This belief in the role of the citizen has animated the work of rights lawyers, activists, feminists, historians, writers, poets and intellectuals, as well as the many ordinary Chinese people who have decided to take a stand on behalf of their communities, their workmates, or their ideals.
And the artists?
One day last spring I chatted over tea in Huang Rui’s garden about the Stars, and how he regarded those events, now almost four decades in the past. Huang Rui told me that by any regular artistic standard the Stars exhibition must today be considered ‘unimportant’. But then he added: ‘One vital precept was established by the Stars: the importance of always staying in opposition to the mainstream. The spirit of the Stars was to adopt an attitude of respectful independence. And I believe I have consistently kept to that attitude ever since.’
‘Respectful independence’. It sounds like a modest ambition but must be immensely difficult to achieve. In the face of an intense drive towards conformity, surrendering your autonomy into the hands of others can seem a price worth paying for secure anonymity.
To comprehend the depths of a great country in the process of one of the most wrenching and epoch-making transformations that our era will ever see may seem impossible. But four decades ago China’s artists found a language to bring that experience to life. It is a language without words, which has allowed them to dance along the edge of the permissible in an era when that edge has often been a precipice.
Through their wit, independence and refusal to have others decide how they will see the world, they give us a shining glimpse of what their country will one day be.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
AI WEIWEI, born 1957 (pronounced eye way way)—Celebrated conceptual artist and activist. The son of the celebrated poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei was associated with the early avant-garde movement in Beijing and moved to the United States in 1981. He returned to China in 1993 and became prominent in contemporary art circles. He collaborated in the design of the 2008 Beijing Olympic stadium but was stridently critical of government policies during the games. He campaigned for transparency over the child death toll in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and after years of political activism on the internet, he was jailed for three months in 2011 for alleged tax offences. In 2016 he set up a studio in Greece to make work highlighting the issue of asylum seekers in Europe.
ANIWAR MAMAT, born 1962—A pioneer of abstraction and installation art on the Chinese scene. Of Uighur ethnicity, he was born in Xinjiang, came to Beijing as a student in 1984 and has remained a distinctive figure in the Chinese avant-garde ever since. His minimalist abstract style explores the interplay between colour, landscape and the forces of nature. His work is in a number of prestigious private collections including the United States State Department and the Swatch Collection, and was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2015.
Huang Rui in Beijing. Behind him is a work inspired by the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. (Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Zhang Xiaogang in his Beijing studio. (Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Pei Li at the Beijing Film Academy, August 2009.
(Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Sheng Qi in his studio in Beijing in 2009.
(Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Aniwar in his Beijing studio.
(Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Jia Aili with his then unfinished work We are from the Century.
(Reproduced by permission of_Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Cao Fei with a still from her online work RMB City.
(Reproduced by permission of Judy Wenjuan Zhou)
Guo Jian in his Songzhuang studio, China, 2014. In the background is a version of his Tiananmen Square diorama. (Reproduced by permission of Wei Wanli). Inset: Guo Jian (centre) and fellow hunger-strikers, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, May 1989. (Reproduced by permission of Guo Jian)
Gonkar Gyatso’s self-portrait, My Identity, No. 5, 2014, envisaging the artist in a Lhasa studio. (Reproduced by permission of the artist)
The Stars in their historic demonstration for freedom of expression, October 1 1979. Huang Rui (centre) walks beside Ma Desheng (on crutches). On the far left is Wang Keping holding an arm of the banner, which reads ‘March in defence of the Constitution’. (Reproduced by permission of Liu Heung Shing, 1979. All Rights Reserved)
This 2006 work by Huang Rui spells out ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ in banknotes. Chairman Mao, 10,000 RMB, Chinese renminbi notes, acrylic, 2006. (Reproduced by permission of the artist)
Bloodline—Big Family No. 3, oil on canvas, 1995. A work from the famous ‘Bloodline’ series that made Zhang Xiaogang’s name. This painting sold for US$ 6.1 million at auction in 2008. (Reproduced by permission of the artist)
Untitled, oil on canvas, 2001. The woman in this work by Guo Jian bears a striking likeness to a singer whose name was linked with former General Secretary Jiang Zemin. (Reproduced by permission of the artist)
Cao Fei, Cosplayers—A Mirage, C-print, 2004. (Reproduced by courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space)
Jia Aili, Nameless Days 2, oil on canvas, 2007. (Reproduced by permission of the artist)
Aniwar, Finding Something Lost, lamb’s wool felt, 2014.
