Shanghai’s Contemporary Art Scene: Looking Inward and Outward

Stephanie Hsu
Contemporary Art and New Media in China
Midterm paper
10/28/10

Shanghai's Contemporary Art Scene: Looking Inward and Outward

Widely argued to be China's most global and cosmopolitan city, Shanghai has become an important international platform for Chinese contemporary art. Shanghai is a young city with a multi-layered history, having within the past century served as a major international port, economic center, and political refuge. Due to its vast influx of foreigners and rapid urban development over the past hundred-plus years, the city lends itself as a case study of globalization and modernization. Much of Shanghai's modern history can be observed through its rich visual culture—from the Western-influenced film advertisements and commercial posters of the 1920s and 1930s, to the Communist propaganda posters and Yang Ban Xi of the Maoist period. Emerging from this image-saturated history, the contemporary art scene in Shanghai grew out of artists' responses to the changing dynamics of commercialism, consumerism, and politics in their world. While Beijing, as the cultural capital of China, remains the most prominent center for Chinese contemporary art, Shanghai has also progressively proven itself to be a distinct and valuable site for the development of Chinese contemporary art.
After the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai provided fertile ground for artistic experimentation, giving rise to the development of Chinese avant-garde art. As Shanghai was once the most industrial city in China, populated with a large working class "sprinkled with political radicals" and a workforce that "ignited the sparks of revolutionary struggle across the city," it also transitioned into China's period of economic reform in the same bold and progressive spirit of the Shanghainese. The city became the site of various exhibitions, such as The Twelve-Man Painting Exhibition and the Grass Painting Society's Painting Exhibition for the '80s, which showcased Chinese artists' rendering of Cubism, Expressionism, and other Western avant-garde influences.  Shanghai-based artist Li Shan organized several performance pieces that earned him notoriety within the art circle as well as in the immediate audience of Shanghai. In 1989, when he participated in the "China/Avant Garde" exhibition in Beijing, he was already forty-five years old—fifteen years older than the majority of exhibiting artists.  Still, his work was characteristic of a local trend initiated by artists of the New Art Movement, who were inclined towards performance. Li Shan's performance pieces included his 1988 work Last Supper, in which he collaborated with other artists and art critics within the art community in Shanghai to stage a performance inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's famous mural of Jesus and his disciples. In her book Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, Karen Smith describes Li Shan's artistic inclination during that time to explain the sense of urgency surrounding China's move towards the avant-garde: "[A]s China began to advance and open up, everyone was scrambling to make up for lost time…The ranks of recent graduates felt that being avant-garde, by its very nature, demanded the rebellious energy of youth."  
Following the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square, China's contemporary art began to develop an identity more independent of its Western influences, as artists probed the changing textures of China's new political and economic landscape. Shanghai became the center of abstract art in China , with artists including Ding Yi and Shen Fan producing colorful works in oils and other non-ink mediums.1 Li Shan, and other Shanghai-based artists including Wang Ziwei and Yu Youhan pioneered the Political Pop movement, which relied on irony and playfulness to critique issues of state ideology and consumer culture. As Smith describes in her book, "Basking in the style and the glamour of a history of internationalism that the rest of China admired from its cloth shoes up, the Shanghainese looked to the world where all other Mainland citizens looked to Beijing". The opening of China in the 1980s rekindled the inclinations towards foreign influences and social freedoms that had characterized Shanghai's cosmopolitan past. In recounting the experiences of Shanghai-based artist Li Shan, Smith reveals the distinctive character of the contemporary art scene in Shanghai:
The city's social ambience played a part in permitting Li Shan to become the artist he desired. It would have been impossible to realize many of the works for which he recognized today in the capital: Beijing remains both more brut and less tolerant, while nationwide, the cultural enlightenment of lesser urban sprawls lag several decades behind.
Smith describes Li Shan's conflicting feelings for Shanghai; while he complains that the cultural life in Shanghai cannot compare to that of Beijing, he agrees that Shanghai is not without allure,  having rarely left the city during his career.  Although the art groups and exhibitions in Shanghai indeed did not receive as much attention as those in Beijing during China's period of liberalization, the complex character of Shanghai still made the city an important site for the bold, experimental development of Chinese contemporary art.  
