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The globalization of contemporary Chinese art: biennales, large-scale exhibitions, and the transnational work of Cai Guo-Qiang
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The globalization of contemporary Chinese art: biennales, large-scale exhibitions, and the transnational work of Cai Guo-Qiang
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Content
The Globalization of Contemporary Chinese Art:
Biennales, Large-scale Exhibitions, and the Transnational Work of Cai Guo-Qiang
by
Ming Yin
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SEPHERE)
May 2021
Copyright 2021 Ming Yin
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Exhibiting Chinese Art in Venice Biennale ...................................................................7
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Rent Collection Courtyard in 48
th
Venice Biennale
– Problems with an Award ...........................................................................................10
Chapter 2: Nuanced Struggle of Overseas Contemporary Artist
Chance vs. Challenge ...................................................................................................15
Inside Out: New Chinese Art: What it means to be Chinese contemporary artist .......17
Chapter 3: 2000 Shanghai Biennale ‘Spirit of Shanghai’: Bring Shanghai to Global Stage
Birth of Biennale Culture in Shanghai .........................................................................20
Uncooperative Approach .............................................................................................30
Chapter 4: Making a World City
Exhibiting National and Individual Dreams ................................................................33
2012 “Reactivation” Shanghai Biennale: Activation of Repurposing Project ............38
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................42
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................45
Appendix with Figures ...................................................................................................................48
iii
List of Figures
Figure 1: The number of museums in China (1905-2016). From the State Administration of
Cultural Heritage (SACH). ........................................................................................................... 48
Figure 2: Wang Guangyi, The Great Criticism Series, oil on canvas, 1993. ................................ 48
Figure 3: Xu Bing, Tianshu (Book from the Sky), installation, 1987-1991. ................................. 49
Figure 4 :Cai Guo-Qiang, Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, 108 life-sized sculptures created
on site by Long Xuli and nine guest artisan sculptures, 60 tons of clay, wire and wood armature,
1999 (commissioned for the 48
th
Venice Biennale). ..................................................................... 49
Figure 5 :Cai Guo-Qiang, Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows, wooden boat, arrows, rope, flag
and electric fan, 1998. ................................................................................................................... 50
Figure 6 :Cai Guo-Qiang, Self-promotion for the People, installation at the Shanghai Biennale,
Shanghai Art Museum, 2000. ....................................................................................................... 50
Figure 7 :Ai Weiwei, Perspective Series (1995-2003), exhibited at “Fuck off” exhibition in
2000. ............................................................................................................................................. 51
iv
Abstract
This thesis examines the rise of the Shanghai Biennale, related international art
exhibitions, and contemporary Chinese artworks. I examine the contentious issues surrounding
the proliferation of art biennales in mainland China, while illuminating how biennale culture
impacts people’s recognition of contemporary art and Shanghai’s urban development. This thesis
analyzes exhibitions about Chinese contemporary art, such as “Inside Out: New Chinese Art”
(1998) and “Fuck off/ Uncooperative approach” (2000), mainly focusing on case studies of
Chinese-born, United States-based contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang. These case studies
include Cai’s Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard/ 威 尼斯-收租院 (1999), exhibited at the 48th
Venice Biennale; Self Promotion for the People/ 自 我宣传 , exhibited at the 3
rd
Shanghai
Biennale; and “Peasant Da Vincis/ 农民达芬奇” (2010), an exhibition critiquing Shanghai’s
urbanization amidst the large-scale state-sponsored Shanghai World Exposition. I consider these
projects and their critical reception in and out of mainland China in order to better understand
cross-cultural exchanges and tensions in the context of twenty-first century globalization.
1
Introduction
Globalization in the twenty-first century has changed the landscape of art and art history.
Amidst increased cultural and economic exchanges, art historians and curators have developed
new methodologies for studying contemporary art produced by previously marginalized “non-
western” cultures. Western biennales, such as the Italian Venice Biennale, invited dozens of
artists from developing countries to gain visibility and present their art to western audiences. In
these contexts, many Chinese contemporary artists, such as Xu Bing/ 徐冰, Wang Guangyi/ 王广
义 and Cai Guo-Qiang/ 蔡国强, created artworks featuring Chinese traditional cultural elements.
Meanwhile, in the People’s Republic of China, the growing prominence of art museums and
global biennale and triennial exhibitions encouraged local audiences to encounter Chinese art,
from ancient antiques to contemporary artworks. The first international biennale of contemporary
art in mainland China, the Shanghai Biennale (established in 1996), now held at the Power
Station of Art, has become one of the most influential contemporary art exhibitions in Asia.
This thesis examines the contentious issues surrounding the international proliferation of
contemporary Chinese art, while illuminating how biennale culture impacts people’s recognition
of global contemporary art and Shanghai’s urban development. I focus on case studies of
exhibitions about Chinese contemporary art, such as “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” (1998), and
investigate artworks made by Chinese overseas artists including Xu Bing, Wang Guangyi, and
Ai Weiwei/ 艾未未. The Chinese-born, United States-based contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang
participated in three biennales, including the 48th Venice Biennale, the 3
rd
Shanghai Biennale
and his solo exhibition before the 9
th
Shanghai Biennale.In particular, I examine his artworks
Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard/ 威尼斯-收租院 (1999) and Self-Promotion for the People/
自我宣传, and solo exhibition “Peasant Da Vincis/ 农民达芬奇” (2010), and consider these
2
projects and their critical reception in and out of mainland China in order to better understand
cross-cultural exchanges and tensions in the context of twenty-first-century globalization.
The proliferation of global contemporary art biennales in the early 2000s ignited a flurry
of artistic debates. Art historian Saloni Mathur criticized contemporary art’s globalization and
identified the term McGuggenheim Effect to summarize the issues related to the proliferation of
non-western biennales. On one hand, Mathur argues that non-western biennales provide a
platform for marginalized artists and seem to resolve the problems of underrepresentation in
European and North American-dominated biennales. On the other hand, organizing international
contemporary art biennales can be seen as a blatant ploy to promote urban development at all
costs. In Mathur’s words:
At their best, these “other” biennales were conceived through the vision for social
justice of the international left; they were formulated in the wake of non-western
anti-colonial struggles and third world revolutionary movement and provided an
alternative space of display for artists excluded from the Euro-Western
establishment. At their worst, the biennales-like those in Havana, Delhi, Dakar, or
Cairo—have been criticized for mimicking modernist abstraction, been plagued
by the systemic corruption of their countries, been co-opted by city promoters and
the tourism industries of the host site, or have stiffened into their own centers of
power involving new gestures of inclusion and exclusion.
1
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, large-scale international contemporary art
biennales had become widespread around the world. The Italian Venice Biennale stands as the
longest running biannual art fair. According to curator Paul O’Neill, the term biennale is used to
“describe a specific genre of large-scale exhibition, typified by a propensity for a large number
of works, an ample budget, and an ambition to be part of an international art world nexus.”
2
1
Saloni Mathur, “Museums and Globalization,” Anthropological Quarterly 78, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 701–702.
2
Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and Curating of Cultures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 51.
3
While specific motives and genres of art biennales have changed over time, it’s fair to say that
these biennales “demarcate a space for dialogue and diverse artistic and cultural exchange.”
3
The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 at the height of western European imperialist
expansion. As such, the exhibition has long reflected the age of “old imperialism, [as if] frozen
in time… mapping the nineteenth-century economic supremacy of European and North
American nations.”
4
The second edition of the Venice Biennale in 1897 featured Japanese
artworks. Because of Japan’s participation in the Russo-Japanese War, which led to the country’s
status as a first-world power, the Venice Biennale included Japanese art (albeit Japan didn’t have
its own national pavilion), marking the first instance of exhibiting non-western art. As the first
Asian country to exhibit artworks at the Venice Biennale, Japan helped define a new global art
exposition, prompting other non-western countries to exhibit their artworks in biennale-type
exhibitions. Additionally, Japan utilized this chance to support the country’s imperialist mission,
embracing culture as one means of expanding its power throughout Asia.
As art historian Jane Chin Davidson argues, the great impact of art biennales and
expositions “was in their ability to simplify nationalism for the general viewing public through
the aesthetic of fetish distinction. And the 1895 inauguration of the Venice Biennale had proved
its potential for exhibiting a country’s ‘status, progress, and power.’”
5
The first part of my thesis
analyzes how artists who exhibited in the Venice Biennale faced misrepresentation and western
imperialist superiority.
Between the early and mid-twenty-first century, Chinese art was largely absent from
global art markets due to political turbulence. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the
3
Ibid, 52.
4
Jane Davidson, Staging Art and Chineseness: The Politics of Trans/Nationalism and Global Expositions (Manchester:
Manchester Univ Press, 2019), 126.
5
Ibid, 129.
4
Chinese government strictly limited the circulation of Euro-American ideas. During this decade
of violent upheaval, Chinese artists were not allowed to express ideas of individualism; Soviet
socialist realist painting became the sole western style permitted by the government at that time.
Under the pressure of a heavy-handed ideology that only permitted images of Chinese
Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and revolutionary masses, some artists left China in
order to achieve freedom; others were only able to express their critiques, discontents, and
suffering experienced during the Culture Revolution after the fact.
6
After the Culture Revolution ended, China entered a critical moment sparked by
President Deng Xiaoping’s publication of a speech “One Central Task, Two Basic Points”
following his 1992 Southern Tour of the country.
7
President Deng acknowledged that “planning
and market forces are not entirely separate from socialism and capitalism.”
8
The political climate
had shifted from hardline resistance toward bourgeois capitalist economics. The Chinese
government began investing in museums and art around this time and implemented the Tenth
Five-Year Plan, which included a policy for the development of cultural industries.
9
Meanwhile,
in 2002, Chinese President Jiang Zemin described the “cultural industry” as “an important
avenue to enriching socialist culture in the market economy,” sparking intensive attention to
contemporary art.
