Beijing

This week (Part two)

Soon after the meeting with Karen, I went to the ‘ON | OFF Chinas Young Artists’ group show at the UCCA, one of the only non-commercial galleries in the 798 art ‘village’. The show featured the work of 50 artists and in its curatorial statement wishes not to present generational trends but instead to simply showcase “the shared subjectivitiy of young artists while still accounting for their vastly different individual positions”. Nevertheless, a group show themed around a generation naturally puts the viewer in the position of searching for themes or commonalities between the work. I don’t think I found a collective voice across the show but there were some definite themes emerging in the exhibition. Much of it was ‘narrative’ based to some extent, with many works seemingly focusing on labour and the creation of value. The works I found most compelling were the ones that didn’t seem to be obviously about something and required more attention. A large architectural work from brothers Chen Yufan and Yujun inspired by Chinese returning to their hometowns from abroad was a standout in the show.

Something which I’ve found interesting is the attitude from Chinese artists towards their own art history. One of my research interests I am exploring while in Beijing is the ancient Chinese practice of ‘Bei’, rubbings of inscriptions and images on stone monuments which gave rise to printing. I am interested in this as the birth of publishing: the first instance where information becomes mobile. I use an ‘echo’ of this practice in my current work. I haven’t gotten very far with my research at the moment as despite having spoke to a number of people, most seem to have a very hazy knowledge of anything beyond the past 30 years. In general there seems to be a real ‘future focus’. This is hardly surprising given the wider context of China’s transformation but somehow perhaps I was expecting more resistance to this from Chinese artists. In any case, I have a lot of people yet to meet and some specialist print museums to visit so perhaps I will be surprised by what I find!

This week (Part one)

Meetings with Wang Chunchen, curator of the Chinese pavilion at this years Venice Biennale and Karen Smith, British curator based in China since 1992.

Visit to ‘ON | OFF Young Chinese Artists’ show at 798 art district

Many friends and colleagues from the UK have kindly pointed me in the direction of people and places I should meet or visit while here in Beijing. Rachel Marsden at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester directed me towards Wang Chunchen and Karen Smith.

Chunchen is a curator and art critic based at the CAFA Art Museum at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing. He is also an Adjunct Curator of The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum of Michigan State University. Chuchen is known for his contributions to the arts via his own body of works, publications and curatorial experiences.

I met him at CAFA, the very huge and impressive museum on the art school campus. CAFA, the only art academy of higher learning directly under the Chinese Ministry of Education, was founded in April 1950 by merging the National Beijing Art College and the Fine Arts Department of Huabei University. Chunchen has been selected this year to curate the Chinese pavilion at Venice. He told me that this means that he is suddenly in demand from the wider Chinese press (this was evidenced by his phone ringing off the hook during our meeting!) I asked him about any potential outside political influence in the show he intends curate. He told me that there are certain obvious politically contentious issues that if he put in a proposal, then he would almost certainly not be selected.

After our meeting, I had a look at the CAFA collection. The collection contains a wide variety of over 13,000 works from representative artworks by ancient and modern Chinese masters to student works. It struck me as one of those incredibly impressive buildings that are not particularly fit for purpose. The entrance foyer is enormous and bigger that most of the gallery spaces. Additionally the exterior walls of the building are slanted at an upward angle meaning that freestanding walls have to be built within the space to mount any 2-dimensional work.

My next meeting was with Karen Smith, the longest standing British freelance curator working in China. I met her at her office and home near the Forbidden City. We had a long and interesting conversation about how Chinese art is perceived both by artists making work here in China and in the UK and the west generally. It seems like there are no easy conclusions to this question. At the moment Karen is working on an annual publication, which is a summary of the best work she has seen in shows around the country by Chinese artists. She has produced a number of these publications now and hopes that they will become a valuable document in time.

We had another interesting conversation about abstraction in Chinese art (I noticed that she had a number of large abstract paintings in her office) where she pinpointed a period of time in the early 80’s, not long after the end of the cultural revolution, where to make works that did not expressly represent anything was a politically daring move. This period didn’t last for long as the Chinese art market boom came along soon after, driven by an appetite from western collectors to acquire ‘Chinese-ness’ works. Karen believes that many Chinese artists don’t have a context with which to approach abstract art. We talked about the abstraction present in ancient expressive calligraphic ink paintings and how the Chinese don’t view these as being abstract in any way.

I’m writing this first blog post from Beijing where I’ve just begun a 5 week residency at artist-led space HomeShop, supported by Arts Council England’s Artist international development fund. I am hoping that the research residency will develop my knowledge of early print and publishing forms within the context of contemporary China.

HomeShop, which was initiated in 2008 by designer Elaine Wing-ah Ho describe themselves as “an open platform to question existing models of economic and artistic production.” They seek to do this through serving as an open platform for multiple, interwoven series of small-scale activities, interventions, and documentary gestures undertaken by creatives who visit the space.

In this regard, the space has similarities to Islington Mill where I have my studio space and also direct the visual arts programme. Both are creative hubs that offer space for artists, designers, and thinkers to come together to create, produce and develop new work. HomeShop could be described as a micro version of Islington Mill, having 3 studio spaces, 1 larger workspace with 6 desks, a large kitchen/dining room and a main events space which fronts onto the street through a large glass window and doorway entrance.

Perhaps more than a studio complex or an artist led space, HomeShop seems to act as a meeting space, a space where people collect and gather. On the second day that I was here, I awoke (bleary eyed after a 16 hour sleep!) to find two groups meeting. The first meeting was the Beijing Urban Farmers group who are intending on installing an Aquaponics system to grow vegetables on the roof of the building. The other was a Chinese reading group.

The Aquaponics group are borrowing the Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome structure to house their system but there is a big question if the roof structure is load bearing and can take the weight. The possibility of calling out a structural engineer to assess this has been mooted but no one appears too bothered about this.

This kind of freeform self-building seems quite characteristic of the Hutong neighbourhood where we are based. These neighbourhoods originally contained traditional courtyard residences for court officials or wealthy merchants. With the fall of the Chinese dynastic era at the turn of the 20^th century, buildings previously owned and occupied by single families were subdivided and shared by many households. Additions were tacked on as needed and built with whatever materials were readily available.

On my first weekend, HomeShop hosted a welcome potluck dinner where they prepared pizza bases and guests brought toppings. My contribution was some Heinz baked beans brought with me from UK! Potluck dinners – a group meal where all participants bring a single sized dish to share – are great events to meet new people. This was no exception. Lu Di, an artist from Beijing who used to be based in Manchester, came along. Lu brought with him a friend called Deng Dafei who is part of the Utopia artist group. I also met an artist called Lulu Li who recently returned from the UK where she did an MA at Chelsea School of Art.

Food and eating together seems to be an essential part of what makes HomeShop work. Quge, one of the core HomeShop team, cooks lunch every day without fail, with each person putting the equivalent of £1 per day into a pot. This regular lunch fixture seems to be the axis around much of what happens here. It’s what brings together people who are renting a desk with those that are here to do projects, and other visitors such as myself. Perhaps because it is so cheap, delicious and convenient, the lunches act as a catalyst to draw some of the extended network here regularly. Whilst they are here, people think about what they might do, with conversations naturally occurring. From reading their statement, HomeShop consider these seemingly simple engagements with daily life, work, and the community as “explorations of micropolitical possibility and working together.”