(Reproduced by permission of the artist)
BEI DAO, born 1949 (pron. bay dow)—A celebrated poet whose political critique kept him out of favour with the Chinese authorities for many years. He was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, but the violence and injustice that he saw turned him against the ideals of the regime. In 1978 he was co-editor of the underground literary journal Today, in which he published ‘The Answer’, one of his best-known and most politically incendiary poems. He was exiled from China after 1989 and was only permitted to return in 2006.
CAO FEI, born 1978 (pron. tsow fay)—Multimedia artist. Born in Guangzhou and trained at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, she began her career in experimental documentary film and video work, exploring themes of youth alienation and psychological adjustment. She went on to produce widely admired video works exploring the dilemmas and paradoxes of rapid modernisation in China. In 2008 she used the online environment called Second Life to create RMB City, a virtual city in which visitors and other artists could exchange ideas and develop creative projects. RMB City and its multimedia offshoots, as well as Cao Fei’s other video and installation works, have been exhibited in galleries around the world. Her solo show at New York’s MoMA PS1 in 2016 was a first for a Chinese artist at this prestigious institution.
CHAI LING, born 1966 (pron. ch-eye ling)—A prominent student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen protests. She repeatedly counselled against compromise and insisted to the end that the demonstrators should not withdraw. She was spirited out of China after June 4 and now lives in the United States.
CHAIRMAN MAO—see Mao Zedong
CUI JIAN, born 1961 (pron. tsway jyen)—A pioneer of the Chinese rock scene, and its most famous performer. His mega-hit, ‘Nothing to My Name’, became an unofficial anthem of the 1989 Tiananmen protest movement. Because of his activism in 1989 he was frozen out of the official concert circuit for a decade, but since 2000 has been gradually rehabilitated.
DENG LIJUN, 1953–95 (pron. duhng lee joon)—A Taiwanese pop singer more widely known as Teresa Teng who had a global following in the 1970s and ’80s. Her music was banned in China because of her Taiwanese background, but illegal tapes created a huge fan base there. She had the same family name as Deng Xiaoping, and there was a popular joke that ‘Deng Xiaoping rules China by day, and Deng Lijun by night’. She never performed in China, and died at the age of 42 of acute asthma.
DENG XIAOPING, 1904–97 (pron. duhng syow ping)—China’s most powerful political figure from 1978 until the early 1990s. He transformed the economy after Mao Zedong’s death, engineering the pragmatic fusion of central planning and market economics known as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. Al
though never head of state, his posts as ‘paramount leader’ enabled him to steer through the historic de-collectivisation of agriculture, the opening up to foreign trade and investment, and the privatisation of state-owned industries. On the dark side of the ledger, it was his decision to unleash the army on the Tiananmen protesters in 1989. Deng officially retired after 1989 but continued to exert a powerful influence. His famous 1992 ‘southern inspection tour’ through the economic powerhouses of Guangzhou province ensured the ascendancy of economic reformers in the Communist Party. It was then that the aphorism ‘to get rich is glorious’ entered Chinese life, widely (but probably inaccurately) credited to Deng Xiaoping.
GONKAR GYATSO, born 1961—Tibetan conceptual artist. Born in Lhasa, he studied traditional Chinese painting in Beijing. In 1992 he left China and spent four years in the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala in India before moving to London on a scholarship to the Central Saint Martins art school. His work explores themes of cultural identity, and ways in which pop culture and religious iconography can intersect. Among public collections in which he is represented are the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Newark Museum (New York), the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art and the White Rabbit Collection (Sydney).
