A Window Suddenly Opened: New Photography in China

Chu Haina, 隐秘的风景1号 (Hidden Landscape No.1) 2006

 43cm x 30cm*3. Photograph| Digital printing

Image reproduced with permission of the artist

To coin a phrase: "What is it about contemporary photography in China that makes it so different, so revealing?"

 I have been reading a fascinating article in 'Glass' (the Autumn 2012 Asian edition about all things stylish, arty and Chinese) about the genesis of contemporary photographic practice in China. And musing over my meeting at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing this month where I asked some hard questions of  International Programs Director, Jillian Schultz, about how female photographers are positioned in the Chinese artworld, and about how collectors and serious art buyers see photography in an art market still very much dominated by painting (more on this meeting later.) 

Photographic practice now in China is a vital, continually evolving and often a sensational and provocative art form. Since the emergence of contemporary Chinese art as we know it in the 1990s, in the experimental art communities such as Beijing's 'East Village', painting, sculpture, performance, installation and photography have merged and blurred, often in the practice of individual artists such as Hu Jieming or Wang Jianwei. Younger artists such as Huang Xu and Chen Hangfeng also exhibit this willingness to blend photographic practice with a range of other expressive forms in order to communicate particular ideas. 

Huang Xu, 'Fragment: Plastic Bag No 31',

 image reproduced with the permission of the artist and China Art Projects

Chen Hangfeng, 'Where the Wind Comes From' 
image reproduced with permission of the artist
See the link to the video by clicking on the title above

In 1996 photographer Rong Rong (who established Three Shadows with his Japanese artist/photographer wife, Inri) wrote an introduction to the third issue of avant-garde journal 'New Photo': "When CONCEPT enters Chinese photography, it is as if a window suddenly opens in a room which has been sealed for years. We can now breathe comfortably, and we now reach a new meaning of 'new photography.' " The metaphor of the window suddenly opening could be applied to all avant-garde art, blossoming after years of repression, but most particularly applies to photography.

Some historical background

Contemporary photography in China emerged from the tight control of its use as a propaganda tool between 1949 and Mao's death in 1976, and achieved a dramatic Renaissance in the 90s which culminated in the important 2004 exhibition at the International Center for Photography in New York, "Between Past and Future"

An interesting historical perspective is revealed in Peter Yeoh's 'Glass' article. William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre developed the photographic process in the same year that the First Opium War erupted, which led to the British control of Hong Kong. The first British Governor of Hong Kong presented a photographic portrait of himself and his family to the Guangdong Governor General, Qi Ying, who then requested a reciprocal photographic portrait from the Emperor. This is the earliest evidence of official Chinese contact with photography. By 1846 foreigners had set up photographic studios in Hong Kong and in the 1870s Chinese owned and operated studios opened in treaty ports such as Shanghai, but were suppressed by the Qing government who saw them as spreading Western culture. Later, in Shanghai, there were photographic studios owned by European Jewish refugees. In fact one was recently rediscovered in the lead-up to the Shanghai Biennale, with a stock of old photographs and negatives intact. The story of one such studio (the most successful in Shanghai in the 1920s, with 4 branches, run by a Jewish immigrant who gave himself the new name and identity 'Sam Sanzetti') can be read on 'American Photomag'. When 'Sanzetti'  left China in the 1950s he took with him 20,000 photographs. I recently met a woman in Sydney whose father, a White Russian, owned a photographic studio in Harbin in the 30s and 40s, photographing local identities both Chinese and European. 

1920s Studio Portrait from the Shanghai studio of Sam Sanzetti

And now?

Yeoh says that "contemporary Chinese photography can be confounding to viewers in the West." Certainly it is necessary to know the points of reference, whether that be a reinterpretation of the tropes of literati painting, historical events from the Imperial or revolutionary past, references to the Cultural Revolution or to more recent events in Chinese history. Staged photographs such as Wang Qingsong's iconic tableaux are popular with artists intending to comment on the extraordinarily rapid pace of change in Chinese society.

Wang Qingsong Can I cooperate with you, 120x200cm, 2000
(http://www.wangqingsong.com/)

 Sometimes the reference points are elusive. I recently saw works by Birdhead, the Shanghai duo who document their city and its inhabitants in black and white images, in the 2012 MOMA New Photography show as well as the Shanghai Biennale, and found the works difficult to engage with. Works by Liu Xiaofang, on the other hand, with her dreamy and evocative 'I Remember' series featuring a small girl in a white dress with a red Pioneer scarf are much easier to like. Yao Lu makes works that initially look like traditional misty ink paintings featuring mountains, lakes and waterfalls, which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be constructions entirely made up of garbage such as discarded plastic bags. He is working in a well-mined idiom very popular in Chinese art. 

