Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video Art: Interview with Toshio Shimizu, Japanese Freelance Curator
By Robert Bernell

Toshio Shimizu is exhibition organizer with Zhang Li for the "Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video" at the Tachikawa International Art Festival. November 2-23 1999.

He is an independent curator based in Japan. He has organised a number of international exhibitions reflecting upon trans-cultural and cross-cultural themes worldwide. He specialises in showing artists who work in photography and video and has spent time in China over the past three years engaging in research and documentation of artists work in the region.

His most recent exhibition in China was held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 1998, entitled "Sur-Everyday" the show included Mariko Mori, Tatsuo Miyajima amongst others.

Robert Bernell:
I understand you're at the end of your visit to China and have selected artists to be included in the Tachikawa International Art Festival. The focus of this years festival will be on Chinese artists who use either photography and video in their work. Can you sum up for us some of the strengths, and weaknesses of the Chinese art you have encountered?

Toshio Shimizu: I believe each society needs its own artistic expression and to create its own voice. At the present time in Chinese society, there seems little possibility for this type of art to emerge. The artist and the public are separate. Even the artists who have been able to create a more personal form of art tend to remain alienated from society.

However, I believe it is important for art to speak to audiences, but often the public are unsure of what many of the younger artists intend in their work. This also creates various problems for new forms of artistic expression to become known outside of a small or informed circle. Therefore, the market for this type of art will always remain stronger abroad.

Young artists whose work I have seen so far in China are more or less eccentric. If there were more connection between artists and the public, this weakness could be corrected. For the moment though there is little likelihood of this happening. Having said that, there are a few artists such as Zhao Bandi, who I'll be showing in the forthcoming Tokyo exhibition, because he manages to find ways of making his art more accessible to the general public.

RB: You have used the term "Sur-Everyday" for the way some artists in Japan approach popular or everyday culture. Do you believe this type of
art can be found in China.?

TS: Yes I do . "Sur-everyday" art is one I associated with a certain kind of Japanese aesthetic and with Japanese culture. Japanese culture is also its popular culture. Any spirituality comes from such forces. That is what I see as the idea of "sur-everyday" art. More and more, culture, is popular culture. I've have also found such tendencies of "sur-everyday art" in France. So, I did a show of this kind of French art in Tokyo this Spring.

Recently I've encountered new forms of popular culture developing here in China that interests me.

RB: The selection of Chinese artists for this last Venice Biennale was the most that have ever been included in one show. Do you see this as significant and if so why?

TS: I think this issue highlights the fact that Europeans and Europe continue to have control in the art world despite the trend towards global issues.

As the curator for the Aperto part of the Biannale, Harald Szeeman selects as many as twenty Chinese artists, therefore there is no doubt that their art will become more popular. For Szeemann, the actual selection of artists was not important, or so it seemed to me. I did not see any common criteria upon which he could have made the selections he did. What was more important for him was to select China, now, not its aesthetics, art or artists, but China. After the Biennale, I talked with Tatsuo Miyajima, the only artist to represent Japan this year. He agreed with this sentiment. He said that the selection of only one Japanese artist showed that generally, Europe still held the power.

RB: This brings me to the exhibition that you're planning now for Japan. Can you tell me the criteria you used to select artists from China for your own exhibition?

TS:I've been making exhibitions of artists who use photography and video for more than ten years. As Renaissance artists used oil painting to express their world vision or universal vision, today's artists use video and photo to express their ideas, and because it is contemporary technology it has the potential to reach far greater audiences. . We are living in the age of the computer so it is only natural that some artists will explore this medium too. I wanted to show those artists who create works that deal with such issues as crossing technological and cultural borders and how they arrive at a new spirituality through their everyday experiences. I believe we learn from both.

RB: What artists work has particularly impressed you?

TS: I appreciate the work of Rong Rong, Liu Zheng and Hong Lei. These artists are very strong in their ideas. The every-day reality of the world interests them, but they arrive at a certain spirituality that transcends the banal, or the familiar. Sometimes they use very Chinese symbols and signs out of necessity, but arrive at innovative or new
means of engaging with tradition.

RB: Zhu Qi, a critic based in Shanghai, wrote an article in which he says that foreigners don't really understand Chinese art. How would you reply to that?