Today, much of Shanghai's contemporary art continues to engage with issues facing China and its growing art world, all the while employing the perspective of a city shaped by the interactions between East and West, local and global, old and new. Shanghai is home to a variety of strong commercial galleries, including ShanghART H-Space at the creative cluster 50 Moganshan Road; pioneering non-profit art spaces, including, BizArt, also at 50 Moganshan Road; and private museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. Furthermore, Shanghai currently hosts two art fairs— Shanghai Art Fair and ShContemporary.  The 2010 ShContemporary at the Shanghai Exhibition Center in September introduced fresh, new work to Shanghai's developing art market. DISCOVERIES: Re-Value, one part of the show curated by Colin Chinnery, presented artworks that explored the intersection between artistic value and consumer value. Among these works was Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' satirical installation piece—a slideshow of intimate and provocative text-based messages being projected onto two opposing walls.  As Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D, a senior curator on Asian Art at the Guggenheim described, "There is a lot of comparing this fair to the Hong Kong fair … but this fair strikes me as different. It feels messier, edgier, younger, and more experimental." Chinnery described the progressive yet laidback atmosphere of Shanghai's art scene:
The art scene is smaller, less competitive, and there are less politics. In Shanghai artists can just relax and have conversations about art, and just be artists…Shanghai could be the most attractive place for art in Asia, maybe even the world, because it represents the future more than any other city. (1)  
Shanghai provides a space for artists to evade the political and competitive atmosphere of Beijing, yet engages them in the heat of the issues facing the globalized world. While the contemporary art scene in Shanghai was born out of the outward-looking mentality of the city— from artists' desire to reach out to the Western world—much of the work produced and exhibited in Shanghai at present reveal that artists are applying their knowledge of the outside world to the issues of the local and everyday experience.  
Perhaps the city's most prominent showcase of contemporary art is the Shanghai Biennale, which has been held once every two years beginning in 1996 at venues including the Shanghai Art Museum. The Biennale consists of a series of exhibitions and lectures, each time engaging in a specific theme. In Shanghai: Art of the City, Dany Chan and Michael Knight state that "from the beginning the plan was to use the biennial as a means to achieve equal footing in the international art realm: Shanghai would 'open the gate for China's modern art to make its way into the world arena'."  While the first two Biennales welcomed only Chinese artists and showcased works limited to the traditional techniques of oil, ink, and watercolor painting, the Biennale in 2000 began to open the exhibition to international artists and curators.  With support from the city's municipal government, the Shanghai Biennale has secured the funding and endorsement that has allowed it to become a truly international event.
The Shanghai Biennale in 2000 was curated by Alana Heiss, director of New York's P.S.1, and Toshio Shimizu, a prominent Japanese curator, both of whom organized the exhibition in such a way that allowed it to portray the movement and vitality of China's contemporary art scene. The curators selected a number of Chinese artists who were known internationally but who were not yet familiar to the Chinese general public. One such artist was Zhang Peili, who was concerned with engaging Chinese society in dialogue with outside countries about art, foreign knowledge, and the issues surrounding China's growing global presence. As Smith describes in Nine Lives, "The Shanghai Biennale offered a powerful platform for comparing and contrasting the dominant characteristics of the divergent cultures of individual nations worldwide in a work he titled simply News."   Zhang Peili's News consisted of twenty-seven recordings, each documenting the news broadcast of a different country's national television network on the evening of December 31, 1999. For viewers, News did not translate into the powerful visual experience that Zhang Peili had hoped, as the simultaneity of broadcasts—all in different languages—made the work seem confusing and overwhelming.   Despite the failure of its presentation, the work reveals the artist's desire to help situate China in the reality of its global context, and the potential of the Shanghai Biennale to give such a work valuable international exposure. The efforts of Heiss and Shimizu resulted in the ultimate success of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, which "put Shanghai on the global art map, and established Shanghai Biennale as a must-see event on the international cultural calendar."  
The 2010 Shanghai Biennale continues the young legacy of the biennial exhibition, through its showcase of the work of Chinese and international artists who have found innovative ways to wrestle with issues of the contemporary world. Curated by Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi, and Gao Shiming, the 2010 Biennale focuses on the theme of "Rehearsal," claiming to serve as a "form of art production that is experimental and open." The introductory wall panel at the exhibition further explains this theme of "Rehearsal":
