Of Site and Space: The Virtual Reality of Chinese Contemporary Art
by Francesca Dal Lago

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In international artistic practices, geographical location is central to assessing the importance of an artist and his/her work. A show in New York, no matter how irrelevant, is still more noteworthy to the 'international' art crowd than an exhibition in Beijing. Likewise, an invitation to the Venice Biennale is definitely more instrumental in bringing world-wide success to an artist, than their participation in the Shanghai Biennal.

On another level, the exhibiting conditions endow the artwork with a series of meanings implying various levels of critical judgment: a work displayed right next to the main entrance of a museum surely gathers a different ranking than a work exhibited in the hallway near the emergency exit.

Metaphorically speaking, place and space are crucial elements in identifying audiences for a show, and thus the meaning attached to a work of art. In viewing artworks produced within 'other' cultural contexts, the natural tendency is to apply patterns of interpretation that are familiar to the viewer but often unrelated to the artist's creative conditions, often resulting in serious misreadings. Only a consistent pattern of showing and viewing can provide a work with an audience, a context, and therefore a series of meanings . Because art does not exist without a place: either the physical and the conceptual framework of viewing and/or the specific conditions of production, both are fundamental to our understanding of the significance of an artwork. The language of art, as most languages, is not universal.

It can be maintained -nonetheless - that Chinese contemporary art is one exception, so far as it exists in a 'non-space' , a virtual reality that partakes in many but does not solidly belong to any.

By using "space" as a critical paradigm I would like to suggest some possible ways of reading the selection of Chinese artworks exhibited in the 47th Venice Biennale and attempt to discuss the actual 'location' of Chinese contemporary art within an international framework.

Many figures and few facts

I would first like to mention some basic facts regarding this year's participation of Chinese artists to one of the most prestigious contemporary art events in the world - the now-so-popular term for the format of the Biennial.

Considering that the People's Republic of China has no pavilion, nor entertains any official relationship with the Biennale, the number of twenty artists born and raised in mainland China taking part in the "APERTO overALL" section is definitely extraordinary. It is also the largest group of artists sharing the same national provenance, even larger than Americans or Italians, to be exhibited at the Biennale. They are : Ai Weiwei (photography and installation) Cai Guoqiang (installation), Chen Zhen (installation) , Fang Lijun (woodblock print) , Liang Shaoji (sculpture), Lu Hao (sculpture) Ma Liuming (painting, performance), Qiu Shihua (painting), Wang Du (sculpture), Wang Jin (installation, sculpture), Wang Xinwei (painting), Xie Nanxing (painting), Yang Shaobing (painting), Ying-bo (video), Yue Minjun (painting), Zhan Huan (photography, performance), Zhang Peili (video) Zhao Bandi (posters) , Zhou Tiehai (painting), and Zhuang Hui (photography). To this group has to be added Huang Yongping, (now living in Paris ), who represented France exhibiting at (and perforating) their national pavilion.

Nine of the artists were showing at the Arsenale and thirteen at the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini section (Zhao Bandi's works were exhibited in both venues). Three otherartists ; Cai Guoqiang, Chen Zhen, and Wang Du, have as Huang Yonping, been living and working extensively in the West since the late 1980s - early 1990s. For this reason and for the cross-cultural artistic approach typical of their work - the purity of their "Chineseness" is often disputed by fellow artists and critics in mainland China; on the other hand they have become a stable fixture in any "serious" multicultural art show exactly because of their supposedly 'authentic' Chinese character. Another curious detail in this list of participants is the place occupied by Switzerland in terms of collectorship of Chinese artworks: two thirds of the exhibited pieces (paintings, photography , video and sculpture) are in fact held - according to the catalogue's checklist - in Swiss galleries and private collections. Which might be one aspect to consider when investigating the curatorial strategy behind the selection, and once again, its relationship to a certain place.

Spaces and their meanings

Within the vast exhibition space of the Venice Biennial, a few obvious spatial divisions come immediately to mind to anyone who has visited the show: the exhibition area includes the park of the Giardini on the edge of the island of Venice, and at walking distance to the Arsenale - a name indicating the complex network of shipyards and warehouses that in the past were used to serve the Venetian fleet.

The Giardini area is the Biennale proper and represents the most formal section of the show, used since 1894 and host to the 26 national pavilions, many of which were realized in pompous Beaux-Art or Fascist style. With the exception of some radical interventions on these structures - such as Hans Hacke's 1993 destruction of the marble floor of the German pavilion or this year's site specific installation by Anne Hamilton in the American pavilion and Huang Yongping's perforation of the French pavilion - the official decorum of the Giardini inevitably constructs a sense of formality, that often contaminates the works of art exhibited within its space. Given the formal character of the monumental architecture and its centenary history, the area well epitomizes the system of national categorization lying at the base of the Biennale concept. The show is organized in a manner reminiscent of the World Exhibitions or even of the Olympic Games, with representatives officially selected by each country and prizes and medals handed out to the best performers. The architecture of this park, in fact, can be considered as a symbolic representation of the status of contemporary art in the world: only those countries which hold or have held any sort of economic or political power in regard to or within Europe during the last hundred years own a pavilion in this area: for example, there is no African pavilion except for Egypt, nor any Asian except for Japan's and South Korea's (which, incidentally , was built only few years ago).