GUO JIAN, born 1962 (pron. gwoh jyen)—Painter and conceptual artist. Born in Guizhou in southern China, he served in the army during the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979. He enrolled in university in Beijing in 1985 and was a hunger striker during the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. In the early 1990s he was part of the artists’ community at the Old Summer Palace on the outskirts of Beijing. He emigrated to Australia in 1995, and returned to live and work in Beijing in 2005. In 2014 he was deported back to Australia after commenting to a British newspaper about the events of 1989. Institutions holding his works include the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney.
HOU DEJIAN, born 1956 (pron. ho der jyen)—A Taiwan-born pop singer who played a prominent role in the 1989 Tiananmen protests. He was one of the group of notables dubbed the ‘Four Gentlemen’, who staged their own hunger strike in the Square. On the night of June 3-4, he and the group brokered a last-moment arrangement with the encircling troops for the remaining protesters to leave Tiananmen Square. After June 4 he spent 72 days under the secret protection of the Australian Embassy, after which he lived openly in Beijing for a brief period before being deported to Taiwan in June 1990.
HU YAOBANG, 1915–89 (pron. hoo yow bahng)—One of the key liberalising figures in Chinese politics in the 1980s, whose death triggered the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. Serving as head of the Communist Party from 1981 to 1987, he was a close ally of Deng Xiaoping and pushed through a series of economic, political and anti-corruption reforms. These, and his outspoken liberal opinions, earned him the admiration of students and intellectuals and the enmity of party hard-liners. When student demonstrations broke out across China in the northern winter of 1986–87, Hu was criticised for leniency and was forced to resign and issue a humiliating self-criticism. In April 1989, within hours of his death from heart failure, demonstrations broke out demanding his rehabilitation and calling for political reform. These escalated into the Tiananmen protests that ended on June 4 1989.
HUANG RUI, born 1952 (pron. hwahng r-way)—Conceptual and performance artist, a pioneer of the Chinese contemporary art movement and co-founder of the Stars group. He was born in Beijing and came to prominence first as a principal editor of the underground literary journal Today (first published 1978) and then as co-curator of the seminal Stars exhibitions of 1979 and 1980. He spent two long periods in Japan (1984–92 and 1995–2001) before returning to reside permanently in Beijing. In 2002 he established one of the first and most important galleries in the Beijing 798 Art District. His work, minimalist and intellectual in approach, explores traditional philosophy and modern iconography and carries a strong political critique. Institutions holding his works include the Guggenheim Museum in New York and M+ in Hong Kong.
ILHAM TOHTI, born 1969—Academic, commentator on Han-Uighur affairs, and China’s most prominent Uighur political prisoner. Born in Xinjiang, he graduated from the Minzu University in Beijing and later took a teaching post there in the school of economics. In 2006 he founded a website called Uighur Online which the Chinese authorities blocked in 2009. In his writings he has called for greater autonomy for Xinjiang within a federal Chinese system, a stronger Uighur role in regional governance, more enlightened religious policies, and more opportunities for the study of the Uighur language. He was placed in detention in 2014, and nine months later was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘separatism’.
JIA AILI, born 1979 (pron. jyah eye lee)—Painter and emerging star of the Chinese contemporary art scene. Born in the far northern province of Liaoning, he did extensive formal art training at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang and was deeply influenced by Western masters. Many of his canvases have a bleak and alienated quality, reflecting the frigid landscapes of his home province and the economic dislocation that afflicted the region during his boyhood. His works frequently explore the disquieting aspects of the intertwined development of humans and technology. He lives and works in Beijing.
JIANG QING, 1914–91 (pron. jyahng ching)—The wife of Mao Zedong and a member of the infamous Gang of Four, the political faction blamed for the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution. An inflexible and relentless ideologue, she was widely hated for her ability to influence Mao in campaigns against key individuals during the Cultural Revolution. She was arrested shortly after Mao’s death in 1976, and after a televised trial in which her shrill speeches in her own defence became the stuff of legend, she was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Released on medical grounds in 1991, she committed suicide shortly afterwards.