Rehearsal is open and fluid. It focuses on the planning and process of the exhibition, on the creation of the exhibition and a consciousness of the process of production. In a rehearsal, the exhibition is not merely an array of artworks; it is a sensory arena that is productive, changing and continually experimenting.
With this opening introduction, the Biennale sets the stage for the exhibition as being only Act III of a five-act "touring rehearsal" that began in June earlier this year and ends in January 2011. Claiming Act III to be a reflection of time and experience, the exhibition presents itself as an open, interactive space in which viewers are expected to engage in ongoing dialogue with the artworks.
Ho Chi Minh Trail, launched in collaboration with Long March Project—a collective of artists, writers, curators, and scholars that was founded by Lu Jie in 2002—is one of the major projects of the Biennale that speaks directly to the exhibition's theme of "Rehearsal." Ho Chi Minh Trail consists of a series of travels, research projects, critical events, and artworks, which explore the intersection between lived experiences, individual memories, and collective imagination in various locales throughout China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  Large wall panels displaying text in English and Chinese over blurred images of people and trails were placed throughout the first floor of the museum. They described Ho Chi Minh Trail as a project with the goal of inspiring artists to engage in continual contemplation and self-criticism, and to approach the process of creation as an end in itself. One of these panels read, "We have yet to thoroughly examine the essence of action"—a commentary not only on war and violence—the obvious subtexts of the project—but also on capitalism and globalization as causes of continual production, mindless consumption, and intellectual passivity.
The theme of "Rehearsal" was also reflected in Wang Xiaoshuai's "Await," an installation displaying several films that each document a single shot for eight minutes. One of these films included a shot of a man on the back of a train, the scenery behind him seeming to change ever so slightly despite the viewer's knowledge that the film documented the train's travel across almost ten minutes of distance. Beyond the challenge it poses to the conventions of film and storytelling, Wang Xiaoshuai's "anti-film" draws attention to the modern world's growing inclination towards speed, sensation, and thrill. "Await" delivers a visual experience to its viewers that is blatantly anticlimactic, arguing that perhaps true unthinking occurs when individuals lose synch with the rhythm of their environment. Another work that addressed immediate issues of the globalized world was Mou Bouyan's "Fat Series," a sculptural installation depicting naked, corpulent bald men who resemble infants, splashing about in waves of milk. A dramatic and humorous display set amid several photography installations, the piece garners attention to the harsher realities of consumerism and mass consumption.
Liu Xiaodong's oil paintings and JR's "Wrinkles of the City" are two of many works in the Biennale that deal explicitly with local settings. Liu Xiaodong's "Getting Out of Beichuan" and "Entering Tai Lake" convey a sense of disillusionment with China's rapid urbanization, depicting Chinese youth in the midst of collapsing, deteriorating environments. "Getting Out of Beichuan" is a painting of a group of young women, dressed in the styles of urban youth but posing solemnly amid the ruins of Beichuan, a county severely hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In "Entering Tai Lake," Liu Xiaodong portrays a group of young men sitting in a boat on the murky, polluted waters of Tai Lake. The environmental impact of industrialization and urbanization are apparent, as the young men appear stranded, yet impassive to the conditions around them. In "Wrinkles of the City," JR also brings an inward-looking perspective to the Biennale with his large black-and-white photographs of the faces of elderly Shanghainese individuals, which cover several walls of the exhibition. The wrinkles, pores, and patchy texture of the faces evoke a sense of intimacy, familiarity, and nostalgia that directly addresses the local character of Shanghai.  
As the Chinese contemporary art scene in Shanghai continues to expand and reach new levels of international recognition, many artists and curators have taken the role of leaders in addressing the social and urban changes around them. The 2010 Shanghai Biennale's theme of "Rehearsal" serves as an example that many artists and curators in Shanghai understand the position of the city's contemporary art scene in relation to both the local environment and the international art world. Since the emergence of Shanghai's contemporary art scene, many local artists have attempted to shatter people's indifference to local and global trends. Active participation in the city's contemporary art scene entails ongoing discussions and debates about the social and political structures that both restrain and give substance to artistic expression.  As Shanghai continues to shape its international identity, it seems that the city's contemporary art scene will take on an increasingly significant role in exposing the myriad issues surrounding Shanghai's growth to both local and global audiences.

