Doing the Cha-Cha with Marx and Engels: an Ode to Shanghai

Fuxing Park, Shanghai, April 2019. Photo: Luise Guest

In a pre-pandemic world I would have been in Shanghai with my daughters right now, introducing them to the city I have grown to love over the last ten years. Such plans we had, for wandering the streets of the former French Concession, watching the dancers in the park, exploring the tiny shops and all the art galleries, and - of course - eating amazing food. In this grim and fractured time it may seem frivolous or self-indulgent to be remembering an era when travel to China was a (relatively) simple matter of getting a visa and booking a flight: in our new parallel universe that will likely be unthinkable for a long time to come. But in a period of growing xenophobia everywhere across the globe, it's more than ever necessary that we hold on to our dreams of trans-cultural encounters and our hopes that in the future our borders will open and our horizons will expand once more. And my nostalgia helps me with that, in a bittersweet way.

Shanghai laneway, April 2019. Photo: Luise Guest

Instead of being a Shanghai flâneur exploring ever-widening arcs around Maoming Nan Lu, I'm 'sheltering in place' like most people across the planet and wondering whether our world will ever be the same. One year ago I was in Shanghai after a week in Beijing, interviewing artists, visiting exhibitions, and enjoying the frenetic pace of this city with its complicated history. I've been thinking about what it is that I most enjoy about Shanghai, and how it is so different to Beijing. My affection was far from instant - it took quite a few years of learning the rhythms of this mega-city with its population of more than 24 million people before I suddenly realised one day that I had fallen in love with it.

Shanghai street scene, 2017. Photograph Luise Guest. 

On my first visit, arriving by high-speed train after a month spent in Beijing, I became instantly lost in the multiple exits from the station, and found it utterly alienating. I had unwittingly booked a hotel in exactly the wrong part of the city, all 8-lane highways and concrete and glass, impossible to walk around and in a construction zone difficult for taxis to navigate. It was the end of winter, and still bitterly cold and damp. On my second visit the following year, and just slightly more savvy, the taxi driver from the airport decided that a foreigner was just too much mafan and tried to make me get out on the side of the elevated expressway off ramp. Fortunately, by this time my Chinese was just barely good enough to argue, and by midnight I'd arrived at the right (very odd) hotel. Although only after he had tried to drop me at three others, apparently randomly selected.

I hired a young translator for my interviews with artists who introduced himself to me with his chosen English name as 'Troy Sailor'. He was certainly handsome and charming, but on our first trip to an artist's studio he unsmilingly told me that in China, old women like me stayed home to save their money to pass on to their children and didn't gallivant around the world on their own. A great start! But going back through my notebooks I am astonished to remember that on my very first trip, as the recipient of a travelling scholarship for art educators, in a single week I interviewed luminaries Hu Jieming, Yang Zhenzhong, Shi Qing and Pu Jie, as well as Shi Zhiying, Chen Hangfeng, performance artist Wu Meng and Monika Lin. And a very young Lu Yang, who had just recently graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. This is evidence of my own chutzpah, for sure, but also reveals the kindness and generosity of the artists and their galleries - I'm grateful to Shasha Liu and Martin Kemble from Art Labor, Lorenz Helbling from ShanghART, and to Art + Shanghai curator Diana Freundl, who had shown Shi Zhiying's beautiful paintings in a group show of women artists.

Lu Yang with 'Biological Strike Back', 2011. Photograph Luise Guest

Leaving the hotel to find somewhere to eat on my first night in Shanghai I remember being too terrified to cross the road, as hundreds of motor scooters revved their engines impatiently at every traffic light. Shanghai taxi drivers were not the chatty, chain smoking 'lao Beijingren'  with their leather jackets and buzzcuts listening to crosstalk on their radios that I had become used to, but surly characters who reversed terrifyingly, at speed, on the elevated freeway and zigzagged in and out of lanes, horns blaring and cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they swore at every other road user. Shanghai driving, it seemed, was a Darwinian exercise where only the most fearless survived. When I showed a Chinese address to one driver, he told me he didn't have his glasses so would have to borrow mine - then proceeded to hurtle down the highway, turned around to face me in the back of the cab, wearing my multifocals. At that point I truly thought I would never see my children again.

In 2012 I was still describing Shanghai as a savage beast of a city - a jabberwock with 'jaws that bite and claws that catch'. When did this change? Perhaps it was in 2013 when I had enough Chinese to feel more confidently independent, or arriving in the Spring of 2014 and realising just how beautiful the old streets are.

