The State and Chinese Art

By Xhingyu Chen

Last year in 2008, the Asia Society in New York City planned an exhibition which would include artworks from the Cultural Revolution. Art & China’s Revolution was a cooperative effort between the organization and museums around China, and was partly sponsored by the Gaoan Foundation (started by superstar contemporary artist Zhang Huan, whose own solo show at the Shanghai Art Museum was cancelled a couple of months before the opening of the Olympics.) However, China’s Ministry of Culture disrupted the show by refusing to allow museums to lend artworks to the exhibition. The show was deemed too sensitive, especially in the year of the Olympics. Throughout 2008, the government made efforts to present China in the most positive light possible. This was imperative especially after the violent crackdown, and subsequent protests from around the world, of demonstrations in Tibet in March of that year. English language magazines, usually given a bit more breathing space than their Chinese counterparts, were forbidden to publish articles on, or even mentioning, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, or Tibet. With China’s visibility growing on the international stage, so too were their efforts to control what was shown and how the country was represented. 

The cultural environment in the run up to the Olympics should have come as no surprise to those familiar with China’s handling of art and culture in the post-Mao era. In 1979, a group exhibition opened on the street outside of the National Art Gallery in Beijing. None of the participating artists belonged to any official art institution, which was a prerequisite at the time to exhibiting works. It attracted a large crowd before the police shut it down. Ten years later, in 1989 (a few months before the crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square), a new generation of artists, many of whom were part of the so-called ’85 New Wave, organized a ground breaking exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Beijing, this time within the museum grounds. China/Avant-Garde made clear its anti-establishment stance and many artists pushed the boundaries of what had been previously shown in China, including works involving feces and sexually explicit subject matter. It was closed down twice, once when the artists Xiao Lu fired a gun into her own work, and again when the show was threatened with bomb threats (it is not clear whether the threats were an artist’s prank or came from the police themselves). Twenty years later, authorities shut down a commemorative exhibition of this landmark show at the last minute, with police telling curator Gao Minglu that organizers had not properly registered with authorities. As with the cultural environment in the run up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, authorities this spring were wary of politically sensitive works before the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. Speaking with ArtInfo, Gao said that he was not “disappointed for the exhibition, I’m disappointed because our system is still so… conservative… its’ been twenty years, and it’s still the same.”

These instances of state interference of exhibitions are not isolated to the capital city. In Shanghai in 1999, a group of artists, frustrated with the lack of exhibition spaces for more experimental works, took over an empty store space in a mall and opened Art for Sale; the show featured saleable artworks displayed as consumer goods, as well as video and performance pieces. It was the first major show of contemporary art to be organized and shown in Shanghai; it was closed down after only a few days for a lack of permits. The next year, the Shanghai Art Museum opened their Biennale show to contemporary mediums like video and photography for the first time. Artist Ai Wei Wei and curator Feng Mengbo thought this to be the perfect time to organize a show of experimental artworks, enlisting a host of emerging and established artists for an exhibition that would run in tandem with the Biennale. The provocatively titled Fuck Off was a landmark show that introduced controversial works at a time that art institutions were just beginning to embrace new media artworks. The show included the now infamous piece by Zhu Yu which shows the artist allegedly cooking and eating a human fetus. Zhu’s piece might have been the most sensational, but the show also displayed overtly political works, such as Ai Wei Wei’s series showing the artist raising his middle finger to various institutions and landmarks, including Tiananmen Square. The show was shut down after the opening night and prompted authorities to pass obscenity and decency laws concerning cruelty to humans and animals in art. 

This image of an authoritarian China is constantly competing with the image of a China that has been producing some of the most exciting, and profitable, artists in recent memory. The Chinese art world has been on an upward trajectory in the past few years and the country has opened their doors to the international art scene. The state has seemingly embraced their artists and has actively encouraged the rapid proliferation of museums, galleries and other exhibition spaces, as well as art fairs and major exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale and Guangzhou Triennale. While to the outside world this may indicate a growing openness to how art and culture can contribute positively to society, their involvement ensures that they have full control of the events. For every show in a museum or exhibition hall, all works must be pre-approved by the cultural bureau; in the case of art fairs, this process can take many months. Any offending works has to be removed from the show. In the past, if an exhibition displayed offensive works without previous approval, the entire show was shut down, as was the case with Fuck Off. This kind of control has a profound effect on visiting exhibitions and artists. In 2007, Art Asia Pacific was asked to remove pages from their magazine on display during ShContemporary; the offending pages featured works from an artist using the hundred RMB bill, which prominently features Mao on the face. Art Forum magazine was asked to leave altogether. During the Shanghai Biennale in 2008, a video by artist Tang Maohong was removed, leaving his projection room dark and empty for the remainder of the show. The animated piece dealt with the moral decay of modern Chinese society and included a particularly graphic scene of an animal orgy. 

That’s not to say that progress has not been made. Smaller gallery shows generally go on without much interference; galleries in general possess a certain level of autonomy and freedom that institutions and exhibition centers can never have because they are seen as business entities. The problem now lies in when authorities decide to strike; in the past the rules were clear cut and boundaries clearly defined, but authorities today are increasingly vague about what is permissible. This has its advantages and disadvantages. At Shanghai’s 1918 ArtSpace last year, sculptor Xiao Min showed a graphic series of couples copulating made of steel mesh but, since the series was based on Tang dynasty pillow books (instruction manuals given to newlyweds on their wedding night), the show went on without a hitch. However, a massive show in 2006 in Shanghai entitled Solo Exhibition featuring the works of 38 artists was shut down on opening night due, in part, to what authorities called “pornographic” material. This included a piece by young artist Zhang Ding depicting naked women taken from various websites. In a move never seen in Shanghai, a few of the participating artists served jail time (the longest sentence was two weeks). Artists were on edge throughout the year, unsure of what authorities would do next. The inconsistencies of these instances make it that much more tricky for artists and spaces to plan shows. And for all the rebelliousness that artists display in their work, very few artists want to be isolated from the scene and miss the opportunity to reach out to a Chinese audience, so many practice self censorship or produce works that are deliberately vague themselves. Very few artists have the power to be openly critical of the system, like Ai Wei Wei whose blog has become a touchstone for issues that are affecting China today. His influence and reach insures that he can continue to be rebel rouser without fear. Many artists working in China today do not have that luxury.