SH Biennale review by Noor Chadha

The 8th Shanghai Biennale 2010

       The focus of the 2010 Shanghai Biennale is rehearsal, the
concept that the final product of an artistic process is not
necessarily the most important – that within every stage there is
substance and in some cases, the "rehearsal" stages may be even more
essential than the final artwork. Spanning over the three floors of
the Shanghai Art Museum, the exhibition consists of work ranging from
the more traditional painting, photography and video, to large-scale
installations and performances involving live music and spectator
interaction.
In one of the exhibition spaces, there was no "artwork" as such, but
an actual studio of the Shanghai artist Ma Liang. Every piece of his
original studio has been moved into the museum for the duration of the
show. This radical move places the spotlight backstage – not even on
artistic process but on the actual work environment for that process
to then take place in. An artist's studio shares so much insight into
the artist's creative soul – it is where the artist can find the peace
of mind to create. Usually you would think that the origin of an
artwork can be traced back to the conception of the idea behind it,
but no, exhibiting Ma Liang's studio in it's whole at the Biennale
takes it one step further, before conception of any idea, suggesting
that perhaps the true identity of any artwork can be located at it's
birthplace.
Right next to Ma Liang's studio is a performance piece by the
Norwegian art group Verdestreatret called "And All the Question Marks
Started to Sing". Whereas Ma Liang's studio is a stagnant environment
– a setting for the process to occur in, Verdestreatret's piece is the
complete opposite: both an ongoing process and a final artwork –
essentially an artwork in ongoing rehearsal. The work consists of all
kinds of machinery – wires, bicycle wheels, computers, projectors and
heavy duty lighting, and artists interacting with the machinery in a
combination of ways: Musicians playing beats on the bicycle wheels,
artists manipulating the silhouettes of the whole piece on the wall.
The piece is constantly undergoing changes and the final product is
that process of evolution.
Other works in the Biennale that I felt successfully emphasized the
theme of rehearsal included French artist JR's "Wrinkles of the City"
and Qiu Zhijie's "Qiu's notes on Colorful Lantern at Shangyuan
Festival". Overall, I thought the 2010 Shanghai Biennale was
conceptually successful and has contributed some wonderful artworks to
the art world.

by Shane Li

I went to Shanghai Biennale 2008 and it was not interesting to me at
all, whereas Shanghai Biennale 2010 is way better than 2008 in terms
of the sheer number and quality of art works presented. Part of the
reason why I think 2010 is better than 2008 is that I am taking
"Contemporary art and new media in China", which gives me a lot of
insights into the life and thinking of contemporary artists and allows
me to appreciate an art work from an amateur's perspective.