Yao Lu, New landscape part I – Ancient Spring Time Fey, 2006
Courtesy of 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing

The artist photographs mounds of garbage covered in green protective nets which he reworks and digitally manipulates to create images of mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist inspired by traditional Chinese paintings. "Lying somewhere between painting and photography, between the past and the present, Yao Lu’s work speaks of the radical mutations affecting nature in China as is it subjected to rampant urbanization and the ecological threats that endanger the environment." (eflux)

Another photographic artist who has used the 'moon window' as a device to suggest links to the classical past and to the iconography of the garden in all its complex layering of meanings, as well as to traditions of ink painting, is Han Lei. Other aspects of this artist's practice, such as the photographs of large fleshy naked women wearing bunny ears and furry bunny rabbit slippers, are another matter entirely!

Han Lei, Yellow Mountain 15, Lambda Colour Photograph

Huang Xu, Fragment, Plastic Bag No. 30

Image reproduced courtesy of the artist and China Art Projects

Likewise Huang Xu's photographs of plastic bags, arranged and lit so they become objects of great beauty, taking on the appearance of the 'scholar rocks' found in Chinese classical gardens.He has exhibited his photographic work (he also works as a sculptor and a painter) in Beijing, London and in Australia, presenting ethereal large scale C-prints exploring "the fragile nature of the contemporary global economy." (http://www.octobergallery.co.uk)  Tattered plastic bags, seen everywhere floating in the air and lying on the ground in Chinese cities, towns and villages, were collected and digitally remodelled, sometimes by using 3D scanners. They evoke the sublime, but they are also suggestive of the decay and destruction inherent in the transformation of today's China. Luminous and beautiful, dramatically lit to recall the chiaroscuro and billowing drapery of Baroque paintings, it has been said that they also resemble the fine silks of imperial China, recalling trade links between East and West. 

Huang Xu, Fragment No 26, C-Print, shown October Gallery London 2009,
reproduced courtesy of the artist and China Art Projects

"Using artifice to reconfigure traditional paintings of landscapes into hyper-modern expressions is also a central approach in contemporary Chinese photography" says Yeoh. And not only in photography - Chen Hangfeng has done something similar in video, with his 'Where the wind comes from', as has Taiwanese artist Chen Chun- Hao with his “Imitating Fan Kuan’s ‘Travelled Among Mountain and Streams’ from the Song Dynasty” which appears at first to be a lyrical, misty landscape painted in ink. On closer inspection, however, one sees it is made entirely with headless steel pins punched through the work with a nail gun - 750,000 of them. In reviewing this and other works shown in 'Down the Rabbit Hole' at the White Rabbit Gallery for 'The Art Life' I wrote, "Beauty and tranquillity on the surface, but with an underlying reminder of mechanical ‘fakery’. In Chinese tradition, the copying of historical paintings is an act required of the scholar. This artist, however, reinvents and subverts the act in a similar manner to Xu Bing’s ‘Background Story’ series, where apparent ink paintings, re-creating old masters from the Song Dynasty, are constructed with rubbish and debris, back lit behind a screen."

Xu Bing, 'Background Story', shown in 'Dead and Alive' at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 2010

One of my favourite Chinese photographers is Chen Jiagang, whose work I first encountered at 'Contemporary by Angela Li' Gallery in Hong Kong in 2009. It was a revelation to me. Melancholy, beautiful, elegiac, romantic yet cynical - the works have so many of the features that I associate with contemporary China and its art and literature. Chen uses specially created negatives and a large format film camera to create these staged images.

http://500photographers.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/photographer-416-chen-jiagang.html

The Great Third Front-66, Chen Jiagang, 2008

Power Station, Galeries Paris-Beijing

Chen Jiagang, Wharf in Old Chongqing, from the 'Smog City' series
Artist's web site: http://www.chenjiagang.com/EnWorks.aspx

Emerging Beijing photographer Chu Haina lives and works in Caochangdi and uses her camera to record images which have the fleeting and melancholic beauty that she seeks, as well as a puzzling and intriguing ambiguity. She principally  uses black and white film, and works with minimal digital manipulation. We met in early December at a gallery and at her tiny one-room apartment in Caochangdi, and spoke at length about her practice. At Egg Gallery her work was showing in a group exhibition called 'Light Sensation', which had the somewhat bizarre tag line,"The classical aesthetics give the feeling of being more familiar and friendly" which gives you some idea of the generally mystifying and appalling quality of the art writing found in many Chinese gallery publications, catalogue essays and wall texts. In conversation she revealed that her favourite photographers are Diane Arbus, (no suprises there - how many young photographers have been inspired to take up a camera after seeing her work for the first time?) Bernard Faucon and the Taiwanese Juan I-Jong, whose photographic theory books had a profound impact on her and "touched the road I started as a photographer".

