11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

ESTABLISHED2019, GUANGZHOU, CHINA LIVE+WORK INGUANGZHOU Guangzhou-based art collective BOLOHO was established in 2019 by Bubu (Liu Jiawen) and Cat (Huang Wanshan), and later expanded to include permanent members Zhu Jianlin, Li Zhiyong, Fong Waiking and He Cong, along with an ever- changing number of collaborators. The name ‘Boloho’ is a romanisation of the Cantonese word for the core of the jackfruit, which is often discarded but can itself constitute a delicacy. Making and sharing food is a key part of the group’s practice, which reflects on social roles between the workplace and traditional family structures. BOLOHO runs a project named ‘Forever 18 Kitchen’, where older relatives are invited to communal meals, in an expression of their guiding principles of self-discipline, equality and mutual aid. In addition to these activities, BOLOHO creates physical artworks that can only be described as utterly joyous. Their collective paintings, executed in the highly accessible medium of colour gel-pen on paper, include elaborate pastiches of art history, architecture, video games and popular culture that manifest as psychedelic, panoramic imaginary landscapes. BOLOHO’s animations and sitcoms abound in rapid-fire comedies exploring family dynamics and the realities of life in Chinese market society. They are made in loving tribute to Hong Kong daytime dramas, which profoundly influenced the cultural sensibilities of southern mainland China in the 1980s and 1990s when received by domestic fishbone antennas. The group’s public presentations tend to combine the various aspects of their practice, most notably in the 2022 mega-exhibition documenta fifteen in the German town of Kassel, where they turned a factory cafeteria into a sprawling Cantonese restaurant decorated with collective paintings and displaying sitcoms. For the Asia Pacific Triennial, BOLOHO have created a new body of work, based on their research into the Overseas Chinese Farms of southern China. Largely dedicated to rubber plantations, these state-run farms were created to accommodate and channel the expertise of overseas Chinese returning from South-East Asia during the post-revolutionary period of the 1950s. During the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, the farms were transformed into commercial and industrial sites. In some cases, inhabitants became the staff of ‘Chinese South- East Asian Communities’, donning ethnic garb and offering exotic food and performances for domestic Chinese tourists, before changing back into their regular clothes after visitors had departed. 1 Consisting of an enormous, four-panel gel-pen drawing and a Hong Kong-inspired TV drama, BOLOHO’s Lunar Factory 2024 project is informed by archival research into these establishments. 2 In researching the farms, BOLOHO realised how little they knew about the younger lives of their grandparents, which were often left undiscussed because of the turbulent events of the 1950s and 1960s. Considering the continued change over the past 20 years, driven by consumerism and communications technologies, BOLOHO’s members also admit to feeling a sense of disconnection from generations younger than themselves. In addition to exploring the particularities of the Overseas Chinese Farms, the project — as joyfully as it manifests — more generally reflects on gaps in intergenerational knowledge produced during periods of great social change. This complex historical and cultural mix provides inspiring material for their dizzyingly dense artistic creation and extends to its mode of presentation, which includes a relief painting derived from farm architectures and a curtain created from cast-off fabrics, as a reflection of southern China’s contemporary rag trade. REUBENKEEHAN BOLOHO NOTES 1 Other farms that became theme parks sought to erase this history, such as one that became a ‘dinosaur park’. BOLOHO’s research also suggests that Shenzhen’s famed Windows of the World, with its replicas of iconic global monuments, was built on the site of an Overseas Chinese Farm. 2 The title derives from the decrepit sign on a disused rubber factory BOLOHO found during their field research. The right half of the character for ‘rubber’ had fallen away, leaving only the left radical, which on its own reads ‘moon’. Lunar Factory (detail) 2024 / Gel pen on paper / Four sheets: 107 × 240cm (each); 214 x 480cm (overall) / Commissioned for APT11 / Courtesy: The artists and Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 64 — 65