The China Project

39 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection Concept 21st Century Group Concept 21 – Taiji 1987 Performance, Great Wall near Gubeikou / Images courtesy: Concept 21 Artists increasingly started to treat the body as the primary material with which to construct new visual structures in their performances, first with the introduction of performances involving artists wrapping their bodies in cloth, newspaper and paint. Wrapping shows how artists in China felt bound by the past; covering their bodies like mummies, and placing them in direct contact with historically and ideologically ingrained public sites. Wrapping further provides an interesting link to the work of the well known artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Already during the early of the 1980s, documentation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works were printed in Chinese art journals, including a small black and white photograph of their 1969 wrapping of the coast at Little Bay in Sydney. 9 During the second half of the 1980s, the practice of wrapping was transformed into a very specific performance medium in China, which became increasingly politically motivated. This provided artists with a new art practice that would embody their critical stance inside Chinese society and within the Chinese art scene. The way wrapping becomes an important aspect of performance art in China during the late 1980s can be clearly seen in a series of performances that were conducted between 1986 and 1988 by a group of artists from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Central Crafts Academy — including Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, Sheng Qi, Kang Mu, Zheng Yuke, Zhang Jianjun and Zhao Jianhai. They called themselves the Concept 21st Century Group, starting their collaboration at a time of growing public unrest and increased demands for political change in China by the turn of the century. In December 1986, following a series of student protests at campuses of major universities across China, the Concept 21st Century Group organised their first group performance on the campus of Beijing University, titled Concept 21 – Art before your eyes . During the performance, the artists covered themselves with pieces of white and black cloth and poured paint over their bodies. They then walked across the campus, loudly reciting the names of important cultural and historical places, including the Yangtze River, the Great Wall and Mount Qolmolangma. The performance was attended by important members of the local art scene, including Zhu Qingsheng, a leading art historian at Beijing University, and Fan Di’an, the former Vice President at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the current Director of the National Art Museum of China. One year later, in the autumn of 1987, the Concept 21st Century Group staged their second performance, this time at the Great Wall near Gubeikou, north of Beijing. Under the motto, ‘if you haven’t been to the Great Wall you are not a true man’, the artists wrapped themselves in red and black and strips of white cloth and tangled themselves in a spider-web made from strips of black cloth, which were linked to the stones of one of the former watchtowers of the Wall. This time, the performance also included the participation of Fan Di’an, as well as Hou Hanru, who would later move to France, where he became an internationally acclaimed curator. 10 In October 1988, the Concept 21st Century Group organised another series of performances, Concept 21 — Taiji , during which they visited different sites of cultural and historical significance around Beijing, including the Exhibition Hall of Ancient Astronomical Instruments in Beijing, the Ming Tombs north of the city, and the Great Wall. During these performances, the artists again used paint and cloth to stage a series of performances that were based on ritual acts of mourning, with the artists carrying out their acts of grievances in relation to the derelict history of China’s ancient civilisation. By the time the Concept 21st Century Group organised their third performance, widespread discussions were being held across China about a six-part television series that had attracted millions of viewers, called Heshang ( Deathsong of the River ). 11 Heshang popularised the idea that China needed to dispense with traditional Chinese civilisation, and that a modern Chinese civilisation could only be established through another New Culture Movement that would allow better access to new ideas coming from abroad. The broadcasting and nationwide discussions on Heshang also marked the culmination of the ‘high culture fever’ in China. As author Jing Wang notes, it can be concluded that ‘what Heshang forcefully calls for — the agenda of enlightenment by means of cultural introspection — is time and again eclipsed by a stronger, perhaps unconscious drive for what it rejects — the revival of the glorious past in the future’. 12 During the 1980s, the desire for creating a new modern culture was no longer marked by a drive towards iconoclasm, which was inspired by the New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s and became generated by the struggle against imperialism and colonial domination. Instead, artists in the 1980s were part of an intellectual movement that strove for the articulation of a new modern Chinese culture, which generated a new conceptual approach to art and would eventually make its way into the global discourse of contemporary art.