The themes for the two biennales have very different implication. The
theme of Shanghai Biennale 2008 is Trans Local Motion, which is a
reflection on the city, urbanization and people's living status in the
city (they probably chose this theme in accordance to Shanghai Expo).
The theme for 2010 is Rehearsal, which emphasizes more on the pure
arty essence of art, as well as the experimental and open nature of
Shanghai Biennale. In 2008 artists were compelled to do something
related to urban life, whereas in 2010 more artists present their
works in more fields. Wu Shanzhuan's installation "d=mr2"
interestingly combined mathematics and arts to express the
unpredictable character of life. MadeIn Company's installation "Must
Act" is a series of works addressing the same subject –politics, wars
and peace. In one piece of painting, the face of Marx is hidden in the
cloud of the Windows XP desktop.( See picture)  Another piece has a
cake-like military castle.

Unlike art works in 2008 which were highly abstract, some realism
works were presented in 2010's show. Liu Xiaodong's gorgeous oil
painting "Entering Tai Lake; Getting out of Bei Chuan" strikes me very
much with their realistic style. "Maleonn's studio" is also
interesting because the artist actually moved his studio into the
museum so that the audience can have a close look at the real
environment in which art works are produced.

Art works that perfectly combine the past and the future is always my
favorite, and Qiu Zhijie's "Qiu's Notes on 'Colorful Lantern at
Shangyuan Festival'" surpasses my expectation. "Colorful Lantern at
Shangyuan Festival" is a very famous traditional Chinese painting. Qiu
took the form of this painting to present various business,
occupations and machines, some of which are purely imaginary but very
interesting. The materials and techniques used in the wall painting
and installations are all very "traditional" and very "Chinese", for
example, black ink and wood.

The last thing I want to address is that I am glad to see more and
more Shanghai citizens and tourists are interested in going to art
museum. I think that artists' prior target when producing art is to
make it relevant and understandable to average spectators. Shanghai
Biennale 2010 also did a good job in presenting art to the society.

Shanghai Biennale 2010

by Grace Cori Huang
Shanghai Biennale 2010

       For the eighth Shanghai Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum, curators
Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming created a show with the
theme of "Rehearsal." From this title, I was looking forward to seeing
works centering around the art-making process rather than only the
finished piece that we usually see at shows, however the way the
pieces dealt with the idea of rehearsal were not just about practicing
or preparing for a final exposition. In "And All the Question Marks
Started to Sing" created by Verdensteatret, the piece was in a
perpetual state of rehearsal, with the mechanical pieces always
moving. Like at a rehearsal, everything was visible to the viewer: the
light sources, the electrical wiring, the set-up of the bicycles and
magnifying glasses, and that made it even more interesting than merely
looking at the resulting light and shadow projected on the walls. On
the first floor of the museum, there were still photographs of the
performance of Semele, directed by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. What was
interesting about this performance was the censorship it underwent as
the show travelled from Europe to China; according to news reports and
reviews, the show's meaning was significantly altered due to
censorship of sexual and political themes. As a result, when the show
opened in China with all the alterations, Zhang Huan did not really
know whether or not it would work, it was as though it was a
rehearsal. It is unfortunate, that it couldn't be shown the way it was
intended, though it gives the piece another interesting twist.

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by Mikael on SH Biennale

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Shanghai Biennale
Shanghai Art Museum until January

Shanghai is bustling with art the week I go to the 8th Shanghai
Biennale and I am already full of other impressions from different
galleries and shows.
The Shanghai Biannual displays a variety of artistic expressions, not
only from China and Asia but from around the world, and that this is
the center of attention in the art scene of Shanghai becomes clear as
I walk in through the front doors.

As I walk in on the first floor, things are very organized and put together.
The show flows and the works seem to speak with each other.
The theme "rehearsal" is clearly visible, and there is no need to read
any plaques to understand the works connection with the theme.
Zhang Huan's temple structure that is the set for one of his operas
clearly speaks the language of the theme and lets you as a viewer
emerge yourself into the artists work, something that seem to be a
cohesive element in the show.

Another good example of this is on the second floor, where I am able
to enter artist Ma Liang's studio that has been recreated in one of
the rooms.