 Influential Chinese practitioners of the pioneering generation include Han Lei and Wang Ningde well as Wang Qingsong. More and more young artists are choosing photography as their medium, she believes, because it is both more "mobile and more direct". There are many 'salon photographers' and mutually supportive photographers' groups in Beijing. and the support and recognition from institutions such as Three Shadows Gallery (and, in particular, 'Caochangdi Photospring' each year) encourages more Chinese artists to work in this medium.

Wang Ningde, image from the 'Some Days' series

Wang Ningde, image from the 'Some Days' series

Wang Ningde, image from the 'Some Days' series

The lyrical black and white melancholy found in Wang Ningde's works finds its echo in Chu Haina's approach to her work - she believes it is what she can see through her viewfinder, rather than how she can manipulate it later, that is the important thing. Chu tells me that she found Hiroshi Sugimoto's, exhibition at Pace Beijing in July of 2012 hugely influential. The work of this artist, which she had admired since first seeing it in 2002, made her realise to what extent photographic works can contain within them layers of meaning and a deep philosophical intent. She is careful to avoid explaining too much about her works - and even adroitly evades my direct questions about the subjects of some of the more ambiguous images. "I want my photographs to trigger a feeling, or maybe a memory", she says.

Chu Haina, 隐秘的风景3号, Hidden Landscape No.3, 80cm x 50cm

Photograph| Digital printing,  2004

Chu Haina with her work at Egg Gallery, photograph Luise Guest, reproduced with the permission of the artist

Chu Haina, Extension, Digital C Print, 80 x 120, 2003, image reproduced courtesy of the artist and Redgate Gallery

In my conversation with Jillian Schultz at Three Shadows Gallery, she is rueful about the fact that there is as yet no national photography collection, and still as yet little strong scholarship or connoisseurship in China regarding photomedia. But local interest and awareness is growing, in large part due to the work of Rong Rong and Inri at Three Shadows, with its clearly stated mission to promote and discuss contemporary Chinese photography. "What makes Chinese photography different?" I ask her. She tells me that there is now a strong interest in alternative processing, 'low-fi' techniques such as i-phone photography, and the production of independent artists' photo-books,as well as a shift away from digital manipulation of images. When I say that it seems to me that those are aspects of photographic practice which are engaging artists internationally, she thinks for a  moment and then tells me that the newest and most interesting aspect of current practice in China is that it is becoming far more nuanced and subtle "capable of saying lots without saying much at all", by which she means that meanings are layered and artists are representing and critiquing aspects of their changing society in much less obvious ways than in the past. 

As an example, she introduces me to the work of Wang Lin, who won the Shiseido Prize in Caochangdi Photospring this year. Formerly a flight attendant on a regional airline, she documented the life of her peers in documentary black and white images which together form a compelling narrative. She was dismissed from the airline after someone anonymously posted her photographs on the internet. In 'Dreams of a Stewardess' she shows us not the supposedly glamorous life of these independent women, but the tedium and loneliness, the hectic schedules, as well as the intimacy of a life shared with other women crammed into dormitories not unlike those of the much despised migrant workers in southern China. "Her subjects can surrender totally in her presence, oblivious to the presence of her camera. This fusion of the photographer with her subjects gives us a unique window into an un-suspected micro-universe." (Jean Loh, Trans Asia Photography Review)

Wang Lin, “From the window of the dormitory at Tianjin airport”,
 from Heaven & Earth series, 2009, 50x40cm.

Wang Lin, “Resting and reading papers on board flight Changsha-Kunming”,
from Heaven & Earth series, 2007, 50x40cm.

Wang Lin, “Waiting for passengers to board the flight from Tianjin-Changsha”,
from Heaven & Earthseries, 2008, 40x50cm.

Wang has been compared to Nan Goldin in her use of unsentimental, everyday imagery. Like many young photographers (and artists) in China today she is unencumbered by memories of the Cultural Revolution or the 'June 4th' Tiananmen movement and its aftermath of cynicism and wariness. Both materially and conceptually there are significant changes occurring in the practice, and the identity, of a younger generation of emerging artists. Schultz told me that the change she would most like to see (apart from a willingness on the part of collectors to buy photographic works) is a shift in thinking to embrace scholarly research and criticality. This, she believes, would give the work of many young photographers a greater conceptual depth. It is beginning to happen now.

And finally?

Photographic practice in China, as with artists working in every other medium you can think of, is vital, energetic and dynamic. There may be opportunities for young artists (and for women artists) in photography that are harder to come by in other forms. It is not so long ago that a gallery director infamously told Liang Yuanwei that she should try photography as "there are already too many female painters"! As Peter Yeoh concludes in his 'Glass' article, the reinvention of photography in China continues, but now many artists are taking the time to reflect more deeply on their practice and consider how it can develop in new and unexpected directions. He is a bit gloomy about what he sees as the loss of a willingness to experiment and combine genres and influences in 'mash-ups' creating bizarrely wonderful hybrid forms. However I am sure that Chinese photography will continue to possess the inventiveness, the playfulness and the imaginative freedom that has distinguished it to this point.