10
With the new political direction and relative openness of the Chinese
government, the first biennale-type exhibition in China, the 1992 Guangzhou Biennale, can be
viewed as a key example in Chinese contemporary art history. Curator Lu Peng collaborated
with 350 emerging contemporary artists and selected 400 artworks to exhibit in the Guangzhou
6
“Scar Art” refers to an artistic and literary trend of the late 1970s. Scar art (named after writer Lu Xinhua’s 1978 short story
“Scar”) represented a coming to terms with the calamitous consequences of the Cultural Revolution.
7
“Deng Xiaoping’s South China tour (January 1992),” China.org.cn (April 19, 2011),
www.china.org.cn/china/CPC_90_anniversary/2011-04/19/content_22392494.htm, accessed March 1, 2020.
8
Ibid.
9
Winnie Won Yin Wong, Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 123.
10
Ibid, 126.
5
Biennale. Lu conceived of the inaugural exhibition as exemplifying significant changes to
exhibitions in China, due to the change from governmental to corporate sponsorship of the arts.
11
The purpose of making artworks had shifted from Chairman Mao’s philosophy of “art created
for the sake of culture” to the idea that “art must be produced for sale.”
12
In order to bring contemporary Chinese art to the public, especially western audiences,
curator Lu invited Flash Art editor Francesco Bonami to the first Guangzhou Biennale in hopes
of informing international societies about Chinese contemporary art. In this way, the biennales
functioned like the new global economic system, bypassing political restrictions for exhibiting
art, while also helping Chinese audiences appreciate contemporary art. After the successful
inauguration of the first Guangzhou Biennale, approximately one hundred museums were built a
year. Beginning in 1993, art galleries were no longer opened in private houses or underground
spaces, and galleries affiliated with institutions, such as those of the Central Fine Arts Academy,
became major experimental sites in China. Museums and art galleries in contemporary China
were “undergoing a reconfiguration of policies in order to adapt to the needs of the market
economy, for which new legislation [were] attempting to pave the way.”
13
The main role of the
public museum was seen as providing a ‘patriotic education’ within the context of PRC, while
private cultural institutions complied with more experimental missions. The number of museums
in China grew exponentially in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as approximately
1,400 art museums opened in 2001 and more than 3,500 a decade later (see Figure 1).
14
11
Lu Peng, Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art (Venice: Biennale Arte,
2013), foreword.
12
Ibid, foreword.
13
Sofia Bollo and Yu Zhang, “Policy and Impact of Public Museums in China: Exploring New Trends and Challenges,” Museum
International 69, no. 3-4 (2017): 28.
14
Davidson, Staging Art and Chineseness, 160.
6
Beginning in 2008, mainland China introduced itself to the world as a major power
through three mega events: the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2009 National Day parade, and the
2010 Shanghai World Expo, which showed off Chinese soft power, military might, and advanced
technological developments. Theorist Joseph Nye defines “soft power [as] the ability to shape
the preferences of others by means of presenting one’s own culture as attractive and
persuasive.”
15
The Chinese government wanted to build Shanghai as an international metropolis,
similar to New York City, Paris, and Tokyo. The 2012 Shanghai Biennale, which I discuss in
Chapter Four, adopted the same curatorial strategies as the Venice Biennale, of inviting
independent curators and artists from thirty international cities to exhibit artworks in individual
city pavilions. Chief curator of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale, Qiu Zhijie, stated that the city
pavilions project signaled the curators’ goals of producing a high profile, international art
exhibition in mainland China. Nonetheless, issues related to exploited migrant labor and
environmental pollution resulting from rapid urban development also proliferated amidst these
mega-events. The following four chapters – Exhibiting Chinese Art in the Venice Biennale;
Struggles of Overseas Contemporary Artists; Critiques of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale; and
Making a World City – discuss contentious issues surrounding the globalization of contemporary
Chinese art and proliferation of large-scale art exhibitions in Shanghai.
15
Yingchi Chu, “The Politics of Reception: ‘Made in China’ and Western Critique,” International Journal of Cultural Studies
17, no. 2 (2013): 160.
7
Chapter 1: Exhibiting Chinese Art in the Venice Biennale
In 1993, one year after the first Guangzhou Biennale, fourteen of the exhibition’s
featured artists received an invitation to be included in an exhibition, “Passaggio a Oriente”
(“Passage to the Orient”) at the 45
th
Venice Biennale. This was the first time Chinese
contemporary art was exhibited in the Venice Biennale. The curator, Achille Bonito Oliva,
adopted a recommendation from Flash Art editor Francesco Bonami, who, as previously
mentioned, had been invited to the first Guangzhou Biennale. In order to explore the idea of
world art in the exhibition, Oliva visited China to select artists and artworks. Oliva received
curatorial consultation from established Chinese curator Li Xianting and emerging Chinese art
historian and curator Francesca Dal Lago, both of whom advocated for a comprehensive
introduction to Chinese contemporary art. With generous support from Chinese researchers and
curators, the curatorial strategy could have emerged as globally and culturally balanced, but
Oliva seemed to have chosen very specific artworks that particularly interested him without in-
depth research.
16
The works he selected, mostly recent paintings that included imagery of the
proceeding Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and ideological representations of the national state,
became a topic of debate and helped define the field of contemporary Chinese art, as well as the
prevailing styles of Political Pop and Cynical Realism.
17
For instance, Wang Guangyi and Xu
Bing are both famous Chinese artists who participated in the first Guangzhou Biennale and the
45
th
Venice Biennale. Both artists stated that Oliva misunderstood the concept of their art and
commented that the 45
th
Venice Biennale was “an unexpectedly traumatic event.”
18
16
Rachel Marsden, “Curating ‘Chineseness’-Translating China in the 45
th
Venice Biennale,” publication of presentation at
University of Lisbon, Portugal (17 March 2015), 3.
17
Marsden, Curating Chineseness, 3.
18
Ibid, 4.
8
Wang Guangyi is a Chinese painter who combines images from Maoist-era propaganda
(e.g., heroic socialist realist depictions of peasants, workers, and soldiers as commonly seen in
Cultural Revolution-era posters) with western-style advertisements to comment on the
commercialization of Chinese contemporary culture. Paintings from his Great Criticism series 大
批判 (see Figure 2) were exhibited in the 45
th
Venice Biennale, but Wang faced increasing
marginalization from Chinese audiences as he gained prominence and fame internationally. In
his series, Wang aimed to advocate that the essence of art is its ancestry, its history, reminding
audiences not to forget their recent Maoist history while living in an era of open markets and
increased commercialization. However, the curator and sponsors of the Venice Biennale ignored
the content of the painting, focusing on the formal representations of western brand names and
propagandistic models. Reductively, Oliva asserted that Wang wanted to critique the Maoist era
and branded the artist’s paintings as Political Pop Art. Wang, on the other hand, perceived the
exhibition of his painting as an “immediate breakdown in interpretive translation, a contextual
misunderstanding.”
19
Xu Bing is a Chinese contemporary artist known for his printmaking skills, installation
art, creative use of words and texts, and explorations of how language impacts our understanding
of the world. His artwork Book from the Sky 天书 (see Figure 3) was exhibited in the 45
th
Venice
Biennale. Constructed from Chinese traditional scrolls, Chinese calligraphy and bookbinding
styles, Book from the Sky incorporates four books, composed of over 4,000 invented characters.
20
Audiences who do not understand the Chinese language believed the characters written in the
scrolls were readable, but in fact, all of the characters were completely illegible and cannot be
19
Ibid, 4.
20
Ibid, 4.
9
understood by Chinese readers. Xu Bing wanted to highlight the idea of abuse of language,
while encouraging audiences to investigate the meanings of this form of non-writing. However,
Oliva did not highlight Xu Bing’s idea of abuse of language but rather presented this artwork as
a representation of Chinese calligraphy to western audiences. For instance, Oliva did not display
wall text that claimed these were not traditional Chinese characters and neglected to include
didactic materials to explain the artist’s intention to the public. Without catalogue texts or wall
panels, Oliva encouraged each visitor to have straightforward experiences with the artworks, but
those experiences were limited by lack of context.
In this biennale, Oliva adopted two keywords, coexistence and nomadism,
21
as the
exhibition’s methodological approach. Artists from different nations in the biennale represented
the idea of coexistence and the artworks exhibited represented Oliva’s interest in the hot topic of
that time: global art. However, based on Wang and Xu’s experiences and considering how Oliva
curated these fourteen Chinese contemporary artists’ works, the exhibition did not reflect his
stated curatorial aim of transcending difference. Rather, the curator exhibited what western
audiences wanted to see from Chinese contemporary art. Dal Largo, Italian scholar of Chinese
art, criticized the biennale as a “typical orientalist format of national grouping… stifling each
individual voice within stereotypical images generally associated with that place’s identity.”
22
Simultaneously, the feedback from these fourteen artists who participated in the 45
th
Venice
Biennale amounted to collective disappointment. Unpleased by Oliva’s curatorial strategy, the
artists participated in this biennale stated: “the installation time was too short, the exhibition
space was very subpar, the accommodations were lousy, most of the artists had to pay for their
21
Clarissa Ricci, “Towards a Contemporary Venice Biennale: Reassessing the Impact of the 1993 Exhibition,” OBOE Journal I,
no. 1 (2020): 85.
22
Marsden, Curating “Chineseness,”3.
10
own travel[;]Chinese representative[s] had no chance to introduce Chinese art to the world.”
23
Although the artists were annoyed about the experience of this biennale and felt Chinese art was
misunderstood by the sponsor and curator of the biennale, their participation established China’s
status as a member of the international art community.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Rent Collection Courtyard – Problems with an Award
In June of 1999, Cai Guo-Qiang won the prestigious Golden Lion prize at the 48
th
Venice
Biennale. His award-winning work, Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard/ 威尼斯- 收租院 (see
Figure 4), recreated a large sculptural installation from the 1960s. Created by a group of artists in
Sichuan and installed in the overthrown home of a feudal landlord, the original Rent Collection
Courtyard/ 收租院 became a model work of the Cultural Revolution. In this piece, Cai hired ten
artisans, including one creator of the original Courtyard, to make the sculptures on site during
the exhibition, but that the clay was never fired, and the work was ephemeral and largely
performative. Audiences could observe the whole production process and Cai himself believed
that the act of reproducing Rent Collection Courtyard constituted a “conceptual performance
piece that used a canonical work of art as background and main material.”