Although some of the more to me interesting individual works are found
on the top two floors. There is a sense that the two curators instead
of creating a good mix and balance corresponding to the theme, instead
put in a random mix of their own personal favorite artists. The
balance and focus found on the second floor just completely vanishes
as I walk up the stairs.
The actual curatorial work seems therefore quite cluttered, imprecise
and in some cases
even quite blatantly obviously bad. Maybe the fact that the multiple
curators did not seem to have fully come to an agreement, the
governmental censorship and that while viewing the show, several rooms
still being built; just adds to the sense of rehearsal.
Maybe the open ended theme is the perfect cover all the madness that
goes wrong when putting together an international show in China.

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A Guiding Light- Shanghai Biennale

http://marclafia.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/art-and-its-guiding-light/

Yesterday evening at Copper Union, I saw ‘A Guiding Light’ a 22 minute diptych video commissioned by Performa, for the Shanghai Biennal. What we see is 6, 7 attractive and well spoken artists speak to the role of the art exhibition, the artist and public. The setting is a sound stage and the format the self-examining, self absorption familiar to both an artist round table talk and the soap opera. In this soap, the actors, the artists are in search of an outside or a definition of the inside in which they are, which is the international or globalized art circuit.

The point of departure is the site and occasion of the art exhibition (The Shanghai Biennale) and the knowing torpor and malaise it occasions because no matter what one’s tact, one’s work, even if it’s a critique becomes spectacle recuperated by capital. This malaise produced by a longing to define, even inhabit an outside by artists, perhaps romantically, only reproduces and further engenders the very thing it wants to resist. Like the film, Exterminating Angel of Bunuel, the art exhibition and the artist’s work is within an entrapment and as such is the setting and endemic condition of the soap opera.

You can’t find a way out of a soap opera, and any way out or form of being and suffering through it is from the perspective of those outside, a self-pitying, a soap. What then, who then are we are and what are we doing, we, that are named artists. What is this condition of looking for A Guiding Light?

This condition of how to live, how to work frames and propels the desire to find an opening, a way to change or accept this condition. What is the way to carry one’s self in this soap opera?

The conversation looks back at the advent of the condition of the modern artist, who by the mid nineteenth century, no longer with a patron, becomes but another wage earner, though a special kind. But just what kind? So two positions are staked out around which the conversation turns. One voiced by the very attractive Bosko, who seeks out alterity, a space outside art defined by the exhibition and its attendant institutions, a space that meets the public, touches and is in touch with the everyman, an otherness that might escape globalization. The other by Shuddhabrata, posed and erudite, who suggests the artist feel comfortable as a wage earner and as such, feel no shame in earning a wage, and in being in the cog of capital and the swell of globalization. Along this line the others suggest that the artist be thought of as a practitioner, a doctor, a lawyer, a worker like any other. This as much so that the artist not be placed outside by either themselves or the public by a type casting that places them in the romantic idea of the artist and outside society. An outside, they argue which does not exist.

The group of contemporary artists, if not understood by the general public, ask then how to position themselves in their ‘work’ and with their work, vis a vis the public. Should they lobby to be thought of as a cognitive class toiling in the realm of representations, deconstructions, scenarios and situations. Shuddhabrata suggest they see themselves as a privileged aristocratic elite, the artist being an exemplary human, living precarity. Theirs is a living in the vanguard, whose erudition and elan give definition and example of how live to be alive, to be noble. The world will go on being the world, but the artist’s role is to live in the fullness of all its contradictions and definitions.

Returning then to its point of the departure, the exhibition then is a complex site and situation, on the go and contingent, a site in the flux of market forces and global capital. Its artists, curators, institutions, patrons, collectors, academics and public will keep the conversation going. The Guiding Light asks what is this conversation and where is it going. At this moment, too self-critical (perhaps) and too keenly aware of the fatigue of self, institutional and society critique, we find ourselves, like in the Bunuel film mentioned above, inexplicably unable to leave. This I think is a very knowing critique of this formally very astute piece. Where is there to leave as we always return to questions of how to live, how to think, how to feel and imagine ourselves and the world, and in turn how to act and make the world.