The Arsenale area , on the contrary , is a space that has been put to use only recently for the section "Aperto" to showcase the latest, upcoming art trends. It occupies a rough, post-industrial space which is more suitable for the display of cutting edge experimental work. This year, in particular, a greater effort was made to enlarge this area with the addition of the unfinished and vaguely decaying spaces of Artiglierie, Tese e Gaggiandre, thus providing a totally new artistic challenge and creating for the audience a viewing experience which had the feeling of a treasure-hunt.

While the selection of the artists showing in the pavilions is the task of commissions nominated by each nation, the art displayed in the Italian Pavilion and the Arsenale is selected directly by the Biennale curatorial team, this year headed by the Swiss critic Harald Szeeman. In his provocative and evocative introduction to the catalogue Szeeman defines his show as "anarchic", and it appears as such in his attempt to scatter without any apparent order artists and works through the Italian Pavilion, in the Giardini area, and the reclaimed 16th-century spaces of the Arsenale. In Szeeman words " there will be non longer any distinction between established artists and the young, up-and-coming talents...... The Italian Pavilion and the Arsenale spaces will form a single whole - hence the name dAPERTutto APERTO overALL."

In relation to the display of the Chinese artworks, this approach entails the absence of the typical Orientalist format of "national grouping", i.e. the tendency to gather together in a generalizing format works of arts and cultural expressions produced within another culture, thus stifling each individual voice within the stereotypical images generally associated with that place's identity. This was actually the way in which Chinese art was arranged in the 1993 Biennale - to which I participated as an organizer for the Chinese section. In that case the section - titled "Passaggio a Oriente (Passage to the East)" grouped together the works of Chinese and Japanese artists with the French group of Lettrisme to add a certain Oriental flavor to one of the first Biennales with a serious interest in a multicultural approach. On that occasion, the choice of artworks and the crowded hanging format contributed instead to the feeling of an homogenous "Chinese" style, eliminating single creativities. The a-hierarchical system in which instead this time the works of all artists have been distributed without an apparent strategy is certainly a most positive factor, which hopefully will set a precedent for future international shows of the kind. The overall choice is very articulate providing a good sample of the best art recently produced in mainland China in the medium of painting.. And yet the total absence of women, now among the best and most innovative artists to use this medium, is quite disconcerting. Also quite strange - considering the large number of challenging and thought-provoking works recently produced - is the notable absence of some of the best mainland installation artists.

Nonetheless, despite the good intentions, space maintains its meaning, and affects the art displayed within. So many Chinese paintings exhibited in the severe white-cube structure of the Italian pavilion acquire a sense of formal propriety, sometimes verging on dullness: a stark contrast with the carnivalesque experience of the works presented within the wilder arrangement of the Arsenale. A sort of visual (and conceptual) dichotomy is thus created between the art exhibited in both spaces, with the expatriate installation artists presented as more 'promising' , glamorous - and certainly more affluent - and the art of the mainlanders as less challenging and cutting-edge.

"Cooler" works, such as grand scale installations accompanied by performances - typically the product of Chinese expatriate artists - are enhanced in their cutting-edge quality by the "work-in-process" space of the Arsenale. Here, two consummated metteurs-en-scene like Chen Zhen and Cai Guoqiang provide yet another instance of their theatrical talents: Chen Zhen mounts one of his typically complex structures that drains all attention from the search of a possible 'meaning' by employing an overwhelming abundance of formal elements, many esoteric references and - in this case - even the voyeuristic appeal produced by the performance of real Tibetan monks (why not asking Richard Geere to come along too ?). It should be remembered how 'national minorities' (such as the Tibetan people are considered within the dominating Han discourse) have continuously provided an exotic 'way-out' to Han artists of all media, assuming a perfunctory picturesque value which has been the source of much inspiration for Chinese high culture throughout the century.

It is also notable to recall how such discourse, contrary to its presumed art-world-style-political-correctness is, in fact, very much supportive of the PRC politics that it exactly pretends to abhor: since Tibet is, beyond any doubt, an indivisible part of China, therefore any of its cultural and religious resources can be used by a Paris-based Han artist to stir an otherwise apathetic art crowd streaming and roaming through an international art exhibition. Think of Bruce Nauman using at face-value a Navaho dance with real American Indians, or Marina Abramovic performing with some Kossovo's refugees without ANY subversive undertone. While much of the politically correct crowd has criticized Maurizio Cattelan's use of a real Fakir buried in the ground for his installation, this other. stronger case of political reference can be grossly disregarded in the trendy and 'poetic' name of art (and the audience's ignorance of a specific political situation).