24
However, after
receiving the Golden Lion prize, Cai ran into trouble and encountered numerous critiques within
China and the international art market. The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, along with some artists
who participated in creating the original project, felt that Cai recreated this work without their
permission, thus infringing on their copyright. The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and offended
artists held press conferences and announced they would prosecute Cai. Simultaneously, Cai’s
story became a hot topic in global cultural news.
23
Lu Peng, Passage to History, foreword.
24
Wu Huang, Chinese Art at the Crossroads: Between Past and Future, Between East and West (Hong Kong: New Art Media;
London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2001), 57.
11
In the 1965, the year prior to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Rent Collection Courtyard
was created. The local Sichuan government wanted to tell the story about Sichuan peasants’
oppression by a wealthy landowner as part of their political and cultural activism. The
government assembled a group of local artists and sculptors to create a collection of realist
sculptures to represent the story. The main content of this piece “was the various violent methods
used by the landlord to collect rent from poor farmers.”
25
The aim was to prove that in rural
villages a socialist system is much better than a capitalist system of governing. After the
figurative sculptures had been completed, the central government in Beijing acknowledged the
meaningful content of this piece and sent this piece travelling across China, as well as to Cuba,
Albania, and other communist countries. Rent Collection Courtyard quickly became famous
throughout China.
The motivations for the copyright infringement case focused stemmed from Cai having
borrowed other artists’ works. Cai argued that he created a performance piece that highlighted
the process of making Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard sculpture. Like Andy Warhol and
many other artists, Cai appropriated existing artwork and brought diverse meanings in new
contexts. The chief curator of the 48
th
Venice Biennale, Harald Szeemann, also supported Cai’s
argument and believed that Cai’s work did not infringe on the intellectual property of Sichuan
artists. Rather, he believed that Cai utilized the Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard as a model to
gesture towards new possibilities for sculpture as an art form, rather than merely copying the
original work. Harald Szeemann also stated that “the issue of artists’ rights in modern art is an
open question, as in the use of sections of films or videotapes. If Cai’s work is a copyright
infringement, then so are the works of Andy Warhol and many other artists.”
26
25
Ibid, 59.
26
Ibid, 60.
12
However, many Chinese artists and art critics insisted that Cai’s piece was not the
product of postmodern art as Cai said because he neither completed the process of copying the
work nor did the work himself, but commissioned other artists and workers to copy the work in
the five days prior to the Venice Biennale. Additionally, Chinese art critics also criticized Cai for
taking advantage of chief curator Harald Szeemann’s enthusiasm for the original Rent Collection
Courtyard to win the prize. Critics also thought that Szeemann wanted to “play the China card at
the Venice Biennale and hinted to Cai that he stages Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, in
order to use hype about Chinese culture and politics to attract media attention to the 48
th
Biennale.”
27
In fact, the issue surrounding Cai winning awards at the 48
th
Venice Biennale ignited
Chinese domestic artists’ anti-western sentiments about Chinese artists living abroad. From
domestic artists’ perspective, Chinese artists living in the United States utilize “Chinese political
and traditional images to pander to western political ideology and western fascination with the
east in order to gain entrance to international art exhibitions held in the west.”
28
They lost their
identity, but pursued their personal fame in the international market without considering what is
Chinese contemporary art. The claims of Cai’s copyright infringement provided a platform for
Chinese domestic artists to express anger about westerners’ obsession with Chinese political
propaganda.
The different gazes of Chinese and Euro-western art critics derive from differing
expectations about how Chinese contemporary art should be presented internationally. Western
critics mainly focus on “the authenticity of the art by judging him as a ‘showman and sham
27
Ibid, 62.
28
Ibid, 62.
13
artist’, they expect him to be an ‘independent, creative, and political agent’.”
29
However,
Chinese artists and media have their own image of how Chinese artists should present on a
global stage. They expect artists to “present his art to change the western perception of China
instead of selling China to satisfy the western media.”
30
Therefore, Cai encountered a dilemma,
being torn between being either a postmodern western artist or patriotic Chinese artist.
Being a transnational artist, Cai plays both roles and alters perceptions about Chinese art.
As a Chinese artist, Cai makes a bridge connecting west and east in order to eliminate the
superficial stereotyping on both sides. However, being as a Chinese cosmopolitan artist does not
“mean that he has a position to be both a border-crossing artist and simply a man,”
31
despite
Cai’s purported dream of being a “normal person” who precisely presents his ideas and
understandings about art.
In Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, Cai dressed up a piece of state-endorsed
canonical socialist realist art in the postmodern language of conceptual art and recreated the
reproduction at a premier western art exhibition. He wanted to highlight the “sophistication,
sincerity and aesthetic value of socialist art in the western art world, while also criticizing the
instrumentalization of art and artists under socialist circumstances.”
32
In a recent interview with
Yang and Li, Cai offered this critique of the instrumentalization of art under China’s socialist
regime:
The humiliating experience of China in the past century has turned art into a tool
for nationalist mobilization and social reform, eulogizing utopian socialism while
exposing the darkness of the old society. Avant-garde art in post-revolutionary
29
Aihwa Ong, “What Marco Polo Forgot: Contemporary Chinese Art Reconfigures the Global,” Current Anthropology 53, no. 4
(2012): 488.
30
Ibid, 488.
31
Ibid, 489.
32
Taj Frazier and Lin Zhang, “Playing the Chinese Card: Globalization and the Aesthetic Strategies of Chinese Contemporary
Artists,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 6 (November 2017): 570.
14
China is again instrumentalized for facilitating reform and promoting democracy.
In this context, art in China always appears to be quite miserable.
33
Here, Chinese history, cultural symbols and socialist ideology become part of Cai’s methodology
in challenging the western-dominated art world, while also encouraging people to reflect on the
legacy of socialist ideology as both inhibiting and promoting art production in contemporary
China.
33
Yang Z and Li W, Cai Guo-Qiang: This Is What I Think (Guilin, China: Guangxi Normal University Press).
15
Chapter 2: Nuanced Struggle of Overseas Contemporary Artist
Chance vs. Challenge
By the late 1990s, the overseas profile of Chinese contemporary art increased
dramatically, as the number of overseas exhibitions focusing on Chinese art grew. The
relationship between Chinese artists and the western art world evolved as western audiences
became better informed and Chinese artists became more well-recognized. Britta Erickson, a
curator and researcher focusing on Chinese contemporary art, concluded that the art world
relationship between China and the outside world, particularly western Europe and North
America, developed like a “romantic relationship during the 1990s: at first, both parties were
curious about the newly discovered other, and wondered what could be gained from a
connection. By the end of the 1990s, the heady excitement had gone and [been] replaced by a
sustainable long-term association.”
34
Although there is now a deeper understanding of Chinese
art in the western art world, there are still areas of uncertainty and moments of misrepresentation.
With the end of the Cultural Revolution and the decline of Mao’s leftist state regime in
the 1970s, a new generation of Chinese artists encountered the chance to embrace western
modern art. Newly discovered artistic freedoms, although limited, were no longer suffocated by
the state-sanctioned doctrine of socialist realism. Many artists in China began experimenting
with modern western art styles. This experimentation resulted in the 1985-88 New Wave
Movement which spawned hundreds of avant-garde art collectives across the nation. “The
increase in overseas travel and a flood of information from the west also produced an exodus of
Chinese artists to western countries in pursuit of better opportunities.”
35
For instance, Ai Weiwei
34
Britta Erickson, The Reception in the West of Experimental Mainland Chinese Art of the 1990s (Guangzhou: Guangdong
Museum of Art, 2003), 2.
35
Alexandra Munroe, “Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe,” in I Want to Believe, ed. Alexandra Munroe and Thomas Krens (New
York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008), 23.
16
left Beijing for New York City in 1981 and Cai Guo-Qiang left Shanghai for Tokyo in 1986 and
then settled in New York City to continue his experimental art career. These overseas
contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Wang Guangyi, Cai Guo-Qiang and Xu Bing,
benefited enormously from western collectors and participating in western exhibitions, resulting
in increased visibility in the western art world. As Chinese culture became a hot topic on the
global art stage, these artists received commercial gains. In other words, overseas artists suffered
“a dual quest from Chinese modern identity and artistic autonomy”
36
and “experimented with
western artistic languages and approaches to contest and reinvent mainstream Chinese
constructions of art and culture.”
37
After the debacle of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement of 1989, interest in
western-European experimental art among Chinese artists came to an abrupt end as the Chinese
communist state “crushed the growing tide of liberal opposition emanating from Chinese
students, journalists and intellectuals.”
38
Disappointed with the utopian social projects of the
government, Chinese contemporary artists dramatically transformed from being concerned with
self-conscious aesthetic critique and inner thoughts to a “postmodern sensibility of cynicism,
satire, pastiche and kitsch.”
39
In the 1990s, the styles of what would come to be called political
pop and cynical realism developed.
40
This generation of artists represented the struggles between
market and state logic by using their talents to ridicule the Communist Party of China and the
36
Minglu Gao, Total Modernity and the Avant-garde in Twentieth-century Chinese Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011),33.
37
Ibid, 33.
38
Frazier and Zhang, “Playing the Chinese Card: Globalization and the Aesthetic Strategies of Chinese Contemporary Artists,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 6 (November 2017): 570.
39
Ibid, 571.
40
The curator of 45
th
Venice Biennale, Achille Bonito Oliva, branded paintings that critiqued the Maoist era as “political pop”
and artworks soberly depicting imagery of the Culture Revolution as “cynical realism.”
17
entire structure of the socialist market economy. This shift “gave birth to a burgeoning art market
endorsed mainly by western capital and shaped by western taste and aesthetic standards.”