Chu Haina自然世界4号 Hidden Landscape No. 4, 80cm x 50cm

Photograph| digital printing, 2006

Image reproduced with permission of the artist

Zhong guo "Zai Jian" - for now

A large wall text at the entrance to the "Andy Warhol - 15 minutes eternal" exhibition currently showing at the Hong Kong Art Museum reads, " Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art". This is curiously appropriate in Hong Kong, a city where, artist Celia Ko told me tonight, "money is the only language that everybody speaks."

Hmmm. Money and art. Who knew? Always a hugely problematic nexus, and ideas about the relationship of one to the other are contested bitterly. In Beijing there is no denying that a number of artists became seriously wealthy in the art boom of the late 90s and early 2000s. And cynical views are expressed by some in the artworld that everything and everyone have been corrupted by that.

However while everybody needs to earn a living and artists are not exempt from the normal kinds of greed and desire for comfort and ease that we are all heir to, I am prepared to go out on a limb and say that each of the seventeen artists I have interviewed on this trip are absolutely and seriously dedicated to making art that expresses deeply felt ideas and beliefs, and work incredibly hard to develop their practice and pursue a goal of excellence, whatever the art market might be doing.

Gao Ping, oil on canvas, image reproduced with permission of the artist and China Art Projects

Gao Ping told me, "Every year I want to find something new in my work" and added, "The drawing is my heart". Lin Tianmiao said, "Being an artist is a very personal thing. We are the people who raise the questions - the critical thinking is the most important thing". You can read a more detailed account of my interview with this iconic figure, currently showing at Lelong in New York, here: http://dailyserving.com/2012/12/holding-up-half-the-sky-an-interview-with-lin-tianmiao/

Lin Tianmiao, thread winding work viewed in the artist's studio,
 photograph Luise Guest, reproduced with the permission of the artist

Liang Yuanwei, who spent three months in Berlin after a less than happy experience representing China at the Venice Biennale, said. "My work is like a tunnel between myself and the world. It must be true."

Liang Yuanwei in her Beijing studio, December 2012
Photograph Luise Guest, reproduced with permission of the artist

Liang Yuanwei, Flower Study for the Golden Notes series, oil on canvas
Photograph Luise Guest reproduced with the permission of the artist

Liu Zhuoquan makes very beautiful works that contain within them some carefully coded meanings about issues in China today. Wu Meng makes works in the public space in Shanghai at considerable personal risk to herself and her family, raising issues of vital concern such as the suicides of workers in the factories of southern China, or the unfair treatment of migrant workers. And Lam Tung-pang in Hong Kong, whose work is currently showing at Saatchi in London, makes works which reflect his feelings of anxiety and distress about what is happening to his beloved city, and his search for quietness and repose in a re-examination of the traditions of ink painting.

Lam Tung-pang in his studio, Hong Kong December 2012,
photograph Luise Guest  reproduced with the permission of the artist

Lam Tung-pang, studio view

Lam Tung-pang, 2 sided work based on Tang Dynasty horse, photographed in the studio
Photograph Luise Guest reproduced with the permission of the artist

Lam Tung-pang, exhibition of work at Goethe Institut, Hong Kong, installation view
image reproduced with permission of the artist

I have interviewed painters and performance artists, photographers and sculptors, artists who work with found objects and found images, those who reinvent traditional Chinese forms such as ink painting or gong bi style painting and those who seek an entirely new visual language. I have met famous and revered artists, and artists newly graduated from art academies. I have met curators and gallery directors and critics.

Monika Lin, "On the Way to the Imperial Examination",
performance piece in which the artist wrote the character 'mi' (rice) 10,000 times
Image reproduced with permission of the artist

Shi Zhiying in her Shanghai studio,
Photograph Luise Guest, reproduced with permission of the artist

I have also met two wonderful and inspirational art teachers with whom I hope to collaborate on some projects with our respective art students - art that crosses national boundaries and limitations of culture and language, that sounds good!

I have learned enough to make my brain feel as if it is overflowing with new information, enough for a book! We'll see... I have loved the experience of travelling with this sense of purpose and in a spirit of enquiry, and have been warmly welcomed everywhere. I have sat in ice cold freezing studios in old 'Shikumen' houses in the French Concession in Shanghai, and in Caochangdi and Songzhuang artists' villages on the outskirts of Beijing. Today, after visiting Lam Tung-pang in his new studio in Fo Tan, I caught a local mini bus to Sha Tin Station, blaring Chinese opera all the way.

