The China Project

99 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection ZHANG Xiaogang In 1989, Zhang Xiaogang created Reincarnation , which was part of a group of works in response to that year’s tragic events in Tiananmen Square. Illustrating Zhang’s own cultural experience, local references and symbols are found in his early repertoire: figures with fallen heads, broken limbs, books, shroud-like cloths and single flowers are drawn and painted in a largely monochrome palette, some with blood-red elements, and set against dark backgrounds. Recalling the surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, these works also evoke Zhang’s personal life, including the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. In the sombre and shadowy Reincarnation , a naked male body stands with head and right arm dismembered. The head, eyes staring, rests on an open book filled with stylised Chinese characters. Behind the naked figure is a length of white textile — white is the colour of death and mourning in China — which appears knotted and intestine-like. At the feet of the figure is another length of rumpled white material, reminiscent of the cloth draped over the Goddess of Democracy statue, a sculpture made by students at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, and wheeled out into Tiananmen Square during the 1989 protests. The long stem of a lily, a symbol of death, enters the picture plane from the right, with its petals suspended in the top section of the work. A pale grey pool of light illuminates the area where a book and a severed male head have fallen — an eerie reminder of Tiananmen Square, and a hint of what Zhang refers to as the ‘shadows in my soul’. Zhang’s use of a pool of light is also significant; it became a signature element of his subsequent ‘Bloodline: The big family’ portrait series beginning in 1993. In Reincarnation , Zhang has made historical references deliberately opaque — the five-panel screen appears defaced and the open book absently discarded. While the title suggests a rebirth, the fragmentary nature of this imagery indicates a darker, more sober environment, poignantly illustrating the denial of culture and knowledge as a result of the 1989 military crackdown, and recalling the cultural desecration authorised by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. Reincarnation is a rare work, foregrounding a resignation that can be found in Zhang Xiaogang’s subsequent portraits of families. The figures in such earlier works herald a sense of loss, and an inescapable history clarified in his later works. Reincarnation 1989 Pencil, ink and oil on paper mounted on cloth / 76.6 x 53.3cm / Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant This work is displayed in ‘Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul’.