Dis-/Continuing Traditions

The Light of Eternity, single-channel colour video with sound 6’25”

Video stills courtesy of the artists and ShanghArt

The Light of Eternity was made at the invitation of a film festival in the United States. All of the photographs shown in the video were taken for the picture album The Light of Eternity (2012). The photographs represent places where Birdhead lived and travelled between 2010 and 2012. In addition to representing the contemporary world, the video also references aspects of China’s cultural past, including traditional ink and brush calligraphy and paintings of the natural world. Many of the photographs included in the video depict Shanghai, where Birdhead live and work and whose cityscapes comprise architectural layers from the city’s colonial and revolutionary past as well as its futuristic present. Accompanying the video is a contemporary music soundtrack by the composer Liu Xing using traditional Chinese instrumentation and stylisations. The video’s combination of sound and vision projects an assemblage of past-present-future tenses in which the historical, the everyday, the futuristic and the eternal continually intersect and impact upon one anotheri. The video’s title invites us to meditate (perhaps ironically), in accordance with Buddhist practice, on the contingencies of the present in light of the illimitable.

Birdhead (Ji Weiyu b.1979 and Song Tao b.1977) are photographers, assemblers, video makers and installation artists based in Shanghai, China. Song and Ji both graduated from the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School (2000). They started to work together as Birdhead in 2004. They have exhibited in China and internationally including in the solo exhibitions: “Welcome to Birdhead World Again – Tokyo 2019”, Kudan House, Tokyo (2019); “Welcome to Birdhead World Again – Vienna 2018”, Schiffamtsgasse 11, Vienna (2018); “Birdhead Solo Exhibition”, Yifeng Galleria (Bottega Veneta), Shanghai (2014); “Welcome to Birdhead World Again – London 2019”,Paradise Row gallery, London (2012); “Birdhead: New Village”, EX3 Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Firenze, Florence (2011); “BIrdhead: Ji Weiyu and Song Tao”, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (2009); and “Welcome to Birdhead World 2004-2005” ShanghArt H-Space, Shanghai (2005). They were nominated for the f irst Hugo Boss Art Award (2013).

A-Tong’s Ancestral Home (2018-2020), single-channel colour video with sound and Chinese and English subtitles 19’50

Video stills courtesy of the artist

A-Tong’s Ancestral Home uses a combination of documentary film and animation to bring together two intersecting narratives: one comparing contemporary scenes in China’s Fujian region with photographs of the same locations by the pioneering Scottish photographer, John Thomson taken during the nineteenth century; and another, showing the exploration by torchlight of an abandoned traditional family house in a village alongside the Min River in Fujian. Accompanying the latter is a voice-over by a young villager passing on stories of his family’s time as occupiers of the house as well as folk tales and legends handed down to him by family members and other villagers. The intersection of these narratives indicates the immense material changes that have taken place since the nineteenth century in a once extremely remote Fujian as the result of China’s modernisation. It also shows how that modernisation continues to be marked by fragmentally remembered traces of China’s recent and distant past.

Chen Hangfeng (b.1974) is a multi-media artist based in Shanghai, China and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He graduated with a BA in Painting from the Fine Arts College, Shanghai University (1997). His work has been exhibited in China and internationally including at: the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; the Today Art Museum, Beijing; the Palace de Tokyo, Paris; the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; the Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester; the Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain (2009), Luxembourg; the Cable Gallery, Helsinki; and the White Rabbit Museum, Sydney. He has received numerous  grants and residencies including from: the Arts Council of England - Visiting Artist, and the Asia-Europe Foundation (both 2009); and the Arts Council of England (2008). Work by the artist is included in the University of Salford Art Collection.