From the sublime to the truly ridiculous, Hong Kong has it. Yesterday I saw an eagle floating, suspended, high above the clustered apartment buildings as I rode down the hills from the Peak on the top deck of a bus. Today, in the shopping mall above the Sha Tin MTR station, I came across a brand of handbags and wallets called 'Shag Wear' - I swear this is true! Yesterday, in Canton Road, two young men in the jostling crowd carried sandwich boards advertising 'The Battery Operated Nasal Aspirator".

I have been observing - sometimes feeling like a voyeur - the people in each city as they go about their lives, Old men and women playing cards, mahjong, chess, doing Tai Chi, ballroom dancing, playing bowls. Such constant activity! And here in Hong Kong have been touched by the way tiny, wizened old ladies are led gently by daughters and grand-daughters down jostling Kowloon streets. And also by the general tenderness shown in every  city I have visited to babies and children. Not surprising in the land of the one child policy, changing though that may be. Often in Australia I observe parents respond to their small children with exasperation and impatience as their default position. Not so in China.

It is perhaps ironic that part of my purpose here has been to discover what the effect of international dialogues, residencies and exhibitions has been on the work of Chinese artists, and how they have been changed by these experiences. A lot more remains to discover on that topic, but in the meantime the person most changed by the dialogue is me.

Zhongguo - Zai Jian!

Shanghai to Xiang Gang

Ah Hong Kong! Toilets flush, traffic lights are obeyed, nobody is spitting in the street right next to me, and whilst it can seem chaotic and frenetic there is still a sense of order and stability. As Fuschsia Dunlop so memorably said, Hong Kong is like a decompression chamber after being in mainland China. It is strange to hear Cantonese, with its long "maaaaaa" and "laaaaa" sounds at the ends of sentences, after the more clipped  tones of Mandarin. And just when I was getting a little bit better at communicating!

When I arrived today I was struck anew by the contrasts. Glitzy storefronts with mildewed apartments stacked above. Beautiful mountains rising out of the sea like a literati painting juxtaposed with enormous slender tower blocks and  outlet malls. In Kowloon two men with a sign reading "Keep away from Falun Gong Evil Cult" lounged against the wall of the Gucci shop next to a poster advertising cosmetic surgery and a woman handing out foot massage leaflets. Mainland Chinese queued in long noisy lines to get into Prada, Chanel and Burberry on one side of Canton Road whilst on the other side Hong Kong citizens queued patiently at bus stops, waiting for buses to far suburbs.

Louise Hawson of '52 suburbs' fame has some great photographs of Hong Kong housing estates - check them out here: http://52suburbs.com/suburb/hong-kong/

On Sunday I will go out to Fo Tan to see the artist Lam Tung-pang in his studio in that previously industrial neighbourhood. Now all the industry is pretty much over the border. And so are many of the workers who can commute to Shenzhen or Donguan and be paid in RMB.

Reflecting on my past two weeks in Beijing and Shanghai - I have learned so much and been so privileged to be welcomed into studios and galleries with great warmth and kindness. Ordinary people from taxi drivers to hotel staff to shop assistants have generally been helpful and friendly - maybe it's my grey hair!

Three things I love about China:

1. The sense that anything is possible, no matter how ambitious, and can be achieved very fast. Quite possibly by tomorrow if you like (although it may very well fall apart soon after that)
2. The way that elderly people are treated with devotion, respect and care
3. The openness and generosity of ordinary people. I cannot imagine that I would be welcomed into artists' homes and studios in the same way anywhere else - certainly not in Australia

Three things I don't love about China:

1. Spitting loudly and revoltingly in the street 
2. Food safety fears - every day the newspapers contain stories about adulterated milk, or prosecutions of farmers for adding chemicals to the feed of pigs or chickens
3. Air quality - it is appalling

Three silly moments from a week in Shanghai:

1. Channel flicking from one CCTV station to another, I came across 'China You've Got Talent', featuring a competitor who said he was a 28 year old worker from Shandong Province. He was dressed inexplicably as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and he performed by juggling eggs with his mouth, shooting them up to the ceiling and catching them again to the wild applause of the audience and the apparent approval of the judges. Chinese TV has a zillion variations on music and MTV style shows, mostly featuring very pretty boys with improbable hair-dos and girls whose role appears to be to giggle on cue. And incredibly soppy romantic love songs with videos starring girls who swoon and are rescued by young men who look extremely gay.
2. Yesterday in M50 I walked into an upmarket art gallery and found three very glamorous young gallery assistants all dancing 'gangnam style' to THAT track. They collapsed into helpless and embarrassed giggles when they realised I was there.
3. Walking in Fuxin Park I came across senior citizens playing a game that resembled bowls, or maybe bocce. It was all very serious - they had uniform team aprons in different colours and a referee with a microphone headset, but they seemed to be having great fun. Much confusion ensued when I asked them what the game was called and about 6 people all tried to explain the rules to me -all in Chinese and all talking at once. Little did they know that I don't understand the rules of ANY sport, much less something that is played only in China!