41
However, throughout the 1990s, the Chinese government still couldn’t embrace the
emergence of contemporary art in both Chinese society and global art markets. The
government’s lack of support for contemporary art and the growing expansion of the global art
market prompted these ambitious artists to go abroad in order to contact collectors and art
dealers in western Europe and/or the United States to sell their artworks and enhance awareness
of artists visibility in the international art market. With the lack of interest in the domestic market
and increased demand for Chinese contemporary art in the international market, some Chinese
artists produced artworks replicating western expectations of what Chinese art should be. As the
Chinese art critic Huang Heqing said, “everyone can tell that Chinese contemporary art is not an
art for the Chinese public but is conceived and produced for the International market.”
42
Inside Out: New Chinese Art: What it Means to be a Chinese Contemporary Artist
In 1998, Chinese art critic Gao Minglu curated the exhibition, “Inside Out: New Chinese
Art,” at the Asia Society in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This
exhibition invited contemporary artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (now a
special administrative region of China) to respond to what it means to be Chinese in an age of
economic globalization and transnationalism. As the curator mentions, “the primary goal of this
exhibition is to enrich the western audience’s understanding of contemporary art from the
selected Chinese regions, both visually and conceptually.”
43
The artists from mainland China
41
Lotte Philipsen, Globalizing Contemporary Art: The Art World’s New Internationalism (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University
Press, 2010), n.p.
42
Huang H, The Conspiracy of Art: Looking through ‘Contemporary International (Guilin, China: Guangxi Normal University
Press, 2005), n.p.
43
Minglu Gao, “Toward A Transnational Modernity: An Overview of the Exhibition” in Inside/Out: New Chinese Art (New
York: Asia Society, 1998), 15.
18
included in the exhibition primarily worked in the west, such as Huang Yongping/ 黄永砯 (based
in France), Wu Shanzhuan/ 吴山专 (based in Switzerland), and New York City-based artists Gu
Wenda/ 谷文达, Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang. Gao analyzed the significance of exhibiting art
from overseas Chinese artists, who ethnically Chinese artists who studied abroad and/or
emigrated from mainland China and discussed the perspectives the artists wanted to introduce to
the western art world.
Overseas Chinese artists have faced various challenges from the mainstream western
culture. Many have expressed a feeling of futility regarding the ability to change western
idealism or “make one culture by substituting another.”
44
They are struggle to “neither
emphasize nationalist cultural characteristics to play the role of a minority or exotic”
45
nor
“overtly de-emphasize their Chinese identity and become internationalists.”
46
The traditional
Chinese materials overseas Chinese artists have adopted in their production bridge the gap
between west and east, while providing a medium that is open to various interpretations. Cai
Guo-Qiang created the installation, Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows/ 草船借箭 (1998) (see
Figure 5), for the “Inside Out” exhibition. This piece is based on a story from the third century
CE in which a general realized his army lacked enough arrows for the upcoming battle. Rather
than waiting for back-up, he made three hundred boats of rice straw with straw figures and sailed
the boats toward his enemy to attract their attention. The enemies shot arrows into the boats,
which the general then utilized to defeat his adversary. For Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows,
Cai constructed a boat made of rice straw sourced from his hometown Quanzhou, an ancient
seaport in southern China. The boat hangs in the air, pierced by myriad arrows. Here, Cai tells a
44
Ibid, 35.
45
Ibid, 35.
46
Ibid, 36.
19
traditional Chinese story with impressive visual form to highlight contemporary transcultural
issues and the collision of eastern and western cultures.
Consequently, Chinese artists overseas often encountered the dueling opinions of Chinese
and western critics regarding what Chinese artists should present on the global stage. Chinese
critics expect Chinese artists in the west to present Chinese culture and challenge superficial
western perceptions of China. On the other hand, western critics expect Chinese artists to present
Chinese political and traditional images that provide different perspectives in the heretofore
western-dominated art world. Ultimately, these overseas Chinese artists want to present their
own ways of looking at the world. As an overseas Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang utilizes his
Chinese identity to reshape western perceptions.
20
Chapter 3: 2000 Shanghai Biennale: Bringing Shanghai onto a Global Stage
Birth of Biennale Culture in Shanghai
In 1993, the executive director of the Shanghai Art Museum, Li Xiangyang, set the goal
for the museum of “organizing events and expanding influences.” As a state-run cultural
institution, the Shanghai Art Museum relies on exhibition rentals and government subsidies to
support museum operations. After visiting other countries’ national museums and art biennales,
Li Xiangyang commented, “when I got the chance to visit museums overseas, I noticed how
many museums, such as The British Museum, collect our ancestors’ art pieces, like Chinese
traditional ink paintings, but don’t collect any contemporary artworks created by Chinese artists.
Chinese contemporary art is absent on the global stage.”
47
A group of overseas Chinese contemporary artists suggested that the executive director of
the Shanghai Art Museum, Fang Zengxian, organize a biennale as an important contemporary art
event, like those in the west. Wang Lin, curator of Chinese Contemporary Art Archive/ 中国当代
艺术研究文献展, introduced the idea of a biennale to Fang Zengxian and explained that
Shanghai was the perfect city to organize a biennale for three reasons. First, as the first open port
city, Shanghai maintains an outward-looking culture. As one of the most important cities in
China’s wave of post-Mao development, Shanghai’s experience as a treaty port closely ties the
city to the complex origins of western imperialism, while providing the city’s denizens with
uniquely international perspectives. Secondly, Shanghainese people can more easily embrace
western culture and global contemporary art. Thirdly, in the early 1990s, Shanghai was
developing its Pudong New District. The government urgently needed a platform to attract
47
Li Xiangyang’s interview and translated from Chinese in English by author, Shanghai Biennale in Contemporary Art
Circumstance, interviewed in Shanghai SPSI Art Museum (March 9
th
, 2007).
21
foreign investment to be used towards economic and cultural development.
48
Subsequently in
1996, with the collaboration of dozens of artists and support from Shanghai’s local government,
the Shanghai Art Museum launched the Shanghai Biennale as China’s first biennale of
contemporary art.
The 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the third iteration, was the most influential international
contemporary art event in mainland China. In addition to being held at the state-operated
Shanghai Art Museum, an institution curators described as at “the forefront of China’s open
policy of engagement with the world, open to the principles of diversity and hybridity through
the promotion of innovative art and ideas,”
49
the 2000 Shanghai Biennale marked the first year
the event was curated by both local and international arts professionals. The curatorial team
included Shanghai Art Museum director Fang Zengxian, chief curator Li Xu, and director Zhang
Qing, working alongside Japanese curator Toshio Shimizu and Hou Hanru, a Chinese-born
curator who relocated from Beijing to Paris in the 1990s. Additionally, the 2000 Shanghai
Biennale invited dozens of well-known international artists, such as British artist Anish Kapoor,
German artist Anselm Kiefer, US artist Matthew Barney, and Korean artist Lee U-Fan, and also
included overseas Chinese artists, such as Cai Guo-Qiang and Huang Yongping. The 2000
Shanghai Biennale encouraged numerous European, North American and Asian arts
professionals to travel to mainland China for the first time.
The third edition of the Shanghai Biennale was developed around the theme “Shanghai
Spirit.” As described by the curators and organizers of the exhibition, they wished to examine the
48
Quote from Wang Lin’s interview and translated from Chinese in English by author, Shanghai Biennale in Contemporary Art
Circumstance, interviewed in Shenzhen, HEXIANGNING Art Museum, in April 19
th
, 2007.
49
Hanru Hou, “Shanghai Spirit: A Special Modernity,” in 上海双年展/Shanghai shuangnian/Shanghai Biennale 2000, ed. Chen
Long (Shanghai: Shanghai Art Museum, 2000), preface.
22
“particular issues that affect contemporary art development in Shanghai.”
50
The chief curator of
the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, Hou Hanru described Shanghai as:
A city reborn by intensive development. In today’s postmodern world, Shanghai serves as
a model for a new, specific and indispensable position in the cultural negotiation between
global and local cultures in non-western societies. If there is really something that can be
called “Shanghai Spirit”, the aforementioned qualities of cultural openness, multiplicity,
hybridity and radical attitude of innovation are at the core of it.
51
Different from the prior two biennales, which mostly exhibited either all traditional
Chinese ink paintings or oil paintings influenced by socialist realism, impressionist and post-
impressionist styles, the 2000 Shanghai Biennale included artworks in various mediums,
including installation, photography, sculpture, video, film and architecture. These works would
be considered more contemporary by western standards. Selecting a wide array of works - from
aboriginal paintings to video installations, the curators wanted to display diverse selections of
works in order to “go beyond the constraints of western-centralism by emphasizing a more
global vision of contemporary art.”
52
However, the content of contemporary artworks exhibited
in the biennale remained quite restricted and limited. “Curators ruled out artworks they presumed
would be rejected by Beijing’s Cultural Ministry, such as those critical of the government or with
sexually explicit themes.”
53
The executive director of the Shanghai Art Museum Fang Zengxian
set three rules about content of artworks in the biennale. First, no works in the Political Pop
style; any artworks related to politics could not be exhibited. Second, artworks involving military
affairs or guns and knives could not exhibited. Third, no performance art; presenting
performance art has many uncontrolled variables and must be avoided.
54
Although the Chinese
50
Ibid, n.p.
51
Ibid, n.p.
52
Ibid, n.p.
53
Lily Tung, “Arts Abroad; Spreading Openness With a 3rd Shanghai Biennale,” New York Times, May 30, 2001,
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/30/arts/arts-abroad-spreading-openness-with-a-3rd-shanghai-biennale.html.
54
Based on Fang Zen-Xian’s interview and translated from Chinese in English by author, Shanghai Biennale in Contemporary
Art Circumstance, interviewed in the Shanghai Art Museum, March 8
th
, 2007.
