding? Mapping the social, economic, juridical and political conditions that Q Art Group negotiates, this article asserts there is no ‘good’ way of curating art for cultural diplomacy, but that the exchange of what is called ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ under cultural diplomacy is but an operation of mutual branding among privileged forms of state capital that use art to circulate the violent philosophical logic behind cultural difference.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139298724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Embedded in a globalized framework, contemporary Chinese art operates as a powerful network of socio-economic and ideological relationships. Both China and Chinese artists have been assimilated into the global art system, which is firmly built on the basis of capitalism. The world saw a surge in artistic activism in the years between 2008 and 2014, with biennales emerging as the gravitational field in which left-wing theories critically addressed economic and cultural exploitation, as well as the disparities arising from the global capitalist system. While western discourses on contemporary art rejected complicity with the neo-liberal order, refusing to be reduced to ‘a consumable sign of opposition’, the Chinese artworld still upheld neo-liberal values at the Venice Biennale. The incidents involving Chinese artists ‘renting’ the Kenya Pavilion and representing Kenya for the 55th and 56th Venice Biennales in 2013 and 2015 became viral media sensations, prompting accusations of ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’. This article takes the Venetian farce, with a focus on the Kenya Pavilion, as the point of departure to investigate the fame-driven image of China.
{"title":"Capitalizing on art and artifying capitals: China’s journey to Venice and scandal around the Kenya Pavilion","authors":"Xing Zhao","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00089_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00089_1","url":null,"abstract":"Embedded in a globalized framework, contemporary Chinese art operates as a powerful network of socio-economic and ideological relationships. Both China and Chinese artists have been assimilated into the global art system, which is firmly built on the basis of capitalism. The world saw a surge in artistic activism in the years between 2008 and 2014, with biennales emerging as the gravitational field in which left-wing theories critically addressed economic and cultural exploitation, as well as the disparities arising from the global capitalist system. While western discourses on contemporary art rejected complicity with the neo-liberal order, refusing to be reduced to ‘a consumable sign of opposition’, the Chinese artworld still upheld neo-liberal values at the Venice Biennale. The incidents involving Chinese artists ‘renting’ the Kenya Pavilion and representing Kenya for the 55th and 56th Venice Biennales in 2013 and 2015 became viral media sensations, prompting accusations of ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’. This article takes the Venetian farce, with a focus on the Kenya Pavilion, as the point of departure to investigate the fame-driven image of China.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139295636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the theme of marginality in the art of Yang Zhichao, a critically and socially engaged experimental artist who has been active in China since the mid-1980s. Yang’s oeuvre – which includes performance artworks, drawings and installations – revolves around the issue of sociocultural marginality in reform-era society, from the condition of migrant workers, beggars and psychiatric patients to the borderlands of Chinese civilization and the condition of the avant-garde artist. Drawing also on Chinese art criticism and two interviews with the artist, this study examines in particular the performance Within the Fourth Ring Road (1999) through its photographic and literary documentation. While writing on Yang Zhichao’s art has largely focused on his most extreme performances of ‘body art’ such as Planting Grass (2000), the artwork at the centre of this study highlights an anti-spectacular approach to performance art and reflects Yang’s stated belief in the importance of placing oneself in the circumstances of marginalized people in order to move beyond a voyeuristic gaze. Through a critical analysis of said approach the article reveals a quality that pervades Yang Zhichao’s multi-disciplinary artistic career – that is, its ‘contemporariness’, in Giorgio Agamben’s sense as a focus on the darkest, most emblematic aspects of one’s society and time.