TS: I studied linguistics at University. It is a subject that engages with interpretation, and concepts of language which may or may not be understood by others outside of its specialized nature. But there is what might be termed a "common ground". As with visual art , we can appreciate certain aspects of its meaning although some remain hidden, or we may bring new understanding to the work. Similarly its very difficult to comprehend different cultures fully. There are somethings about life we understand instinctively. Other parts we have to learn from a society's history, or the culture of different countries.

Because I believe in those principles, I continue to work with foreign artists. Not only Chinese, but artists from all over the world. To understand the meaning of the artwork fully is impossible, whether you live within a society or come from outside. But , yes, it is true, [what Zhu Qi says] comprehending the content or intention of a work of
art from another culture can be problematic.

RB: In post-modern critical discourse, the myth of narrative histories and objective history, where tradition is a construct has come under investigation. A critic based in India recently said that there is no such thing as "Indian art," that it is the art of individuals. How would you respond to that statement?

TS: It's also an old argument. If you compare the Renaissance and the Baroque, for example, there are many talented artists, each with very individual styles. But if you examine history, we find there are connections between the past. So we chose to make distinctions - Renaissance artists, Baroque artists, High Renaissance artists, etc. If we see from afar, I think we can find some things in common between some groups of artists at different times in history. But if you say, or want to find what might be a Chinese identity, its becomes a question
of politics. That means identity is more or less political, which is another issue.

If you want to make a case for Indian identity, it will be one of distinction, say between India with Pakistan. Societies want to make a feature of difference between cultures. When I think of Chinese culture, I think of something that has come from its history, geography and life and so on. I don't think of its politics. It is not about individual
expression unless art functions for the society.

In my case, I may approach different governments to assist in funding exhibitions and it would be very easy to say that I play between culture and politics many times in order to secure sponsorship. But for me, cultural identity should not be confused with political identity.


RB: In the West, the identity of Chinese art has become associated with Chinese politics. For example, Political Pop and Cynical Realism. This year one of the comments by a critic in an art magazine on the subject of the Venice Biennale was that it was strange that there were no politics in the Chinese works shown at this year's Biennale. Do you agree? Have you noticed a trend in China away from politics in art?

TS: Yes, I am aware of that.

Most of the artists are now very interested in issues to do with the personal, and with their private life. I think this is very normal. However even with Political Pop it is coming out of an individual's points of view. That means I consider the artist him/herself, how they react to situations as individuals. Sometimes this response is construed as political even though it is not intended in such a way.

For example, when I came here to China six years ago, some of the artists explained what the overriding important issue was for them at the time: how to recover personal relationships destroyed by the Tiananmen years. So this point of view is always possible. When I see Fang Lijun's work, I'm very impressed by his approach, as he represents individual sentiment placed in society. Not so much political on its own, actually, he wants to express his own personal sentiment.

RB: Can you talk about your research and preparations for this exhibition?

TS: I've traveled a great deal in China over the past three years initially to find video artists. Photography cuaght my eye over a year ago.

My idea for an exhibition always comes out of an encounter with an artist's works that engages me. For example, Rong Rong or Liu Zheng who I have met this time encouraged me to start preparing for my next show. Rong Rong's work I knew initially only through magazines. Projects for an exhibition tend to come like clouds into my head. Little by little they begin to take shape and move forward, so with the exhibition for Tachikawa, it was about a year ago that it became more concrete in my
mind.

RB: Can you talk about your personal philosophy toward curating art?

TS: Just that the work has to interest me. I meet artists, and can be very impressed by their ideas. There has to be a charge, or energy when I see the work, then I start to talk with them more. It is important for me to get to know artists, and in that way we can arrive at a good exhibition.

As I said, we have the ability to share a certain languages whether it is visual, or oral. I want to find this, in part through the work that I like, and communicate this enthusiasm through the art I encounter. It is not necessary to be so concerned with what we don't understand, but
that people from different cultures can comprehend something. If I can create this type of dialogue then I am satisfied. If people in Japan can find something in contemporary Chinese art, then that is very rewarding and important for me.

RB: How many artists will there be in the exhibition and where will it be held.

TS: There will be twelve artists altogether, showing sixty works. Nine using photography and three using video. It will be held in Tokyo, Tachikawa. a district in the West of the city. Its a new developing part of Tokyo. It was initially occupied by the American Air Force. But the Americans return the land and the Japanese Urban Planning Department started to construct a financial and recreational center. It incorporates commercial buildings, monorails, a new city hall, department stores and leisure facilities. Its like Shanghai today. We will have exhibitions in this area, the galleries, city halls, monorail stations, streets, parks, everywhere.