LI PENG, born 1928 (pron. lee puhng)—A former premier of China who was an influential opponent of market reform and liberalisation. He is remembered for his intransigent line against the demonstrators during the 1989 Tiananmen protests, and for his key role in ordering the imposition of martial law and the use of troops to crush the movement.
LIN BIAO, 1907–71 (pron. lin byow)—A marshal of the People’s Republic of China whose mysterious death and fall from grace had a corrosive effect on public confidence in the party. He was a close ally of Mao Zedong and was named as the Chairman’s designated successor in 1969, but a rift developed between the two men shortly afterwards and he died in a plane crash in Mongolia. The party at first tried to cover up the event and later denounced Lin as a traitor, repeatedly injecting fresh and often implausible versions of his crimes into the endless propaganda wars of the Cultural Revolution. The exact circumstances of the ‘Lin Biao Incident’ have never been established.
LIU QING, born 1948 (pron. lyoo ching)—Activist and co-editor of the underground Democracy Wall period magazine, April Fifth Forum. Detained in November 1979 for publishing a transcript of Wei Jingsheng’s trial, Liu was sentenced to three years in prison, later extended to ten years after his smuggled prison diary was published in the West. After his release from prison he was allowed to travel in 1992 to the United States, where he lives and works as an activist on Chinese political and social issues. He is on the board of directors of Human Rights in China, a New York-based NGO.
LIU XIAOBO, born 1955 (pron. lyoo syow boh)—A literary critic, professor and prolific author who is China’s only winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the country’s most famous prisoner of conscience. A prominent lecturer and commentator on Chinese cultural affairs, he became involved in the 1989 Tiananmen protests, and despite his efforts to mediate between the protestors and the authorities, he was jailed without trial for nineteen months and stripped of his academic posts. In the succeeding years he was ceaselessly harassed for his advocacy of human rights and jailed several times. In 2009 he was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his involvement in the publication of the rights manifesto ‘Charter 08’. In 2010 he was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize, and was represented on stage at the awards ceremony in Oslo by an empty chair.
MA DESHENG, born 1952 (pron. ma der shuhng)—Distinguished contemporary artist who was a founding member of the Stars group. His works appeared in the seminal Stars exhibitions in Beijing in 1979 and 1980. He now lives and works in Paris.
MADAM MAO—see Jiang Qing
MANG KE, born 1951 (pron. mahng ker)—A pioneer of avant-garde Chinese poetry and co-founder in 1978 of the vanguard literary journal Today. Mang Ke was born in Shenyang, but grew up in Beijing where he still lives today. He has written many volumes of poetry as well as a novel, and is also an accomplished painter.
MAO TSE-TUNG—see Mao Zedong
MAO ZEDONG, 1893–1976 (pron. maoh dzeh doong)—Founder of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and ruler of the nation until his death. From 1935 to 1949 he led the Communist Party in its struggles against the Nationalists, and was the architect of the brand of Marxism-Leninism that dominated Chinese politics after the communists took power. His achievements in unifying China and restoring its status as a world power were overshadowed by the despotic and capricious excesses of rule, notably the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward (1958–62), which killed between 36 and 45 million people, and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), which crippled the economy, scarred a generation and destroyed China’s cultural heritage. After 1976 the Communist Party reconciled Mao’s semi-divine status with the chaos of his era through Deng Xiaoping’s verdict that he was ‘seven parts good, three parts bad’. He remains an important if ambiguous figure in contemporary Chinese life.
PEI LI, born 1985 (pron. pay lee)—Video and installation artist. Born in the Yangtze River delta city of Changzhou, Jiangsu province, she studied new media at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou and later at the Beijing Film Academy. While much of her work reflects on the experience of young people in today’s China, she is also socially engaged, and has worked as a mentor to both rural workers and visually impaired people in Beijing, helping them to create art works based on their experiences. She is represented in various private collections including the Sigg Collection. In 2016 she was awarded a PhD for her research on early Chinese cinema.
The Phoenix Years Page 31