{"title":"Yang Zhichao’s performance art at the margins: Within the Fourth Ring Road (1999) and the Chinese contemporary","authors":"G. Strafella, Daria Berg","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00082_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00082_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the theme of marginality in the art of Yang Zhichao, a critically and socially engaged experimental artist who has been active in China since the mid-1980s. Yang’s oeuvre – which includes performance artworks, drawings and installations – revolves around the issue of sociocultural marginality in reform-era society, from the condition of migrant workers, beggars and psychiatric patients to the borderlands of Chinese civilization and the condition of the avant-garde artist. Drawing also on Chinese art criticism and two interviews with the artist, this study examines in particular the performance Within the Fourth Ring Road (1999) through its photographic and literary documentation. While writing on Yang Zhichao’s art has largely focused on his most extreme performances of ‘body art’ such as Planting Grass (2000), the artwork at the centre of this study highlights an anti-spectacular approach to performance art and reflects Yang’s stated belief in the importance of placing oneself in the circumstances of marginalized people in order to move beyond a voyeuristic gaze. Through a critical analysis of said approach the article reveals a quality that pervades Yang Zhichao’s multi-disciplinary artistic career – that is, its ‘contemporariness’, in Giorgio Agamben’s sense as a focus on the darkest, most emblematic aspects of one’s society and time.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43092845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This editorial considers the role of action in the development of performance art, from the late 1970s until today. It is based on the original call for articles for this Special Issue on ‘Performance Art in China: Bodies in Action’ that called for papers on a diverse range of topics. Topics that relate to Chinese terms and conditions for performance art and topics that cover a broad range of histories and conditions related to the art historical development of performance art in China, from the late 1970s until the present day. The editorial raises the important role performance art has played in the history of contemporary art in China. It extends this position to an argument for understanding the important role of performance art in the development of contemporary art worldwide, including in Asia. It does this by considering the art historical study of practices of performance art – and their relation to art, action, space and time – pointing at how each of these performances is considered a prepared action (happening or performance) by the artist, involves the preparation of materials, and invokes temporal and durational experiences, including in performance remediations. The editorial sees the social context of performance art as apparent. Yet, it also raises the important conditioning of performance art as a medium, a medium that can be trained as well. And, as a medium, linked to other mediums and media. The editorial raises concern with past and present urgings that consider performance art a restricted field and instead raise broad conditions of performativity and performative art, positioning the study of performance art as study of art conditioned by action and by the (urgent) condition to perform. In China, as well as elsewhere in Asia, the condition to perform is often urgent and unavoidable, including in the way performance art (art to perform) concerns artists working through conditions of art in relation to social reality. The articles in this Special Double Issue feature a range of examples of such conditions, which are introduced in this editorial, to strengthen the knowledge that performance art is an important field in the study of Chinese contemporary art and countering some of the ongoing criticism and censoring of performance art in China.
{"title":"Bodies in action: Performance art in China","authors":"Thomas J. Berghuis","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00073_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00073_2","url":null,"abstract":"This editorial considers the role of action in the development of performance art, from the late 1970s until today. It is based on the original call for articles for this Special Issue on ‘Performance Art in China: Bodies in Action’ that called for papers on a diverse range of topics. Topics that relate to Chinese terms and conditions for performance art and topics that cover a broad range of histories and conditions related to the art historical development of performance art in China, from the late 1970s until the present day. The editorial raises the important role performance art has played in the history of contemporary art in China. It extends this position to an argument for understanding the important role of performance art in the development of contemporary art worldwide, including in Asia. It does this by considering the art historical study of practices of performance art – and their relation to art, action, space and time – pointing at how each of these performances is considered a prepared action (happening or performance) by the artist, involves the preparation of materials, and invokes temporal and durational experiences, including in performance remediations. The editorial sees the social context of performance art as apparent. Yet, it also raises the important conditioning of performance art as a medium, a medium that can be trained as well. And, as a medium, linked to other mediums and media. The editorial raises concern with past and present urgings that consider performance art a restricted field and instead raise broad conditions of performativity and performative art, positioning the study of performance art as study of art conditioned by action and by the (urgent) condition to perform. In China, as well as elsewhere in Asia, the condition to perform is often urgent and unavoidable, including in the way performance art (art to perform) concerns artists working through conditions of art in relation to social reality. The articles in this Special Double Issue feature a range of examples of such conditions, which are introduced in this editorial, to strengthen the knowledge that performance art is an important field in the study of Chinese contemporary art and countering some of the ongoing criticism and censoring of performance art in China.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42675084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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