Where Do We Depart To?

Liu Fenghua, One Cent, Start from Zero, Sculpture, Stainless steel, Diameter 200cm

Two kinds of Chinese art enjoy popularity in the nineties international art scene. The first art installations that utilize traditional Chinese cultural symbols and native materials; the second are twodimensional works that employ political images from the CUltural Revolution. The first kind mainly reflects an artistic strategy of Chinese artists who have emigrated abroad; the second kind is a specialty of many so-called "avant-garde" artists in China. Although foreign curators and art critics consider both trends "new Chinese art," neither have anything to do with China's reality and neither have any relation to China's domestic development.

Liu Jianhua, Colou Sculpture Series, the Rosy Memory, Mixed media, 1998

In Europe and America, the two fields of sinology and contemporary art were traditionally separated: sinologists did not study contemporary art, and students of contemporary art paid little attention to China. But as China has gradually gained a focal importance in international affairs, contemporary Chinese art has also begun to attract wide attention. With little knowledge of either Chinese cultural traditions or contemporary Chinese society, however, foreign curators tend to select Chinese artists and works based on some stereotypical images of China. The approaches and tastes of these curators have also exerted a strong impact on Chinese artists because China still has not developed its own art system, including a domestic art market. Viewed from the perspective of international politics, this situation can be considered a manifestation of post-cold war international relations. Viewed as an artistic phenomenon, this situation reflects foreign curators' ignorance of Chinese reality. I decided to curate the exhibition Departing from China largely to respond to this situation.

Shi Qing, Margrette's Curse, computer basde photograph, 1998

In the winter of 1998, I got to know several artists through participating in an exhibition called Persistent Deviation (Pianzbi). Another exhibition around the same time, Tradition and Reflection, curated by German sinologist Eckhard R. Schneider, made me think a lot: his way of juxtaposing traditional and contemporary Chinese art seemed both forced and arbitrary, leading to a simplistic interpretation of an art that is produced by a very complex society. To me that exhibition typified a particular view of contemporary Chinese art from the perspective of a Western sinologist. A third exhibition around that time-It's Me, which was canceled before its opening-exemplified another tendency: its strong focus on the problem of self nevertheless overwhelmed the issue of social responsibility. I felt that it was necessary for me to promote the idea of "departing from China" by organizing a large exhibition.

Sui Jianguo, Studies of the Striples No.3 1999

It did not take long for me to finish an exhibition proposal. I faxed it to many artists and soon received their enthusiastic responses and personal data. I initially selected my artists from two previous exhibitions: Zhang Dali, Xu Yihui, Zhao Bandi, Gu Dexin, and Zhao Liang from Persistent Deviation; and Wang Wei, Sun Yuan, Shi Qing, Weng Fen, and Zheng Guogu from Post-Sense Sensibility.

In early 1999, the artist Wang Wei introduced me to Mr. He Yaohua, director of the Design Museum and a patron of contemporary art. Established on December 25, 1998, this museum was the first privately owned art institution in Beijing aimed at promoting contemporary art. Mr. He once served in the army and also spent many years in various government departments. He loves to meet people in artistic circles, and is willing to let them use his museum for artistic experiments. He became rather well known in Beijing for funding experimental and "alternative" art. When I told him of my plans for Departing from China, he immediately agreed to sponsor this exhibition in his museum and to fund a large catalogue.

Suo Tan, The Grand Result Series, Color Sculpture 1999

The Design Museum is quite spacious, with a four-meter high ceiling and an exhibition space of four hundred square meters. But it was still difficult to exhibit more than thirty installations, video works, sculptures, photographs, and performance pieces all in a single space. I therefore invited the architect Zhang Yonghe to redesign the exhibition hall while thinking how to relate exhibition items to the architectural space. I suggested using scaffolding in the gallery, which would remind the audience of the construction sites omnipresent in Beijing.

Zhao Bandi and His Panda Baby, computer based photograph

Three groups of artists withdrew during the preparation of the exhibition. First, in a meeting in February 1999, artist Sun Yuan proposed using a human corpse in his installation. Because this exhibition was not a private show and would be open to the public, I rejected this idea. Sun and his friends therefore withdrew from the exhibition. Second, because of the large number of artists in the exhibition, the catalogue was going to be more costly then we first thought. He Yaohua asked each artist to contribute 1,000 yuan (about US $120) toward the expenses of the catalogue. Some artists, including Gu Dexin, Wang Tiande, Zheng Guogu, Song Dong, and Xu Xiaoyu, resisted this idea and left the exhibition. Third, a group of artists, including Hu Xiangdong, Feng Zhengjie, and Xu Yihui, withdrew because of their association with another exhibition called Gaudy Art (Yansu yishu).

Because of the withdrawal of so many artists, the exhibition's future became uncertain. I encouraged He Yaohua to continue this project, and told him that many artists were watching us; we would lose our credibility if we stopped here. Largely because of my insistence, the preparation for the exhibition continued. When we began to compile the catalogue, the museum's designer Tian Xinyin and I often worked overnight, hoping to make the catalogue as perfect as possible. We began to receive calls from artists again, asking us about the progress of the exhibition. Several artists joined or rejoined the show, including Zhao Bandi, Liu Xinhua, Feng Weidong, Chen Qingqing, Du Bingbing, and Cang Xin.

Wang Jin, Leading to the Victory, installation view 1998, Fukuoka Japan

The exhibition was scheduled to open at 4:00 p.m. on April 24, 1999. Artists who lived outside Beijing began to arrive before this date. In conjunction with the exhibition's opening, He Yaohua and I planned to organize a concert and a bonfire party in the open space in front of the National Art Gallery. Posters of the exhibition arrived on April 18. That night we sent two teams of people to put up the posters in and around Beijing. Zhao Bandi, Zhang Dali and Zhang Nian would cover the Chaoyang district and the Jianguomen area, while Suo Tan, Weng Fen and I were responsible for the university campuses in the Haidian district. We were questioned by patrol guards when my team was putting up posters in People's University, and were chased away by plainclothes policemen at Peking University. There was an interesting exchange while we were in the College of Languages: when we had put up a poster on a bulletin board, a group of taxi drivers came over to see it. One of them asked: "'Departing from China? Where do you plan to go?" I answered spontaneously: "Anywhere would be fine!" Later when I thought about it, this answer seems to summarize the unspoken message of the exhibition.

Zhang Dali, Demolition, Forbidden City Beijing 1998

As the exhibition drew close, bad things began to happen. On Monday, April 19, three men in the uniform of the Industry and Commerce Bureau came to the museum. They checked the museum's license and examined whether the museum's operation was legal, but did not find any problems. Two days later, three men arrived from the Tax Bureau to check whether He Yaohua had paid his taxes in full. On Thursday, five men from the Fire Department came to check whether the museum had followed the fire codes. This time they found problems on ten counts, including hidden fireworks, blocked fire exits, shortages of fireproof equipment, and so on. They demanded that the museum stop operations immediately. They asked the museum director to appear the next morning at the Fire Department for further instructions, and required that no activity should be held in the museum during the period of consolidation. The implications of these demands were obvious.

Consequently, the exhibition did not take place. I called the show Departing from China. But thinking about the events surrounding this exhibition, I kept asking myself: Where can we depart to? Although I do not have a definite answer, I know that we still must depart.