Moon (2012), Single-channel colour video, without sound, 20’00” 

Video #20150415 (2015), single-channel colour video, without sound, 7’27”

Video still courtesy of the artist and ShanghArt

Giant Fur, Video #20150415 and Moon can be interpreted as contemporary variations on artistic depictions of nature made with respect to literati-Confucian aesthetics as part of traditional Chinese culture. In the view of literati-Confucian aesthetics, artists should seek to develop and express an empathetic vital-energy resonance (qiyun shengdong)iv connecting themselves with nature in accordance with the Daoist idea of a spontaneous foundational  reciprocity between differing states of being (yin-yang). That resonance is also understood to extend to relationships between artists, their artworks the viewers of artworks and nature, constituting what might be described as a virtuous relay connecting all of those elements together in a potentially harmonious way. In the context of presentday climate change, such relationships between humanity and nature are of continuing and intensified ethical importance. Liang’s nature videos are also open to interpretation with respect to the literati-Confucian idea of xu-shi (empty-full)v which conceives of apparent absence as a site of illimitable meaning/feeling. The single-shot videos by Liang included in the exhibition record slowly or almost imperceptibly changing phenomena in nature that invite meditation on wider significances and feelings. In Chinese culture the roundness of the moon symbolises peace, prosperity and family reunion. The lunar surface photographed in Moon through the intervening shimmer of the earth’s atmosphere is partially illuminated somewhere between its full and new (empty) phases.

Liang Yue (b.1979) is a photography and video artist based in Toronto, Canada. She graduated with a BA from the Shanghai Art Academy (2001). She has shown her work in China and internationally, including. In the exhibitions: “New Art History, 2000-2018 Chinese Contemporary Art”, MOCA Yinchuan, Yinchuan (2019); “Chinese Contemporary Selected Videos”, Cinema Dynamo, Centre D’Art Contemporain Geneve, Switzerland (2018); “The 7th edition BiCity Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture”, Shenzhen (2017); “Intermittent”, ShanghART Beijing, Beijing (2016); “Easy Going”, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen (2014); “Liang Yue: The Quiet Rooms”, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2013); “A Lecture Upon the Shadow”, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, U.K. (2012); “Numerous, Liang Yue’s Solo Exhibition”, Shanghai, and “Move on Asia, the End of Video Art”, Casa Asia-Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (both 2011); “Shanghai Candid: Women In Motion”, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, U.S.A.(2010); “China Power Station - Part IV”, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); and “Shanghai Kino, Shanghai Kino”, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2009). She was awarded the Rote Fabrik Residency, Zurich, Switzerland (2015). Work by the artist is included in the collections of: Dr. Michael I. Jacobs, U.S.A.; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (MUHKA), Belgium; and the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Switzerland.

A Transitory Vacuum Sculpture (2015), single-channel colour video with sound, 9’44”

Video still courtesy of the artist and the Vanguard Gallery

A Transitory Vacuum Sculpture shows the making of an impromptu assemblage of suction tools commonly used to unblock sinks and drains whose inherent instability when connected together resists its maker’s efforts toward settled completion. As such, the sculpture can be interpreted as indexical of a constellation of ideas associated with traditional Chinese Daoist thinking and practice. Daoist thinking and practice is characterised by a view that conceives of the cosmos as being constituted by myriad interrelationships underpinned by a reciprocity between the mutually dependent, but otherwise opposed foundational states of yin and yang. It also views those interrelationships as moving cyclically between a spontaneously achieved state of harmonious reciprocation, overreaching human intervention and dissonant disintegration. The work is also informed by Liao Fei’s close attention to the rationalising tendencies of Western philosophy and mathematics.

Liao Fei (b.1981) is a multi-media artist based in Shanghai. He graduated with a BA from Shanghai Normal University (2006). He has exhibited in China and internationally including in the solo exhibitions: “Res Extensa”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2018); “Plain”, Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai, “Perspective”, Yve Yang Gallery, Boston and “The Equator”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (all 2016); “Liao Fei: This Sentence Is False”, PIFO Gallery, Beijing (2015); and “Surface Material Motion”, Vanguard Gallery (2013).

Hausmann in the Tropics (2017-2020), single-channel HD colour video with sound and Chinese and English subtitles 31’50”

Video still courtesy of the artist

Hausmann in the Tropics presents an artistic meditation on the reality of growing social divisions in contemporary China interspersed with highly aestheticised depictions of urban landscapes and imagined para-normalities redolent of China’s Buddhist and animistic traditions.The fantastical half human-half animal creatures that appear in the video intentionally represent supernatural spirits imagined by the people who lived in/visit the abandoned house depicted in the video.