23
government restricted criteria on exhibiting appropriate artworks in the biennale, the shift away
from traditional ink paintings created exclusively by Chinese artists to multimedia artworks
created by Chinese and non-Chinese artists signaled the government’s increased tolerance of
contemporary art.
The curators of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale recognized that the problem of globalized
contemporary art as a western-dominated field could not accurately illustrate the “Shanghai
Spirit” theme. The biennale also risked satirizing Shanghai’s history and semi-colonization by
western powers. After inviting artists from other countries, the curators decided to frame the
2000 Shanghai Biennale as a platform to present the collision of eastern and western culture and
also serve as a laboratory for “new cultural development that would negotiate local (e.g.,
Shanghainese) and global concerns.”
55
The three curators – Hou Hanru, Toshio Shimizu and
Zhang Qing – illustrated their expectations and curatorial strategies about how to make the 2000
Shanghai Biennale an event exhibiting artworks form the world, while also embodying the
characteristics of openness, multiplicity, and hybridity that they argued characterized the
“Shanghai Spirit”.
Shanghai’s local context and unique historical background as mainland China’s most
foreign influenced, cosmopolitan metropolis exactly represented the non-western-centric
curatorial ideas and global aims of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale. Curator Hou Hanru explained
the biennale’s goals and highlighted the relationship between Shanghai’s semi-colonial past and
the globalized present:
The third edition of the Shanghai Biennale will mark the first international
contemporary art exhibition organized by a Chinese art museum. Inviting artists
from all around the world to exhibit together with their Chinese colleagues under
the banner of “Shanghai Spirit,” the organizers and curators wish to examine the
55
Jenny Lin, Above Sea: Contemporary Art, Urban Culture, and the Fashioning of Global Shanghai (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2019), 98.
24
particular issues that affect contemporary art development in Shanghai. China’s
most cosmopolitan metropolis. Shanghai is a city reborn by intensive
development. It is a laboratory for a new China, including one for contemporary
art. To test the significance and influences of contemporary art in the specific
context of Shanghai one needs to appreciate the circumscriptive terms of
Shanghai culture in historical terms. Shanghai’s cultural definition owes as much
to its western as Chinese foundations. Shanghai’s modernity is shaped by the
complex amalgamation of both Eastern and Western perspectives… However,
Shanghai’s image in the collective imaginations of the citizens of the world
continue to resonate. What is important to note is that present day Shanghai’s
modernization is different from its image of the past: today Shanghai’s identity is
very much its own, very much Chinese albeit framed by its semi-colonial history.
The re-emergence of Shanghai should be understood as an active reaction and
resistance to the economic and cultural expansion and hegemony of western
colonialism, and not simply its extension. The crossroad between the east and
west is meeting in Shanghai once again, and profound lessons are being drawn
and affected on both sides of the hemispheric divide. It is natural that issues of
confrontation, collision, exchange and mixture between eastern and western
cultures have become the central themes under examination. Again, hybridity
marks the fundamental character.
56
Here, Hou Hanru recognized the status of Shanghai as the most cosmopolitan metropolis
in mainland China. The city is influenced by its semi-colonial past and reborn by intensive
present-day city development. Shanghai’s modernity, furthermore, was defined by complex
eastern and western perspectives. However, as many critics observed, the curators of the 2000
Shanghai Biennale entirely ignored the recent historical period of Shanghai’s Maoist past and
Cultural Revolution. Curators selected artworks embodying optimistic descriptions of “Shanghai
Spirit,” such as “cultural openness, multiplicity, hybridity and radical attitude of innovation,” but
excluded any artworks referencing the Cultural Revolution, which made a painful impression on
an entire generation of Chinese artists and exhibition participants. In fact, the curators were not
entirely to blame for omitting Shanghai’s Maoist past and the Cultural Revolution; the 2000
Shanghai Biennale was sponsored by the Shanghai government and the curators needed to follow
the government’s standards by selecting approved artworks. In the opening of the 2000 Shanghai
56
Hou Hanru, Shanghai Biennale 2000, preface.
25
Biennale, Hou Hanru, as the representative of curatorial team, merely says “Thank you” with
tears in his eyes.
57
The world is changing all the time but it’s difficult for our generation to be aware of this
change in its depth. Toshio Shimizu shared how the rapid development of Shanghai in the past
ten years and the widespread access to the internet changes people’s connection with the world,
eliminating superiority of western cities:
The world is about to change… The city of Shanghai now has many gigantic
buildings, highways running throughout the city, but what really is this
fundamental change behind this development. What I think about every time I
visit Shanghai is that it is starting to have the same kind of scent with other major
cities in the world such as Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, London,
Frankfurt, Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, Taipei, and Seoul. Such cities are the
center in each country or the district. The common factor here is speed…The
period in which culture was streaming down forth the superior Europe and
America, the Westerns, to other parts of the world is now over. Power of a
culture lies not in superior cities or countries but in a network. Therefore, each
city is able to nurture its original culture by connecting to a network and avidly
absorbing other culture while keeping its own traditional culture grounds. From
now, it is probably true to say that a certain city is superior to others if this city
was able to create an original culture.
58
During the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the phenomenon of globalization was swiftly
shortening distances between cities around the world. As Toshio Shimizu said, the present world
is no longer dominated by western culture and the contemporary world has come into a new era
where new values are sought. Non-western artists receive abundant chances to be exhibited in
the contemporary art world. For instance, artists from Africa, Asia, Central America and the
Middle East began being noticed outside of their home countries for the first time. Toshio
Shimizu argues that the 2000 Shanghai Biennale served as a laboratory for generating new
57
Based on Li Xiang-Yang’s interview and translated from English into Chinese by author, Shanghai Biennale in Contemporary
Art Circumstance , interviewed in Shanghai SPSI Art Museum, Shanghai , November 8
th
, 2000.
58
Toshio Shimizu, “Shanghai Biennale: A New Expression in a New Epoch,” in 上海双年展/Shanghai shuangnian/Shanghai
Biennale 2000, ed. Chen Long (Shanghai: Shanghai Art Museum, 2000), 12.
26
cultural values and that Shanghai is the best city for mixing various culture together. The aim of
this biennale is to encourage ordinary people to recognize that “globalization has reached the art
world at last.”
59
As such, publics have become accustomed to visiting art museums and
considering art as an expression of our times. Toshio Shimizu expected this exhibition to serve as
a starting point for fostering a “social mood where many people start visiting museums.”
60
However, Shimizu’s argument sounds quite optimistic, utopian almost. He potentially equates
globalization as an economic force with its impact on contemporary art, while not accounting for
artists that may still remain marginalized in this more open terrain. For instance, women artists,
as a minority in the male dominated art world, have been excluded from mainland China’s
mainstream art institutions and the curators of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale shockingly included
three women artists. Obviously, the issues of representing marginalized artists still remained in
both the western and non-western biennales.
The curators of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale sought to resolve the problem of globalized
contemporary art as westernized contemporary art. Selecting diverse works for the exhibition,
the curators hoped to eliminate the constraints of western-centrism and transform global
contemporary art discourse that had been mostly dominated by western art critics and exhibitions
prior. One of the curators, Zhang Qing sought to change rigid western perceptions about Chinese
contemporary art and raised serious questions to discuss: what is the criterion for Chinese
contemporary art and who determines it?
61
Zhang Qing writes:
In the Chinese art scene, new generation, Political Pop and cartoon generation
emerged and artistic experiments flourished, demonstrating the breadth and
vitality of contemporary art activities in this previously ignored or emerged and
artistic experiments flourished, demonstrating the breadth and vitality of
59
Ibid, 13.
60
Ibid, 13.
61
Qing Zhang, “Beyond Left and Right: Transformation of the Shanghai Biennale,”in 上海双年展/Shanghai
shuangnian/Shanghai Biennale 2000, ed. Chen Long (Shanghai: Shanghai Art Museum, 2000), 16.
27
contemporary art activities in this previously ignored stereotyped country. On the
other hand, artist’s works have been directed by the western art market… the
Shanghai Biennale attempts not only to raise the profile of Chinese contemporary
art, but also to inspire discourse about the right to judge and to choose, which are
crucially important in a world dominated by western values and power… the
Shanghai Biennale is a crossroads. It has to face both cultural tradition and
foreign influence. On one hand, it is firmly opposed to new conservatism and
rigid adhesion to tradition, calling for renovating and absorbing the traditional
heritage to make it compatible with contemporary art and culture. On the other, it
is strongly against following the west blindly and pursuing fame and profit at the
cost of national dignity. At the same time, it encourages borrowing, using the
humanistic spirit and other valuable elements in foreign cultures to enrich Chinese
contemporary art. The Shanghai Biennale is making an effort to show the active
role China plays on the Asian cultural stage. Moreover, its curatorial idea,
distinguished from western ones, is a moving testament to the uniqueness and
independence of Chinese contemporary culture.
62
Zhang Qing acknowledges that some Chinese contemporary artists imitated western art
techniques and styles to create new paintings for export which cater to the global art market. He
encouraged Chinese contemporary artists to adapt foreign models without simply following
western standards, which is similar to the Maoist maxim: “make foreign things serve China.”
The 2000 Shanghai Biennale stood as an international event which encouraged curators and
artists to combine traditional heritage and contemporary culture together in order to generate and
enrich a uniquely Chinese contemporary art.
The 2000 Shanghai Biennale invited international artists and Chinese artists to participate
in the exhibition. Out of sixty-seven artists, thirty-two were from mainland China, two from
Hong Kong and two from Taiwan. The remaining artist were from various countries, such as
Japan, the United States, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Holland, France, the United Kingdom,
South Africa, Germany, Congo, South Korea, Canada, and Tanzania. The diverse selection of
62
Ibid,17.
28
nations supported the international aims of the exhibition. The biennale also included numerous
overseas Chinese artists, who faced different feedback from critics in and out of mainland China.
Cai Guo-Qiang produced one of the only works to directly interact with Shanghai’s
cityscape: Self Promotion for the People, 2000 (see Figure 6), “a series of digital photographs of
people and places around Shanghai displayed outside the exhibition venue.”
