The China Project

179 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection WANG Wenhai For Wang Wenhai, Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution have taken on a consuming importance in both his life and art. His sculpture celebrates Mao and ranges from tabletop clay busts to larger-than- life fibreglass figures. His many permutations and interpretations (more than 1000 over 20 years) are an effort to transcribe the multiple personas that Mao assumed, including Communist Party Chairman, moralist, poet, philosopher and ‘father’ of modern China. Wang’s work is a reminder of the enormous respect and dedication that much of China’s rural population holds for Mao and the extent to which he is part of the folklore and culture of China. Like many of his generation, Wang became a Red Guard in 1966 and was an enthusiastic participant in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. From 1970, he worked as a museum guide for the Yan’an Revolutionary Museum, where he was introduced to visual art. In recent decades, Mao’s status has been celebrated and examined in nostalgic terms through popular culture and historical kitsch by younger generations of Chinese. His reputation is yet to endure the same level of revisionism in China that has expunged the names of other socialist leaders such as Stalin or Ceausescu, and the Cultural Revolution and its consequences are still officially off limits for public discussion. The purges, famines and violence of Mao’s regime are largely overlooked by the vast numbers of rural poor in China, in favour of what are perceived to be Mao’s moral qualities. He convinced the majority that egalitarianism was possible, desirable and righteous, and that it was achievable only through labour, struggle and absolute adherence to official policy. Mao’s propaganda campaign was ubiquitous and successful, and his belief in ‘correct thinking’ was a euphemism for obedience. For younger generations of Chinese, Mao’s actions have been progressively depoliticised. The Mao cult got under way in the early 1980s with Mao memorabilia becoming a significant business enterprise in a gradually reforming economy. He is celebrated in a variety of forms, from snow domes and statues to bronzes and ballpoints. The former leader is presented as a benevolent figure who had his faults but whose popular appeal outweighs the extremes of his dictatorial reign. Often the memorialising transforms anecdote into fact, the prosaic into the extraordinary. Three decades after Mao’s death in 1976, his demigod status in the popularised version of his life is a phenomenon that continues in China. In Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong 2003, Wang clearly presents Mao as an autocrat: both Chairman of the People’s Republic and Emperor of China (Mao compared himself to Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor who unified China in 221 BCE). The military Mao references a popular historical image of him as a young man, walking on the road in search of revolutionary spirit and ideas, while the imperial Mao is dressed in a traditional tunic. These two statues, over three metres tall, are joined together holding an umbrella — a symbol of protection — with the military Mao positioned slightly in front, as if dragging the imperial regime forward towards the future. Wang Wenhai’s devotion to Mao as a subject is total, and such works seek to personalise and expand the possibilities for understanding Mao in ways beyond the dignified and imperial poses of traditional monuments. Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong 2003 Fibreglass, ed. of 3 / 2 figures: 320 x 130 x 130cm (each)  / Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant endnote Adapted from David Burnett, ‘Wang Wenhai: The red sun in our hearts’, in The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2006, pp.138–41.