Cai Guoqiang - recipient of one of the Prizes handed out by the International jury - organized one of his trademark spectacles using , instead of his usual Chinese stereotypes, an even sexier and so far unexplored theme for Chinese conceptual art- i.e. Socialist Realism. The most appealing element of Cai's "Venice 's collection Courtyard" derives from its poignant visual character, largely amplified by the suggestive space of a run-down warehouse at the end of the Arsenale complex. While his attempt, as mentioned in the catalogue essay, was to "not only to emphasize how much Chinese art has changed [since the Cultural Revolution] but also [to] underline how the temporal and physical displacement of a work changes its meaning" this strategy is not immediately apparent to a viewer of the installation. In such case the original culturally-specific quote is reproduced without any significant addition or alteration within the stenographic space of the Gaggiandre. Considering that the typical Venice Biennale public is completely ignorant of the immense iconic impact and the ideological significance of the original work - which in China is as well known as Michelangelo's David is in the West - what type of 'additional value' can this work assume other than a very skillfully produced and highly entertaining theatricality? Which leads to the 'boring' question, far too simple to still be worth asking of "what does it mean?.

These two works reveal an unchecked attempt to capitalize on the widespread Western ignorance of Asian cultural manners, mixed with a spiritual awe and respect for the esoteric "East". They thus create a discourse which ultimately does not acquire any specific "meaning", neither in "China" nor in the "West". Existing in a "virtual" space, this art is often based on the assumption that eventually no one (nor in China or in Venice) will ever really know. .

Questions with no Answers

This eventually leads to a question which again is connected with spatial and geographical issues: is it right to adopt the same category ,"Chinese" , to group individuals who have been living and experiencing a very different cultural environments for at least a decade? Such a label, that indexes both style and content of a certain artistic production with a culturally specific format , should be abandoned because of the profound misunderstandings it only helps to create. Instead, this is the main strategy adopted so far by exhibitions in the West to showcase the 'new art of China'. Two years ago the Guggenheim museum seemed to abolished all chronological distinctions with the lump exhibition "China - 5000 years" where the art on display was strictly presented in a mono-cultural fashion, but the modern and contemporary period were showcased as the 'natural' outcome of a straight line of historical lineage. Last year the Asia Society devised another format - this time "across cultures" - by grouping together all the different national entities that can be associated with the name of "China" and displaying their art as a part of the same cultural phenomenon. While these can be explained as attempts to simplify such an overwhelmingly different culture with few larger categories, through such practices subtler hues get subsumed under a stereotypically informed agenda while all complexities are tamed into a manageable order. In is often a milder, softer version of a certain cultural form that finds its way and success within the 'international' (i.e. Western) system of the art world.

The issue is not the different degree of 'Chinese authenticity' presented by the work of 'Chinese' artists, residing within and without China proper. They are , in fact, equally "Chinese" so far as they are thus considered and displayed in the West. But because the main definition for this art amounts to the blurry and vague concept of "China" , much of what these artists create is easily misunderstood. The art which is labeled 'Chinese' but is produced in a Western cultural sphere often employs 'Chinese'-indexed symbolism to discuss cultural hybridity and the dilemma of living between two worlds. To attract the attention toward their message, these artists often employ a language that shrouds the main issue within a cryptic and esoteric discourse: form turns into meaning and annihilates concept. From the perspective of a Western audience , this art most often is perceived as yet another exotic instance of fashionable multiculturalism while little or no attention is dedicated to the contradictions and negotiations it reflects.

On the other hand, it should be quite evident by now how the most significant art coming out from the People's Republic of China in the last few years is rarely nice. While sometimes it might appear nice looking , this strategy most times is consciously adopted to mimic the daily experience of urban reality in China: well packaged and often glittering on the outside, irrational and morbid within. This art rarely has positive or joyful statements to make on the society that produces it. Formally it is rough, violent, unsophisticated, vulgar and kitsch. It is NOT a Song poem, nor a dinner party. It is often shocking and even horrifying for the viewer, so to shake him or her out of a state of slumber and create, even briefly , a new consciousness. It might strike as a blow or works as an indirect, even beautiful reference to unspeakable spiritual malaise. In short , it is based on very different issues from the art - equally labeled as "Chinese" - that is produced within the distinct cultural context of the Euro-American world where instead an ongoing negotiation between cultures is at stake. Displaying these two different productions in a lump format as if produced within the same cultural reality definitely creates a dichotomy that often privileges the ingratiating works of artists versed in Western artistic practices.

Thus "Chinese" contemporary art - rarely seen by a Chinese public, created either in Europe, America or China , but mostly exhibited, judged and prized in Western contexts, exists paradoxically in a non-space. This may account for the different impression offered by the "Chinese' works presented within the Venice Biennale . Place and space create meaning , which sometimes might overwhelm the artist's intentions.

Next time you look at 'Chinese contemporary art', first try to think of where you place it.