63
Before attending
the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, Cai had already received international recognition by winning one
of the international awards at the 48
th
Venice Biennale (as I discuss in the previous chapter). The
artist’s signature gunpowder performances and paintings thrust him onto the international stage,
making him one of the most prominent Chinese contemporary artists in the western art world.
The Chinese art critic, Fei Dawei evaluates Cai Guo-Qiang’s career:
The 1990s witnessed the most prolific years in Cai Guo-Qiang’s career as an artist. In
terms of quality and scale, his production may find no match among his contemporaries.
Cai’s main contribution, however, lies in his idiosyncratic way of thinking under the
special context of the 90s, which is highly instructive both to the broadening of the
contemporary art conception and the deepening of the artistic dialogue between the east
and west.
64
As one of the leading figures of Chinese contemporary art on the international stage,
Cai’s participation in the 2000 Shanghai Biennale definitely attracted international attention to
the exhibition, promoting cross-cultural exchange. Regardless of what Cai created for this
exhibition, his fame was bound to garner international recognition of the 2000 Shanghai
Biennale, thus promoting the development of Chinese contemporary art. However, Cai’s art and
identity as an overseas artist provoked hostile responses from some local art critics. In The
Shanghai Art Museum Should Not Become A Market Stall in China For Western Hegemony-A
Paper Delivered at The 2000 Shanghai Biennale, author Wang Nanming critiqued some
63
Lin, Above Sea, 101.
64
Fei Dawei, Shanghai Biennale 2000, ed., 18.
29
overseas Chinese contemporary artists for “appropriating simple motifs or symbols left behind
by tradition and … formulat[ing] these motifs into some essential markers of Chinese-ness.”
65
Wang argued that when people see Cai’s works, “they are awed by the scale and expense of his
so-called artworks, so much so that they forget to examine the meaning underlying his
“conceptual” approach.”
66
From Wang’s perspective, Cai incorporates traditional Chinese motifs
into his work in order to pander to western understandings of Chinese contemporary art, utilizing
a Chinatown culture-like strategy. On the other hand, Wang also evaluates the exhibition system
and cultural policies of China: “China’s exhibition system and cultural policies should take the
position that the art of a people should be created first for its people, that contemporary art
should spring from its own dynamic cultural realm and breathe new life into that realm.”
67
Typical amongst Chinese art critics, Wang’s perspective perfectly assimilates President
Mao’s talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art in 1942. Mao declared that “all our
literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants,
and soldiers; they are created for the workers, peasants and soldiers and are for their use.”
68
Indeed, Wang subsumes a nationalist position; he remains willing to support domestic art
development but holds prejudice against overseas artists. In other words, Wang and other
domestic art critics protect traditional artists’ interests and resent overseas artists’ success in the
domestic art market.
The 2000 Shanghai Biennale invited small numbers of Shanghai-based artists and its
relative lack of artworks related to Shanghai and its local history failed to support the curators’
65
Nanming Wang, “The Shanghai Art Museum Should Not Become A Market Stall in China for Western Hegemony—A Paper
Delivered at the 2000 Shanghai Biennale”,in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Wu Hung with Peggy Wang
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art), 353.
66
Ibid, 354.
67
Ibid, 354.
68
Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art”, in Yenan’s Talk (May 1942), Selected Works, Vol. III, 84.
30
theme of “Shanghai Spirit.” The 2000 Shanghai Biennale provided a unique opportunity for
artists of various historical backgrounds, countries and ethnicities to collaborate and exchange
culture and ideas through art. However, many local artists and audiences wished to see artworks
created for themselves rather than art pieces largely offered to western audiences about “the
romance of exotic, imagined lands.”
69
Uncooperative Approach
Concurrent with the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, artist Ai Weiwei and curators Feng Boyi
and Huan Tianxue curated an exhibition, entitled “Fuck off/ Uncooperative Approach/ 不合作方
式”, organized in critical response to the perceived limitations of the biennale model. “Fuck off”
was held at Shanghai’s privately-run East Link Gallery and invited dozens of artists who were
rejected from the 2000 Shanghai Biennale. Due to receiving support from the Shanghai
government, the curators of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale had to leave out some experimental
artworks that may not have met official approval. The government wanted to exhibit artworks
transmitting “positive” and “healthy” messages rather than displaying extreme or shocking art
pieces in the official exhibition. However, Ai Weiwei and other artists who had been unfairly left
out of the Shanghai Biennale believed that contemporary artists should be independent and able
to express their opinions about certain issues. In the preface of the “Fuck off” exhibition
catalogue, Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi proclaimed the curatorial goal:
Fuck off emphasizes the independent and critical stance that is basic to the existence of
art. Within a state of countless contradictions and conflicts, it maintains its status of
independence, freedom and plurality. It tries to provoke an artist’s responsibility and self-
discipline, and searches for a way in which art lives as “wildlife” and raises questions
about some issues of contemporary Chinese art.
70
69
Nanming Wang, The Shanghai Art Museum Should Not Become A Market Stall, 353.
70
Ai Weiwei, Feng Boyi, and Hua Tianxue, 不合作方式/Bu hezuo fangshi/Fuck Off (Shanghai: East Link Gallery, 2000), n.p.
31
“Fuck off” included photographs from Ai Weiwei’s Perspective series (1995-2003) (see
Figure 7), in which Ai gives the middle finger to the viewer and to seven geographically diverse
national political monuments, such as the White House and Tiananmen Square. At first glance,
viewers probably decode this collection of photos as expressing an anti-government message and
a demonstration of his contempt for power. However, the work becomes more complex and
unique when it is viewed not as political artwork but instead as an imitation of the western genre
of pop art. In fact, this collection of photos is not “so different from the Warholian anti-
establishment irreverence easily found in the works of many western pop artists.”
71
It is also
important to note that Ai’s juxtaposition of Tiananmen Square in Beijing with Washington,
Venice, Paris and Switzerland in these images subtly admitted that the power of Chinese
government is equal to other western powers and the historical and cultural value of Tiananmen
Square equivalent to that of the Louvre. Therefore, the “Fuck off” exhibition, to some degree,
did not represent a protest against the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, but rather functioned as a
“corresponding fringe part of the event, an additional component of the larger spectacle.”
72
At the beginning of the 20th century, the development of Chinese contemporary art
flourished. Under the general trend of global cultural integration, the government hoped to utilize
the Shanghai Biennale to establish a new image of Chinese contemporary art and Shanghai’s
urban brand. Chinese contemporary art urgently needs official channels to promote itself.
Following the conclusion of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the Shanghai Art Museum’s director
critically reflected that the art institution needed to improve in some ways. Firstly, the museum
should cultivate professionals who fully understand the trend of global cultural development,
conduct theoretical analysis and critical reflections, and hold forward-looking perspectives about
71
Frazier and Zhang, Playing the Chinese Card, 575.
72
Ibid, 576.
32
contemporary art. Secondly, the museum needs to establish its development department in order
to help curators find donors, who can support the cost of bringing artists to Shanghai. More
external private support would take official pressure off of curators and improve fairness in the
selection of artists. Despite the critical comments surrounding the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the
exhibition did succeed in introducing Chinese contemporary art to a wider public.
33
Chapter 4: Making a World City
Exhibiting National and Individual Dreams
To introduce China to the world as a major power, the Chinese government conducted
three mega-events in the first decade of the twenty-first century: the 2008 Beijing Olympics
presented Chinese soft power to the world, the 2009 National Day parade displayed China’s
military might, and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo stood as the Olympics for Culture, Economy
and Technology. Indeed, the 2008 economic recession marked the reversal of fortune for many
western cities such as New York City, Tokyo and London, which had until then, been recognized
as the world’s primary global cities.
73
As these cities struggled with financial crises, Dubai,
Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai emerged as new centers of global finance. These major
cities in the developing world have become “centers of enormous political investment, economic
growth, [and] cultural vitality and thus have become sites for instantiating their countries’ claims
to global significance.”
74
Shanghai, as China’s primary financial center, conducted the 2010
World Expo as an “explicit demonstration…of a can-do determination to experiment with
cutting-edge innovations in urban architecture, industry, and design.”
75
The World Expo, the
Olympics, and National Day parade aimed to show the world that China is a modernized and
unified nation, ready to take its rightful place on the global stage. The success of China’s soft
power “was symbolized by the Beijing Olympics in 2008.”
76
Due to the relatively limited
reception of Chinese culture in Western Europe and North America, the Chinese government
73
Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Enabling Economic Intermediation and Bearing Its Costs,” City & Community 15, no. 2
(2016): 99.
74
Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (West Sussex: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2011), 253.
75
Ibid, 253.
76
Frazier and Zhang, Playing the Chinese Card,571.
34
sought to utilize mega-events as outlets to transmit the quintessence of Chinese culture, while
transmitting the ideological position of the current Chinese government.
Within China, soft power operates distinctly as both inward-looking and outward-
looking. The domestic purpose of soft power is to “create a positive collective imagination” and
the international aim is to “brand the nation” globally.
77
In this case, the aim of the Shanghai
World Expo was both local and global: to “showcase the host country’s scientific, technological
and cultural power, but in [a] global context in cooperation with other nations.”
78
The slogan of
the Shanghai Expo, “Better City, Better Life,” signaled the important role of 21
st
century
urbanization and highlighted the government’s promotion of Shanghai as one of the world’s
great metropolises. By the end of the Expo, over seventy-three million people had visited and
almost two hundred countries and international organizations had participated. Nonetheless,
many local Shanghainese privately complained that the Expo was an extravagant waste of money
and an event the government could not fully afford. To construct city pavilions for the Shanghai
Expo, the government had to move out dozens of local residents in order to create space for the
event. Additionally, issues of migrant laborers, environmental pollution, and urban displacement
incurred sentiments of disappointment from citizens, who also promoted the development of
subsequent repurposing of Expo pavilions projects.