Three friends watching the ball game at Fuxin park

And three favourite artworks - although there are so many it is almost impossible to narrow it down

1. Cui Guotai, a painter I had not come across before - I loved his raw expressionist works of military hardware and industrial installations fallen into decay. Like a eulogy for the Socialist Utopia.

Cui Guotai

2. Liu Zhuoquan's new work is very exciting - a development from his 'neihua' inside painted bottles as seen in White Rabbit and the Biennale of Sydney, he is now working with lights and developing larger installations. These birds are painted on the inside of the lamps which are intended to evoke those on Chang'An Avenue in Beijing, leading to Tiananmen Square. The black birds are birds of ill omen, a dangerous portent. And a coded political meaning as in so much of this artist's work. The references are very subtle, but they are very deliberate and intentional.

Liu Zhuoquan with his new installation, bound for an exhibition in Australia.
Photograph Luise Guest, reproduced with permission of the artist and China Art Projects

3. The new works by Gao Ping - she continues her subtle and delicate ink on paper works of 'tiny things' - rows of tin mechanical toys, sad stuffed animals, tiny people or cars, miniature gardens or pot plants, floating on expanses of Chinese paper. However she has developed strong works in oil on paper and canvas, exploring a palette of subtle greys, fleshy pinks and celadon green, from which murky forms emerge from a misty wash of pigment. They are evocative and very beautiful works.

Gao Ping, untitled, oil on canvas, image reproduced courtesy of the artist and China Art Projects

Gao Ping is an artist who impressed me enormously with her quiet dedication to advancing her practice - unflashy, unpretentious, absolutely sincere and genuine in her determination to keep learning.

Gao Ping Studio View, Photograph Luise Guest

Gao Ping in her studio, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

Actually I lied - I can't leave it at three. I have to include Dong Yuan and her paintings of her grandmother's house - multiple small canvases making up the entire 4-roomed house as it was in Dalian in the artist's childhood, reconstructed from photographs, memories and interviews with her relatives:

Dong Yuan, Grandmother's House, oil on multiple canvases to make up installation,
 image reproduced courtesy of the artist

And. finally, the truly astonishing work by Huang Yong Ping in the Shanghai Biennale, 'Thousand Hands Kuanyin' - this artist continues to amaze, delight and impress.

Huang Yong Ping, Thousand Hands Kuanyin, Shanghai Biennale

Just what is it that makes Shanghai so different, so appealing?

My sentiments exactly, after a day experiencing all the contradictions of modern China. This is a work seen at Vanguard Gallery in M50

I go to sleep at night with all the Chinese phrases and sentences floating around in my head that I somehow haven't been able to remember during the day when I need them. In my dreams I am wonderfully fluent, but during my waking moments it is as if I have been rendered mute. I stumble through basic requests, usually forgetting the interrogative 'ma?' in my questions, so I must sound weirdly declarative. Sometimes I obviously sound better than I am, so am met with a flood, a torrent, an avalanche of Chinese and have to shamefully declare 'Wo bu mingbai' - I don't understand. I am absurdly pleased with myself when very simple conversations are conducted successfully in Chinese - albeit with a fair bit of mime and gesturing. People are wonderfully good-humoured and like to practice their English, so we get by with good grace on both sides - although I find they are generally very amused by the notion of any foreigner attempting to speak Chinese. Secretly I suspect they think we are absolute barbarians.

Sometimes this seems to be in fact the case. Last night as I was desperately flinging myself into the path of the terrifying Shanghai traffic, attempting to hail a cab, a middle aged Australian couple got out of a taxi next to me and the man said, "You might as well take this one, he can't seem to understand my instructions". Why on earth would you expect him to? is what I wanted to ask, but instead gratefully jumped in. Later I felt guilty, thinking I should have tried to help them communicate, but I must have been infected by some of the Chinese 'every woman for herself' attitude in public spaces. And I didn't like my compatriots appearing both ignorant AND arrogant. Also they had just come out of a very swanky hotel, so too bad!


Embarrassing Chinese moments: "Tai Chi Le!"

