By Erica Kesel
The holiday period was busier than usual and finally I am back to share five memorable impressions from Hangzhou and Beijing. It’s nice to take some time to remember these experiences.
Shi Hui’s Studio
Shi Hui in Hangzhou was the first female artist we spent time with and her work felt noticeably different to me. She is a fiber artist and her work employs light and texture to fine effect. I was entranced by the wall she created and how it looks solid and not at the same time. You can see a piece with light in the background that I really enjoyed as well.
Xu Jiang’s exhibition at the Zhejiang Art Museum
Xu Jiang is Shi Hui’s husband and the head of the Hangzhou Academy of Art from where many fine artists graduate (including Yang Fudong mentioned in my previous post). The Cultural Revolution is the defining moment in Xu Jiang’s life (and probably many others), and his work examines how this colossal event has impacted his generation through the motif of the sunflower withered and on the verge of collapse. That you can imagine the promise held in their yellow discs and petals just days before makes its absence all the more poignant. It was a beautiful and haunting show.
Three Shadows Photography Art Centre
Photographers Rongrong and Inri founded Three Shadows in 2007 to promote photography and video work within China. The organization reminded me of the Photographic Resource Center in Boston where I worked in college and I immediately felt at home in the space. This was feeling was accentuated because the Beijing sky had miraculously cleared and I almost felt like I was in a leafy New England town in this artist enclave of Caochangdi.
Rongrong and Inri’s works are romantic in the literary and the interpersonal senses of the term. I love the way they juxtapose their bodies and mammoth, impersonal landscapes, evoking both vulnerability and timelessness.
Ai Weiwei
Would we meet Ai Weiwei? Alas no, he has been called away on business. Wait, it turns out he is under house arrest and will be available.
That is how we came to visit the artist in his home and studio briefly between interviews with international media outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian. His studio manager showed us around while he was on the phone explaining to the world why he wasn’t allowed to leave his home. My favorite piece in his studio was a marble replica of one of the surveillance cameras trained on his front door. His exhibition of sunflower seeds had recently opened at the Tate Modern and it was interesting to see them here. Not long after the exhibition opened, it became impossible to get up close to them as the artist intended.
Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin
Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin’s home and studios are a testament to the power of art as a way of life. The spaces were beautiful and refined and they were incredibly gracious with their hospitality, as were all the artists we visited.
I enjoy the texture in Lin Tianmiao’s work and the way she chooses materials. In just one example, I love the sleek, almost Apple-product feel of the body and the eggs in this work and how the eye is dehumanized by the digital screen.
Wang Gongxin treated us to a private screening of work. I am very sorry to have missed his exhibition Relating at Platform China last summer. He showed us pieces of It’s About Dreams comprising 100 cell phones with videos showing images of people sleeping. I had the sudden realization of just how ubiquitous these screens are and how I’ve never seen at them as anything but a tool.
Well, that hardly sums up my experience in China, but it does capture some of the highlights. I hope this was the first of many trips to explore China. It was a fascinating look at contemporary art and how it shapes and is shaped by our global world.