After the Shanghai Expo had been open for just two days, Chinese contemporary artist
Cai Guo-Qiang curated an exhibition, “Peasant da Vincis,” at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art
Museum. Cai, an artist who orchestrated the fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of
the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this time worked outside the national mega-event system in a
77
William Callahan, “Shanghai’s Alternative Futures: The World Expo, Citizen Intellectuals, and China’s New Civil Society,”
China Information 26, no. 2 (2012), 253.
78
Ibid, 254.
35
“purely private capacity.”
79
“Peasant da Vincis” criticized the rapid economic development of
China and celebrated the ingenuity of the rural communities who built China’s cities. While the
theme of the Shanghai Expo was “Better City, Better Life”, the theme of Cai’s exhibition offered
a counter-theme: “Peasants—Making a Better City.” There is something persistently theatrical
running through the exhibition, “a feeling aided by the stage-like quality of its venue.”
80
The
exhibition featured dozens of inventions created by people in the countryside, including
submarines, flying machines, boats, and China’s first aircraft carrier. The chief curator of the
Rockbund Art Museum, Liu Yingjiu, felt that these peasants involved in the exhibition “have
dreams, and pursue them however crazy they might seem. It shows how they have bigger dreams
than city people who dream of getting a bigger house and a car.”
81
Unlike city people’s
materialist lifestyles, these “Peasant da Vincis” utilize their ingenuity to represent more
optimistic and positive ways of living.
As Cai Guo-Qiang stated in an interview: “the dreams of people in the countryside are
endless. It’s an important reminder that we should hold onto our dreams instead of just chasing
wealth.”
82
Shanghai, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in China, relies heavily on migrant
laborers from the countryside to provide construction work, collect the city’s waste, and other
low-skilled jobs. These migrants work longer and harder than most city people but are treated as
second-class citizens. Although migrant laborers come from the lowest class of the society, they
deserve the right to fulfill their dreams as well. Meanwhile, Chinese film director Jia Zhangke/ 贾
樟柯 was commissioned by the World Expo to make a film to introduce Shanghai’s culture and
79
Cai Guoqiang, Nongmin dafenqi (Peasant da Vincis) (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2010), 21. For further
information on the exhibit, see Wang Yin, Yixiang tiankai: Cai Guoqiang yu nongmin dafenqi/Wild fantasies: Cai Guoqiang and
the Peasant da Vincis (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2010).
80
Chris Moore, “Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant Da Vincis,” China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House, 2010, 193.
81
Interview with Liu Yingjiu by Chris Moore, interviewed in the Rockbund Art Museum Curator, Shanghai, 12 October 2010.
82
Elaine Kurtenbach, “Shanghai Exhibit Pays Homage to Peasant Inventors,” Asian Reporter (June 7, 2010), n.p.
36
architecture. The film was called Shanghai Legends/ 上海传奇 (English title: I Wish I Knew).
Although the Expo presented Shanghai in line with the slogan “Better City, Better Life,” Jia’s
film documented Shanghai as an “overcast polluted city that is engaged in a perpetual process of
destruction and construction.”
83
Similar to the theme of Cai’s exhibition, Jia’s film revealed the
chaotic multiplicity of this global city, highlighting perpetual motion and the sacrifices of
Shanghai’s success.
Cai aimed to show that China’s economic model of growth does not apply evenly to
everyone. In the exhibition, Cai displayed propaganda style slogans on the exterior of the
Rockbund museum: “What’s important isn’t whether you can fly” and “Never learned how to
land.” Looking through the inventions on display, audiences could see how these peasant
inventors challenge gravity in their works and also challenge the dominant society by
showcasing the work of everyday people, whose work, while invaluable, often remains invisible.
These inventors pursue their dreams and advocate for the importance of freedom, even though
not all of the inventions functioned. Cai’s exhibition featured pigeon plane and flying saucers
that never took off from land, implying that the “Peasant da Vincis” should have the freedom to
succeed, but also the freedom to fail. While some of the inventors’ family members think of
them as losers, the inventors recognized themselves as risk takers. One of the featured inventors,
Wu Shuzai, makes a sedan-chair helicopter with the goal of escaping from Wuyi mountain,
which surrounds his village in Qianshan, Jiangxi. As a 69-year-old peasant, Wu doesn’t work.
When Cai discovered him and asked why he made this invention, Wu answered, that his “real
goal [was] to fly it out of this mountain and see the world.”
84
Prior to having his work displayed
in the exhibition, Wu’s wife dismantled his helicopters to use for firewood.
83
Callahan, “Shanghai’s Alternative Future.”, 258.
84
Wu Shuzai quoted in Cai, Nongmin dafenqi,146.
37
Despite Cai’s exhibition and other critiques, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo pushed
Shanghai on to the global cultural stage. After the World Expo successfully ended, the Chinese
government recognized that top quality museums and art galleries are an indispensable part of an
international cultural metropolis. In comparison to famous western metropolises with multiple
world-class museums (such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and
Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Louvre, Pompidou Center, and Orsay Museum in
Paris), Shanghai only had two major art museums prior to 2012: Shanghai Museum, which
exhibits ancient and pre-modern arts, and Shanghai Art Museum, which exhibits modern and
contemporary arts. The Chinese government recognized that, due to spatial limitations, the
Shanghai Art Museum required expansion. In 2012, following the Shanghai World Expo, the
Shanghai Art Museum expanded by moving to two new locations: the Expo’s China Pavilion,
now China Art Palace, which houses most of the Shanghai Art Museum’s permanent collection
of modern art, and Urban Future Pavilions, now Power Station of Art, which hosts contemporary
art exhibitions. As art historian Jenny Lin observes, the Urban Future Pavilion’s conversion into
the Power Station of Art signals “Shanghai’s future of increased intimacy between art, industry,
and state sponsorship, while hinting at historical cross-cultural tensions that raise the stakes of
Shanghai’s worlding.”
85
Interestingly, the old Shanghai Art Museum was originally located in a
colonial building that was the British racetrack. Now, the Power Station of Art resides in
Shanghai’s first Chinese-owned power plant intended to compete against foreign-run monopolies
on electricity. Moving the Shanghai Art Museum to this new location reminds us of Shanghai’s
85
Jenny Lin, “China’s Bright New World? Dazzling Project of Global Shanghai,” in Cities of Light. Two Centuries of Urban
Illumination, eds. Sandy Isenstadt, Dietrich Neumann, and Margaret Petty (London: Routledge, 2015), 120. Lin further describes
how the original building housing the Urban Future Pavilion during the Expo and now the Power Station of Art – the Nanshi
Power Plant – reminds us of the semi-colonial history of Shanghai’s past and signals China’s desire to further develop its
nation. As Shanghai’s first Chinese-owned power company, Nanshi Power Plant, opened in 1897, aimed to counteract the city’s
foreign-run monopolies on architectural illumination.
38
semi-colonial past, while highlighting China’s present-day desire to further develop the nation
under its own rule.
2012 “Reactivation” Shanghai Biennale: A Repurposing Project
The Power Station of Art museum (hereafter referred to as PSA) now hosts China’s
largest international art event: the Shanghai Biennale. The theme of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale,
the first one at the new location, was “Reactivation,” which signified Shanghai’s desire to take
inspiration from the city’s past to shape its future. The curators of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale
invited ninety-eight artists from twenty-seven countries to participate in the exhibition and
displayed artworks in a variety of media at the Power Station of Art. The curatorial team, also
international, was composed of Chinese chief curator Qiu Zhijie, and his co-curators Boris Groys
from Germany, Jens Hoffmann from Costa Rica, and Johnson Chang Tsong-zung from Hong
Kong. The 2012 Shanghai Biennale was organized into four sub-themes: Resources, Revisit,
Reform and Republic. These four sections each focused on art as a socially mobilizing force,
artists as visitors and rewriters of history, artworks as transformative converters of energy, and
artworks as organizers of dialogue and communication.
The exhibition area of the PSA is three times larger than that of the original Shanghai Art
Museum. Undoubtedly, the former power plant’s unruly architectural space provides an
enormous and interesting post-industrial space to exhibit contemporary art works. The 27-meter-
high space on the first floor is suitable for large-scale installations; the second can exhibit
themed exhibitions; the space on the third floor can be utilized for education and as a theater; and
the fifth floor has a large terrace facing the Huangpu river. The unique 165-meter high chimney
of the Power Station of Art is utilized as a special exhibition space that the museum’s curators
believe can produce intense encounters with artworks. The chief curator of the 2012 Shanghai
39
Biennale, Qiu Zhijie, commented that “moving to the Power Station of Art is the best decision
we’ve made. The old Shanghai Art Museum has a deeper integration with the history of
Shanghai, but to be honest, such a building can’t exhibit installations at all and it’s very
unusable. Although the PSA still needs time to develop, we’re thrilled to have such a museum in
which to work.”
86
Additionally, the 2012 Shanghai Biennale introduced a remarkable new component, the
City Pavilion project, which comprised independently curated projects with thirty international
cities in Shanghai. Several parallel city pavilions were “set within the main location of the Power
Station of Art, with more scattered alongside Waibaidu Bridge-Yuanmingyuan Road-North
Sichuan Road-East Nanjing Road.”
87
The city pavilions project signaled the curators’ goals of
producing a high profile, international art exhibition, like the Venice Biennale, in China. A few
of the pavilions, such as those of Amsterdam, Bandung, Istanbul, Lagos, Lyon, Mumbai,
Moscow and Palermo, were situated on the top level of the Power Station of Art museum. The
other pavilions were situated offsite alongside Shanghai’s central Bund area. Independent
curators exhibited artworks from their cities in each of the City Pavilions. For instance, the
curator of the Sydney Pavilion, Aaron Seeto, selected five mid-career artists and a collective of
three emerging artists to represent the spirit of Sydney. The city of Lima exhibited Jose Carlos
Martinat’s large installation, All the Republic in One-Stereoreality Environment, comprised of
old electric fans endlessly blowing dozens of colored papers around an empty space. Despite the
gallery space provided for each City Pavilion being limited, these cities presented remarkable
pieces with abundant visual offerings and various curatorial practices. The exhibition’s curators
86
Qin Li, “Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum: Four Years of Reactivation,” China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing
House 43, (October 2012), http://www/ cnki.net, accessed March 1, 2020.