1. Almost falling headfirst out of a Chinese toilet at the feet of an artist in his gallery. I had temporarily forgotten that Chinese-style toilets have a steep step at the door. A quick recovery and a (probably unconvincing) attempt to suggest that I had always intended to exit the 'ce suo' with astonishing speed was my strategy to save face here
2. Involuntarily screaming loudly in the back of a Shanghai taxi as we swerved violently through an intersection, scattering riders of bicycles, pedi-cabs and pedestrians, almost colliding with a bus. I have become very used to the no-seatbelts, drive across multiple lanes and on the wrong side of the road and through red lights whenever you feel like it modus operandi, but this journey was horrific even by Shanghai standards. I sat gripping the door handle, thinking I may never see my children again. and  uttering moans and gasps, with the driver looking at me sideways in contempt

Three more things not to select from a Chinese menu:

1. Bullfrog in sauce
2. ' New York' pizza - I have tried this and it is neither New York style nor pizza
3. 'Yuanyang' or Cantonese coffee/tea drink, a mixture of a small amount of instant coffee and Hong Kong style milk tea. My very sophisticated university lecturer Chinese friend drank this to accompany stir fried seafood and a Malaysian curry, much to my disbelief

Shi Qing, Shanghai Electricity Shopping Mall, Shanghai Biennale

Installation, Shanghai Biennale

Installation detail, Shanghai Biennale

Installation, Shanghai Biennale

The last few days have exposed once again the extraordinary contradictions of China, as seen through the  the microcosm lens of the artworld. From the quiet, contemplative and thoughtful practice of Shi Zhiying, steeped in Buddhism and the traditions of ink painting; to the internationalism of the Shanghai Biennale and some apocalyptic exhibitions at M50; to the Shanghai Museum's blockbuster show of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy from American museums; to sentimental socialist realism at the Shanghai Art Museum; to social activism through art in the work of a number of painters and the performance artist Wu Meng: everything goes into the stir fry that is China today.

I started the day at the very wonderful Shanghai Museum, which is housed in a rather ugly building designed to resemble an ancient bronze 'ding' vessel and containing a fabulous collection. The exhibition of paintings and calligraphy from museums such as the Metropolitan in New York, the Cleveland Art Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was packed with Chinese visitors of all ages, intently reading the calligraphy and peering at the scrolls and paintings in silence. I felt like such a frivolous dilettante flitting from one to the next and trying to remember the historical sequence of the different dynasties. It is very possible to see the strong influence that these traditions continue to have on contemporary artists - especially literati painting and Song Dynasty Bird and Flower painting. And humbling to see what the Chinese were doing during Europe's  Dark Ages.

I visited my favourite Tang Dynasty 'equestrienne' sculptures - love those feisty girls riding bareback - and also the court ladies looking terribly smug with their moon-like faces and fat rosy cheeks.

With a brief detour past the men playing cards and mahjong in People's Square, under the eyes of a statue of a revolutionary hero, I entered the Shanghai Art Museum, previously the European-only club of the Shanghai Racecourse, to discover myself deep in the sentimental land of socialist realism - the motherland in fact, as the exhibitions title declared. I have seen a number of these exhibitions in China, where artists employ their exemplary skills to depict scenes like those in a Victorian narrative painting with a moral - they always remind me of the Holman Hunt  work 'The Awakening Conscience' except that they depict beautiful idealised peasant girls and happy ethnic minority peoples herding their sheep. In fact, they are not unlike the photographs sold to tourists in Xintiandi and Tianzifang, which so often use dirty-faced ethnic minority children as their subjects. In these there is an unpleasant kind of Orientalism and 'exotification', as well as a romanticisation of a reality that is more often difficult, unpleasant and politically fraught. Ironically, the artist is based in LA and paints for an international market of nostalgic Chinese. The Shanghai Art Museum was, however, once again, full of Chinese visitors taking photos of the works on their mobile phones and buying postcards to take home.

Li Zijian poster at the Shanghai Art Museum - teeth clenching sentimentalism

Li Zijan, part of a series of paintings of young idealised rural women clutching letters

Artists have responded to the dramatic and growing wealth disparity in China in a number of ways. Suzhou Gallery in M50 showed paintings by a  group of artists participating in a project travelling to Hunan and Jiangsu Province and painting old people, young migrant workers, and children in the village school. Unfortunately there was no information available in English about the artists or the project. The paintings were good - strong, expressive and allowing the subjects full dignity, without romanticising their hardship. These young migrant workers lead hard lives with an optimistic determination to reinvent themselves, far from rural poverty, in the factories of the Pearl River Delta. 

Artist Unknown, Young Migrant Workers, Suzhou Gallery, M50

Artist Unknown, Village School, Suzhou Gallery, M50

At the Biennale a project of video interviews of old people from the villages of remote provinces and from older areas of the big cities is an attempt to record their stories and memories. Walking through the hanging installation of the still images of their faces is quite a haunting experience.

