The China Project

243 Zhang XiAOgang: Shadows in the Soul Chinese people have experienced too much change, which dramatically influences people internally. I say this from my experience, because I have lived through three completely different time periods in China in a short amount of time. 1 Zhang Xiaogang may be said to represent an encapsulation of Chinese contemporary art. Following the development of his style . . . it is possible to see in his work the flow of China’s art history of the time. 2 Zhang Xiaogang is a leading artist of the Chinese Avant-garde. His artistic development runs parallel to the growth of contemporary art in China — from its gestation during the Cultural Revolution and the opening up of China to the West in the 1980s, through the post-Tiananmen Square era of the 1990s and its economic boom in the twenty-first century. A practising artist for more than three decades, Zhang has experienced firsthand the many changes affecting contemporary China and he has explored these extensively in his practice. Born in Kunming in 1958, Zhang was the third of four boys. His mother Qiu Ailan and father Zhang Jing were employed as government officials. In 1963, his family moved to Chengdu in western China’s Sichuan Province. Zhang’s youth largely coincided with the Cultural Revolution — he was eight at its inception and at its conclusion ten years later he was at the threshold of adulthood. The psychological effects of this era would continue to permeate the lives of his generation, as well as the artist’s practice. This period — characterised by tumultuous political and social upheaval which affected every echelon of society — was a deeply traumatic time for the young Zhang. His parents, like so many others, were under investigation by the government; every night ‘people came to our house and asked my parents to make confessions about what they did wrong’. 3 Zhang’s relationship with his mother was also a troubled one; she had schizophrenia, a condition undoubtedly aggravated by the difficult social climate in which she lived. Perhaps as a refuge from the outside world, he spent much of his childhood drawing. Zhang was initially taught to draw by his mother, who hoped it would keep him off the streets when schools were closed: From early on, my parents worried that I would go out and get into trouble. So they gave us paper and crayons so we could draw at home . . . I gained more and more interest in art. I had a lot of time, because I didn’t have to go to school. My interest increased. After I became an adult, I never gave up art. So that’s how I started to draw. 4 Zhang Xiaogang biography opposite The artist’s noticeboard at his studio, Hegezhuang district, Beijing, 2008 / Courtesy: The artist above Zhang Xiaogang in his 100-day commemorative photograph, 1958 / Courtesy: The artist Zhang Xiaogang at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing, Sichuan Province, 1981 / Courtesy: The artist ABIGAIL FITZGIBBONS