87
“About Shanghai Biennale,” Power Station of Art Museum, accessed March 1, 2020,
https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/programs/shanghai-biennalee/about-shb.
40
and members of the Shanghai Biennale committee believed that the City Pavilion Project would
contribute to the city’s global goals. Sharing similar aim as those of the Shanghai World Expo,
the Shanghai Biennale, together with the City Pavilion project, created a high-profile
international art event. However, focusing too much on collaborations with international artists
detracted from the Biennale’s emphasis on local art and culture. The 2012 Shanghai Biennale
curators invited only twenty-nine artists from mainland China out of ninety artists in total. As a
result, young Chinese artists had limited chances to present their works, and audiences could not
fully appreciate recent development in Chinese contemporary art. Although the Shanghai
government promoted the 2012 Shanghai Biennale as the largest international mega-event after
the World Expo, the other purported goal of presenting Shanghai’s distinct cultural spirit was
almost entirely ignored.
Chief curator Qiu Zhijie likened the curatorial approach of the 2012 Shanghai Biennale to
hotpot. Using the analogy of a hotpot party, in which the host provides the broth and each guest
brings their own ingredients to enrich the meal, Qiu Zhijie explained that the 2012 Shanghai
Biennale utilized the strategy of the Venice Biennale (with international cities replacing nations),
wherein his team focused on curating the primary exhibition with other nations’ curators
designing their own exhibitions in distinct pavilions. In reality, Qiu Zhijie and his co-curators’
ambitious focus on the City Pavilions neglected the realities of Shanghai’s still nascent
contemporary art infrastructure.
Following the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo stood as another
mega-event. Qiu Zhijie admitted that no cultural events following the spectacular Expo could
surpass it. The Shanghai government invested enormous funds and labor in supporting the Expo,
raising both local and international audiences’ expectations of Shanghai-based cultural events.
41
The curators’ overambitious aims in utilizing the Power Station of Art and organizing the City
Pavilions project for the first time didn’t succeed in meeting elevated standards and the 2012
Shanghai Biennale received dozens of negative critiques from local and international audiences.
Sydney-based critic David Corbet commented that the actual pavilions of the 2012 Shanghai
Biennale “were far lesser entities than City Pavilions might suggest (such as World Expo),
largely situated in makeshift spaces and marked by a lack of resources and adequate security…
most pavilions are in poor condition and awaiting major restoration.”
88
For the Chinese government, conducting mega-events, such as the World Expo and
Shanghai Biennale, flexes the country’s soft power while celebrating Shanghai as a world city.
These mega-events attracted dozens of tourists and art lovers from around the world to Shanghai.
At the same time, critiques of the Shanghai Expo, including Cai’s “Peasant da Vinci” exhibition,
demonstrated the pros and cons of Shanghai’s rapid urban development. Similarly, the 2012
Shanghai Biennale showed both the promises and pitfalls of the globalization of contemporary
Chinese art.
88
David Corbet, “The Artist Is Absent Reactivation: The 9th Shanghai Biennale,” Art Monthly Australia, no. 255 (November
2012): 30.
42
Conclusion
At the turn of the twenty-first century, artists from different countries gathered together in
high-profile exhibitions. Numerous contemporary Chinese artists presented their works on a
global stage, as the field of contemporary art developed within China. Cai Guo-Qiang, along
with many artists of his generation, were embraced in the western European and North
American-dominated contemporary art world. However, many of these contemporary Chinese
artists also faced severe criticism from Chinese art critics. Some critics accused overseas Chinese
artists of playing “the China card” and pandering to westerners’ fascination with the “eastern
other.” Despite these cross-cultural conflicts, the recent success of contemporary Chinese artists
abroad has led to greater recognition of Chinese art outside of China, as well as the
acknowledgment of the importance of contemporary art within China, as seen clearly in
Shanghai.
On the heels of large-scale international exhibitions, such as the Shanghai Biennale,
numerous modern and contemporary art galleries and museums have opened in Shanghai. As I
discussed in the previous chapter, Shanghai now houses the state-run China Art Palace and
Power Station of Art, as well as the privately funded Rockbund Museum. After the 2010
Shanghai Expo, the local government decided to renovate and convert cultural industrial sites
along the Xuhui Waterfront of the Huangpu River. City officials identified this area, referred to
as Shanghai West Bund, as a Central Activity Zone that “carries the core functions of global
cities” in the “Shanghai 2035 Master Plan.”
89
Shanghai West Bund now boasts over twenty
cultural institutions, such as the Long Museum, Yuz Museum, Tank Shanghai, and an emerging
theatre cluster, forming the largest art zone in Asia. Shanghai’s hosting of international art
89
“District Overview of West Bund,” Westbund, accessed March 1, 2020, http://www.westbund.com/en/index/ABOUT-WEST-
BUND/Area-Overview/District-Overview.html.
43
exhibitions and creation of art zones, such as the Shanghai Biennale and Shanghai West Bund,
uplifts the city as an international cultural center.
This past year, I fortunately received the opportunity to intern at China Art Palace, where
I completed my research and enriched my own experiences of viewing contemporary art in
Shanghai. As a state-run cultural institution, China Art Palace mainly exhibits internationally
known artworks, and the primary role of this museum is to commemorate and celebrate Chinese
history. With the proliferation of biennales and art exhibitions, Chinese audiences and art lovers
encounter numerous chances to appreciate western artworks and be more tolerant of foreign
cultures. However, encouraging people who don’t have any background in art to visit museums
and galleries remains a difficult task for art institutions.
From my perspective, we should now focus on supporting local young artists and
enhancing people’s interest in and enthusiasm about contemporary art. Today, emerging artists
need more chances and platforms to present their artworks and people who don’t have any
background in art need to be welcomed into institutions. Art institutions may brainstorm some
online activities or a series of seminars to bring young artists and audiences together to provide
emerging artists with a platform to illustrate their ideas, while giving more people an opportunity
to elaborate their understanding of art.
During my internship period, I worked with the education department of China Art
Palace to organize a series of seminars with young artists in the state-run cultural institution. We
invited several Shanghai-based artists who graduated from art school recently to introduce their
works of art and discuss obstacles they’ve encountered under current cultural circumstances.
Each artist involved in this seminar freely expressed their ideas and audience members from
various backgrounds were welcome to attend the seminars and share their perspectives. The
44
seminars strengthened connections between artists and audiences and provided a platform to
discuss the current artistic environment.
Related to my research, my fellow MA candidates Allison Chaklos, Jordan Gonzales, and
I are currently curating an exhibition, entitled Old Home/ 老家, which employs an experimental
book-as-exhibition model to present art about shifting ideas of Chinese and Chinese American
identity and notions of home. 老家(Old Home) is the Chinese concept of a person’s geo-cultural
homeland or origin. Although rooted in real geographies, conflicted notions of Old Home
especially exist in the psychological geographies of those who live apart from their homeland.
We have collaborated with four Chinese American female artists – Iris Yirei Hu, Stephanie Shih,
Sichong Xie and Tshab Her – to explore these artists’ processes of representing their own
homelands and negotiating diasporic identities. As these artists are relatively unknown in China,
I would like to lead programs to enhance exchanges between them and audiences in Shanghai,
especially young female Chinese artists.
Drawing from my dual American- Chinese educational background, I aim to build
bridges connecting artists in China and the United States. I also seek to promote contemporary
art in my hometown of Shanghai. In the future, I hope to organize art exhibitions and events that
will present Shanghai’s shifting cultural spirit to the world and help foster a more equitable
development of Chinese contemporary art.
45
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Appendix with Figures
Figure 1: The number of museums in China (1905-2016). From the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH).
.
Figure 2: Wang Guangyi, The Great Criticism Series, oil on canvas, 1993.
49
Figure 3: Xu Bing, Tianshu (Book from the Sky), installation, 1987-1991.
Figure 4: Cai Guo-Qiang, Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, 108 life-sized sculptures created on site by Long Xuli and nine
guest artisan sculptures, 60 tons of clay, wire and wood armature, 1999 (commissioned for the 48
th
Venice Biennale).
50
Figure 5: Cai Guo-Qiang, Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows, wooden boat, arrows, rope, flag and electric fan, 1998.
Figure 6. Cai Guo-Qiang, Self-promotion for the People, installation at the Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, 2000.
51
Figure 7: Ai Weiwei, Perspective Series (1995-2003), exhibited at “Fuck off” exhibition in 2000.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This thesis examines the rise of the Shanghai Biennale, related international art exhibitions, and contemporary Chinese artworks. I examine the contentious issues surrounding the proliferation of art biennales in mainland China, while illuminating how biennale culture impacts people’s recognition of contemporary art and Shanghai’s urban development. This thesis analyzes exhibitions about Chinese contemporary art, such as “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” (1998) and “Fuck off/ Uncooperative approach” (2000), mainly focusing on case studies of Chinese-born, United States-based contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang. These case studies include Cai’s Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard/威尼斯-收租院 (1999), exhibited at the 48th Venice Biennale
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Yin, Ming
(author)
Core Title
The globalization of contemporary Chinese art: biennales, large-scale exhibitions, and the transnational work of Cai Guo-Qiang
School
Roski School of Art and Design
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere
Publication Date
04/20/2021
Defense Date
04/20/2021
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Cai Guo-Qiang,contemporary Chinese art,Globalization,large-scale exhibitions,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Lin, Jenny (
committee chair
), Cheng, Meiling (
committee member
), Moss, Karen (
committee member
)
Creator Email
mingyin@usc.edu,yinming19970702@163.com
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-451084
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UC11668765
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etd-YinMing-9504.pdf
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451084
Document Type
Thesis
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Yin, Ming
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
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Tags
Cai Guo-Qiang
contemporary Chinese art
large-scale exhibitions