The painter Yi Wei is showing large and fabulously painterly canvases recording the impoverished living conditions of migrant workers and the urban poor. Reminiscent of the virtuousity of Liu Xioadong, I found these paintings gripping, absolutely unsentimental yet filled with humanity and compassion. There is a growing awareness and unease here about the social implications of the changes that have taken place in the last ten years, and a growing bitterness about the 'mega-rich' and their conspicuous consumption of all the status symbols of western fashion, from Philippe Patek watches to Louis Vuitton handbags and Porsches. In fact there is a web site that tracks the watches worn by members of the People's Congress and publicises them online. The other day, performance artist and activist Wu Meng told me about the film project she is working on, recording interviews with the 'educated youth' who were exiled from Shanghai to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Now elderly, and in many cases returned to the city of their birth, they feel angry and  unfairly treated. There are many such projects, some more politically sensitive and potentially dangerous to the artists than others, reflecting a growing interest in justice and a growing compassion for the 'underdog'.

Wu Meng in her Shanghai studio

Wu Meng's performance 'Security, Sad Clown' at Shanghai Expo, 2010

Another artist, Li Xiaofei, has presented a video work called 'Assembly Line' in which he interviewed factory workers, managers and owners about their lives, examining the relationships between man and machine, management and labour, and the individual and society. One of the women interviewed spoke about her work in the past enforcing family planning regulations and the one child policy, another issue currently being re-examined here.

Yi Wei, 'Slumdog'

Yi Wei, 'Slumdog'

Yi Wei, Old House

Yi Wei, Factory

At M50, the enclave of artist studios and galleries (the good, the bad and the ugly) next to Suzhou Creek I wandered the galleries for most of the afternoon. At Vanguard, a bizarre and interesting curated show 'Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Appealing?' included works by the Made-In collective - a tent surely intended to reference Tracy Emin's notorious 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With since 1963' and Yang Zhenzhong's video in which a series of people spit what appears to be blood over the camera in a repetitive sequence, recalling his famous 'I Know I Will Die' video from some years ago.

Hu Xiangcheng, ' Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Different, So Appealing?', installation at Vanguard Gallery, M50, Shanghai

Hu Xiangcheng, ' Just What is it that Makes the End of the World so Different, So Appealing?', installation at Vanguard Gallery, M50, Shanghai

Made-In, Tent for Safety D

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong

At Island 6 (Liu Dao) 'The Cat That Eats Diodes' revealed their characteristic crossover hybrid works that blend painting, sculpture, light and sound, and computer generated animation. Sometimes too commercial for my taste (and, sometimes, quite frankly, sexist in their approach to the representation of women) nevertheless a really interesting collective art practice that integrates new technologies with artmaking. And a real indication of the interest in Shanghai of the way that boundaries between art, design, architecture, fashion and even events can be blurred.

Liu Dao (Island 6) Interactive Work - when you call the number, something will happen!
And you will get a text message from the character in the artwork. Witty, engaging and surprising. 
Art? I am still unsure.

At Studio Rouge, a number of different works including some of Huang Xu's beautiful plastic bags photographed to transmogrify them into 'scholar rocks', thus making a comment on the influence of the literati in Chinese tradition and the significant issues of environmental degradation and pollution. With his wife, Dai Dandan, he developed the recent installation show at Studio Rouge in Shanghai and later in Hong Kong. 'Mr and Mrs Huang in the Humble Administrator's Garden' combined his photographs and other sculptural works in which he uses buttons to create temples and pagodas, with Dai Dandan's 'luxe' scholar rocks encrusted with rhinestones.  A witty and beautiful play on the Chinese obsession with gardens as miniature perfected landscapes.

Huang Xu and Dai Dandan in their studio, Beijing, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artists

Having spent a morning this week wandering the Yu Gardens here and having all the various levels of symbolism explained to me by my young and very serious translator I feel I have just a glimmering of understanding.

Yu Gardens Shanghai, a rare non-touristed moment of tranquillity

At OV Gallery, an exhibition by painter Shi Jing, 'The Remains of the Day', also seems a little apocalyptic. Curator Rebecca Catching, whom I met today, says that his "asteroid series takes this concept of elapsing time to a new and cosmological level. Images of asteroids, which were taken from an Internet fan-site, are applied to the canvas using a combination of brushstrokes moving in different directions to depict the bulbous, pockmarked forms. What fascinates Shi Jing is the idea that for an asteroid, travelling an average of 90,000 km an hour, these photos are outdated even by the time they are taken. What we perceive is merely an image of an asteroid which is now light-years away from where it once was." The paintings become an installation with frames constructed with protruding LED lights which cast eerie shades of green, blue and magenta onto the dark surfaces. This continues the artist's interest in the vastness of the cosmos.

Shi Jing, Seen in Passing, courtesy of Chambers Fine Art Beijing

There seems to be a somewhat apocalyptic theme here, and in a week in which North Korea fired a long range missile and many memorial ceremonies of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre took place across China,  that may be most appropriate. Meanwhile, however, the men in People's Square play mahjong and in Fuxin Park they fly kites and play cards. Life continues in all its banality and its beauty.

Playing cards under the watchful eye of Marx and Engels

Gathering in People's Square

Kite Flyer at Fuxin Park