The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

190 Yang Shaobin X – Blind Spot In X – Blind Spot 2008, Yang Shaobin takes the coalmining industry in China as his subject, exploring its effects on the individuals who make up its huge labour force. X – Blind Spot was developed as a collaborative project with the Long March group, and consists of documents, sculptures, paintings, installation and videos. 1 While the first part of Yang’s project, 800 metres under , focused on the mine itself and workers’ lives at the mine site, X – Blind Spot concentrates on the repercussions of this industry. Over a four-year period, Yang and members of the Long March visited the four diverse coalmining districts of Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning. 2 They went to the ‘high-tech, super-scale environment of open-pit mines [as well as] the small, home owned operations’ where they met with many individuals — from grassroots workers to highly- placed officials. 3 Although Yang was born into a coalmining family in Hebei Province, he found his experience of the contemporary mines to be very different from his family’s. He felt confronted and depressed by what he saw: When I was young, I felt coalmines were very clean and really nice . . . [when I returned] the whole environment was hard to look at . . . it was an earthly hell. 4 China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, and its coalmines proportionately have the largest numbers of fatalities. Recent figures show that approximately 6000 miners are killed every year, or almost 20 per day. 5 Many are migrant peasants from rural areas — one of the most vulnerable social groups in China, partially as a result of the ban on independent worker unions. Lack of regulation, and an unwillingness to invest in adequate safety equipment, exacerbates the problems of an already unsafe industry. Many accidents go unreported, and the long-term effects on the miners’ health are devastating. For APT6, a select group of six works represents Yang’s X – Blind Spot , consisting of two sculptures and four oil paintings highlighting the theme of labour exploitation. The title operates on a numbers of levels: ‘X’ suggests a kind of X-ray vision which Yang uses to great effect in his phosphorescent paintings, while ‘blind spot’ refers metaphorically to the public invisibility of the hardships the miners suffer, and to the dark industrial caverns of the mines themselves. Literally, the title also relates to a term used for a piece of mining equipment (Komatsu 170), which allows the miners to see in the impenetrable underground darkness. Yet, there is a blind spot at either end of the machine’s reach (over 50 metres in diameter), which represents a real risk to those working in the mines. A poignant metaphor for the miners’ status is Yang’s fibreglass sculpture X – Blind Spot No.16 2008, which replicates a statue outside the Yanggeleng Village mine in Inner Mongolia. The statue’s muscular, planar surfaces suggest heroism, yet its loosely hanging arm and exposed wires imbue it with an air of melancholy and neglect. Contrasting with this figure of heroism destroyed is the highly realistic fibreglass and clay sculpture of a miner dressed in rubber boots, reclining with his helmet at his side. Complementing these are four paintings: a portrait in photographic negative style, evoking the ‘X-ray’ of the series title and suggesting the erasure of individuality; and another, showing a group of faceless miners overshadowed by the immense machinery surrounding them. Several works were painted following Yang’s visit to the Qinhuangdao Beidaihe Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis and Recovery Centre, a hospital specialising in treating pulmonary disease and chronic ailments. The blackened specimens in these paintings represent the diseased lungs of deceased workers. A critical aspect of Yang’s project is its contrast with the heroic and idealised depictions of workers in the art of the Cultural Revolution era. X – Blind Spot presents the obverse of this revolutionary idealism — the treatment of workers in a China increasingly motivated by capitalist principles. While Yang uses the same painterly realism, the bright colours and superficial surfaces are replaced with a dark and penetrating vision. While mourning the loss of a short-lived communist ideal, Yang’s project also attempts to recapture some of the spirit of social responsibility motivating communism. Through X – Blind Spot , Yang Shaobin proposes an ambitious new mode of moral engagement for art, and creates a visual experience which is both thought-provoking and emotionally powerful. Abigail Fitzgibbons Endnotes 1 The Long March Project is a Beijing-based art-related initiative established in 2002 which uses the Long March (led by Mao Zedong in 1934–35) as a geographic and discursive framework. Its founder and chief curator is Lu Jie. 2 Long March Writing Group, ‘Excerpts from Yang Shaobin’s notebook: A textual interpretation of X-blind spot ’, Yishu , vol.8, no.1, January–February 2009, p.67. 3 ‘A Long March Project: X-blind spot — Yang Shaobin solo exhibition’, <http://www. longmarchspace.com/yangshaobin/X-blind-spot/e-about.html >, viewed 30 August 2009. 4 Yang Shaobin and Jin Yujie (interview), ‘The traces of concept: Interview with Yang Shaobin’, Art Map , 13 August 2008, <http://www.yang-shaobin.com/eng/htm/ pinglun/2008-p/2008-1_main.htm>, viewed 30 August 2009. 5 Susan Watts, ‘A coal-dependent future?’, BBC News , 9 March 2005, <http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm> , viewed 30 August 2009.