Tan Lijie (b.1991) is a multi-media artist based in Shenzhen, China. She graduated from the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou with a BA (2014) and an MFA (2016). She was also a post-graduate exchange student at Kingston University, UK (2015). Her work has been exhibited in China and internationally, including in the group exhibitions: “Freeland around the Second Line - Shenzhen Contemporary Art in 2019”, Hive Centre for Contemporary Art, Shenzhen (2019); “Reciprocal Enlightenment”, Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, Beijing and “The Unusual West Lake”, The First Art Scene of West Lake Photo Exhibition, Hangzhou (both 2017); “New China/New Art: contemporary video from Shanghai and Hangzhou”, Djanogly Gallery, University Nottingham, UK (2015); and the Austria Electronic Arts Festival, Linz (2012). Works by the artist are in the collections of the White Rabbit Art Museum, Sydney and the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.

Yi (One) (2015), performance, single-channel colour video with sound, 3’11”

Video still courtesy of the artist

Yi (One) is a video recording of a performance by Xiao Lu staged at the Valand Academy of Fine Art, Gothenburg, Sweden on 5 September 2015. The performance, curated by Jonas Stampe, involved the use of handmade Xuan paper, water and ink traditional to Chinese literati-Confucian painting. During the performance Xiao pours ink and water over herself while standing on sheets of Xuan paper wearing a white shirt and skirt. As such, Xiao’s performance can be interpreted as an embodied female intervention into China’s historically male-dominated literati-Confucian artistic traditions. As part of those traditions, ink and brush are considered assertive and water and paper as receptive in respective accordance with the Daoist principles of yin, that which is masculine, positive and turns toward the light, and yang, that which is feminine, negative and turns away from the light. Xiao’s positioning of her body between ink and paper as an active pourer and passive receiver obliquely disrupts the gendered asymmetry of that traditional order while maintaining the continuity of its basic materials and precepts. Xiao has stated in relation to this performance that “Ink is Yin, water is Yang, Yin and Yang becoming One is the Way of the Universe.”  Xiao’s traditionally supposed absence from literati-Confucian culture invites meditation on its wider significances in the past, present and future.

Xiao Lu (b.1962) is a multi-media artist, poet and author based in Beijing. She is internationally recognised as a seminal f igure in the development of Chinese contemporary art for her performance work Dialogue/The Gunshot Event (1989), which has become a significant focus for debates about the status of women’s art in contemporary China.. She graduated with a BA from the Oil Painting Department of the prestigious Zhejiang Academy of Art, now the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (1988). She was resident in Australia from 1989 before returning to China in 1997. Since 2003 she has produced a series of sometimes highly provocative performances, installations and videos, including Sperm (2006), an artistic document of the artist’s search for a sperm donor after splitting with her long-time partner. She has exhibited in China and internationally, including in the solo exhibitions: “Impossible Dialogue”, 4A Centre Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia (2019); “Studio Project: COIL”, Skew House, Beijing (2018); “Xiao Lu”, Skovde Art Museum, Skovde (2017); “Money Laundry → Anti-Money Laundry”, Hosane Space, Shanghai (2016); and “Open Fire”, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York (2006).

The Way Things Were (2015), Single-channel colour video with sound, 1’17”

Video still courtesy of the artist and the Vanguard Gallery

The Way Things Were shows a spinning bicycle wheel brightly illuminated against a stark black background. The bicycle wheel is not only redolent of Marcel Duchamp’s assemblage Bicycle Wheel (1913) but also the traditional upholding of a wheel within Chinese culture as an analogy of Daoism’s central principle, the Dao (the Way): the underlying principle or way of the universe involving a paradoxically dynamic and non-changing reciprocity between yin and yang that humanity is encouraged to follow spontaneously in ethical accordance with nature.

Ye Linghan (b 1985) is a video artist, animator and painter. He attended the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou where he studied mural painting and drawing, graduating in 2009. His work has been exhibited in the UK, Hong Kong and China, including in the solo exhibitions “Ye Linghan, Lucy III: Replication, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2018) and “Ye Linghan, Gold-Circle-Tiger”, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong (2014) and the group exhibitions, “The Process of Art: Tools at Work”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2019); and “Blackboard”, ShanghArt, Shanghai (2009). Ye has also exhibited  at the Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai; and the Today Art Museum, Beijing.