Looking at the 2010 Shanghai Biennial

The Shanghai Biennial (curators Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming), carrying the theme of “Rehearsal,” showcases many artists’ work from both China and overseas.

The first floor’s exhibitions are more strongly tied to the theme of Rehearsal (which aims to discuss and contemplate on the meaning of contemporary art). Featured works include those from Zhang Huan, Liu Xiaodong, The Long March Project, the MadeIn Company. I particularly liked the works in The Spread series from the Madeln Company, headed by Xu Zhen, particularly impressed me for its meaning. The works from this series, which claims to use the “media as a medium…to create media,” come together as a collage of paintings that represents both media and reality (the painting of the windows desktop screen with the clouds forming Kar Marx’s head is representative of this as the desktop screen represents the media and Karl Marx represents the ideology that has shaped the socio-economic-political conditions of China today). On a side note, Guan Wei’s works on modifying ancient Chinese landscape maps also adds an interesting combination between more traditional and modern art.

The next few floors display many interesting works, but do not flow as coherently as those on the first floor. For example, Yves Bernard and Yannick Antoine’s “The Gate” combines ancient Chinese painting elements and concepts such as ink paintings and more modern concepts, but does not really contribute to reviewing or reinventing contemporary art.

Lustful Opera, Censored, Befuddles Chinese

October 25, 2010

Lustful Opera, Censored, Befuddles Chinese

By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — As any artist or performer in China knows, it is impossible
to predict what will set off the mercurial culture censors who have
sweeping power over the content of film, music, television and print.

On Sunday, it was the depiction of a sexually aroused, anatomically
correct male donkey and references to capital punishment that nearly
derailed an ambitious interpretation of the Handel opera "Semele," the
tragic tale of what happens when a lustful god, a vengeful goddess and
an impressionable young maiden are ensnared in a love triangle.

In the end, officials allowed the donkey to remain onstage, but they
insisted on a number of last-minute changes that significantly altered
the production and left the audience perplexed.

The opera, directed by Zhang Huan, one of China's most
boundary-pushing artists, sold out nine performances last year in
Brussels with its melding of Baroque music, Greek mythology, Chinese
cultural references and modern touches that included sumo wrestlers,
flashes of nudity and rousing audience participation.

Lady Linda Wong Davies, an opera patron whose London-based foundation
brought the production here for the annual Beijing Music Festival,
said her goal was to expose Chinese audiences to Western-style opera
and to build bridges between China and the rest of the world. "I
wanted to bring to life an 18th-century German composer's work through
the eyes of a contemporary Chinese artist," she said.

Even before the cast arrived from Europe, Chinese officials who saw
the production in Brussels insisted on a number of changes: they
vetoed the singing of the Communist anthem "The Internationale" during
the finale — too provocative, apparently — and suggested a costume
change for the Greek chorus, whose burgundy and saffron robes too
closely resembled those worn by Tibetan monks.

Those and a few other demands — no nudity, less violence and fewer
sexually suggestive gestures — were easy enough to meet, Mr. Zhang
said.

But after officials from the Ministry of Culture watched a dress
rehearsal on Saturday, they decided that the donkey — two actors
draped in fabric — was revealing too much of the animal's anatomy.
More ominously, they objected to a short documentary, which was
screened during the overture, that explained how the gracefully carved
frame of a 450-year-old Chinese temple had made its way onto the stage
of the Poly Theater in Beijing.

Three years ago, Mr. Zhang bought the building and its contents from
an impoverished family who had been its occupants for two decades.
While taking apart the structure, the director discovered a diary
written by the broken-hearted husband. The man, Fang Jixin, wrote
about how the adulterous behavior of his wife had driven him to
alcoholism, and eventually madness. In the end, after he murdered his
wife's lover, Mr. Fang was arrested and put to death.

"I was amazed how this tale out of contemporary China was like the
Greek tragedy, and it inspired me to do this production," said Mr.
Zhang.

Although he declined to discuss the censors' specific objections about
the documentary, others who worked on the opera said it was the
mention of the husband's crime, and especially his punishment, that
troubled the authorities.

Their solution was not very subtle. They demanded that the
Chinese-language subtitles be excised, and they forced the
projectionist to freeze the film before it could reveal the heart of
the tale, leaving the audience confused about the connection between
the documentary and the opera.

"To be honest, as of 2 p.m. on Sunday, we were not sure the show would
go on," said Mr. Zhang.

Given her desire to foster intercultural exchange, Lady Davies, too,
was not eager to criticize the last-minute bureaucratic deus ex
machina. The donkey, after all, was allowed to stay in the production,
even if officials asked that his lascivious behavior be toned down.

"I'm optimistic about the future of the arts in China, although it's
definitely challenging with a capital C," she said with a sigh. "Maybe
next time I ought to do a production of 'Mary Poppins' or 'The Sound
of Music.' "

Zhang Jing contributed research.

Ho Chi Minh Trail by Stephanie Hsu

Blog Post #3

Ho Chi Minh Trail is an art project launched by the Long March
Project, a collaboration between artists, writers, curators, and
scholars that was founded by Lu Jie in 2002. Act 1 of Ho Chi Minh
Trail is currently being exhibited at Long March Space in Beijing's
798 Art District, with Act 2 to be exhibited as a part of the upcoming
8th Shanghai Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum. Having the
opportunity to visit Beijing's 798 Art District last weekend, I was
able to see Act 1 of Ho Chi Minh Trail and begin learning about the
ongoing organization of educational programs and exhibitions to which
the project belongs.
As the headquarters of Long March Project, Long March Space provides a
modest gallery space that fulfills a multidimensional purpose—to
engage creative thinkers both physically and conceptually with the art
being displayed. The entrance of the gallery leads to two larger
rooms, which display the works of a group of established artists—Chen
Chieh-jen, Liu Wei, Xu Zhen, Wu Shanzhuan, Wang Jianwei, and Zhang
Hui. I entered the left-side room first, prompted by the text on the
wall, which gave me an introduction to Ho Chi Minh Trail as a metaphor
for a historical path connecting lived experiences, individual
memories, and collective imagination. Statements including "Taking on
the burden of history is not an act of retracing historical memory,
but a restless attempt to position the present in history" informed me
of the project's efforts to use art as a vehicle through which to
understand the past and its relevance to present issues.
Among the works, Wu Shanzhuan's installation, a c-shaped sculpture
surrounded by a border of cautionary stripes, takes the focus of the
room by laying claim of its conceptual function:
"imagination=perspective x projection x cloud3." This seemingly
lighthearted play on perception was then shadowed by the ominous
words, "VIOLENCE IS THE ULTIMATE MATERIALIZATION OF UNDERSTANDING."
Lining the edges of the sculpture in backwards text, these words
seemed to point towards the irony of contemporary knowledge as having
been gained through the brutality and human cost of war.
With the wall caption's description of Ho Chi Minh Trail as aiming to
"rehearse rather than produce," the smaller back room of the gallery
contextualizes the exhibition as merely a "rehearsal" in a six-stage
progression that includes "field research" and "physical journey."
Photos, videos, and books displayed in the casual, almost office-like
setting seem to act as records of the previous stages of the project's
development, documenting the human exchanges, research, and physical
travel between China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia that paved the way
to the artistic production being shown. Nguyen Trinh Thi's
experimental film "Chronicle of a Tape Recorded Over," depicts the
collective telling of a story that is at once fictional and
non-fictional, by individuals that the filmmaker herself met during
her travel along the actual site of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Though the individual works of Ho Chi Minh Trail evoke complex and
provocative ideas, the exhibition failed to convey the relationships
between them in a coherent and cohesive fashion. Optimistically
speaking, perhaps as a "rehearsal," the exhibition is intended to be a
true work-in-progress. Hopefully, the "theatre" stage of Ho Chi Minh
Trail—which will be exhibited beginning October 24 during the 8th
Shanghai Biennale—will attest to its claim as the final performance.