Former French Concession street scene, April  2019. Photograph Luise Guest

So what do I love?

The parks with their dancers and singers - of course.  I love the impromptu concerts by students in the tiny park across the road from the Shanghai Conservatorium. On each visit I try to make a very early morning visit to Fuxing Park with its staggering array of activity including the very loud, and often completely tone-deaf, amplified singers belting out anything from Chinese opera, to cheesy karaoke ballads, to Puccini.  I love watching the ballroom dancers doing rather stiff, upright, Latin moves under the watchful gaze of Marx and Engels.

Doing the cha-cha with Marx and Engels. April 2019. Photo Luise Guest

I love the tree-lined streets with their tiny shop windows where gaudy qipao and satin stilettos jostle against windows displaying rows of lacquered roast ducks or dusty mops and buckets in hardware stores. I love the lines of people waiting to buy baozi, pancakes and cakes at the famous places on Huaihai Road. I love the strange fashions in the windows of the 'Shanghai Lady' department  store. I love peering into beautiful but run-down gardens behind walls and fences. I love the sheets, towels, quilts and undies hanging from lines strung from windows, between trees, and on power lines, and the padded jackets waving in the wind on coat-hangers hooked onto street lights.

'Shanghai flags' in the French Concession. April 2019. Photo Luise Guest

Cyclists on Changle Lu, Shanghai, 2017. Photograph Luise Guest

I used to love the uniquely Shanghainese habit of wearing pyjamas in the street - often paired with high heeled shoes, and a tiny dog on a leash, or sometimes worn with fluffy slippers. Younger people found this fashion choice excruciatingly unsophisticated and over the years these sightings have become very rare. I always found it eminently practical and comfortable, if not exactly elegant.  Now that we are all wearing old track pants all day, or switching from our night pyjamas to day pyjamas to start working on laptops in our locked-down interior worlds, it also seems rather foresighted.

Shanghai street scene, 2012. Photograph Luise Guest

I love Shanghai's architecture too, from the art deco around Maoming Nan Lu and Huaihai Lu and the colonial buildings (a reminder of a dark past, but very beautiful) on the Bund. The towers topped with neon-lit, Gotham City-like spires you glimpse as you speed along the elevated freeway coming into the city are visions of a modernity of the past. The stone doorways of shikumen houses and multi-dwelling longtang laneways, whether crumbling and chaotic or restored and gentrified are beautiful. They are endangered, of course, as Shanghai undergoes a constant process of being torn down and rebuilt, like every other Chinese city.

Shanghai Longtang, Neighbours chatting, 2015. Photograph Luise Guest

Shanghai rooftops, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest.

Most of all I love the palpable energy of my conversations with artists in their studios - oftentimes now far outside the city centre - and their sense that anything is possible. Last April I engaged in intense conversations, recording interviews with artists ranging from painter Zhao Xuebing to video artists Li Xiaofei and Qiu Anxiong, and global new media star Lu Yang, almost ten years after we first met.

Zhao Xuebing in his studio, 2019. Photograph Luise Guest

Qiu Anxiong in his studio, 2019. Photograph Luise Guest

With Lu Yang, Shanghai, 2019

Now, of course, galleries and museums are closed, exhibitions are virtual, and art fairs are cancelled or indefinitely postponed. The future of the artworld, and of artists as nomadic beings participating in a global ecology of fairs, biennales and curated museum shows is anyone's guess. We can probably assume that after this (if there is an after this) then nothing will ever again be quite as it was.

Chen Hangfeng in his Shanghai studio, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest

Last April I travelled to the outskirts of the city to meet once again with Chen Hangfeng in a suburban villa.  I had first interviewed Chen ten years earlier in his tiny, former French Concession studio: changes in the places where artists live and work echo the changes in Chinese society over the intervening time. Chen discussed his new work 'Excited with No Reason'. This video animation was inspired in part by his new life, shuttling back and forth between Shanghai and Amsterdam, and his interest in global trade and its effects - an interest that seems even more compelling in a world brought to its knees by a pandemic that has infected the globe, vectored on planes and cruise ships.

The outcome of that conversation with a wonderful artist who jokingly describes himself as a 'half-assed literati' was published last year as Invasive Species and Global Trade Routes: A Conversation with Chen Hangfeng. Click on the link to read the article in Sydney-based online journal, The Art Life.

Artists, in Shanghai and everywhere, are continuing to work in their studios. Perhaps artists and writers, often somewhat introverted and solitary by nature, are among those whose lives are least altered by our current circumstances. I hope I shall return to see their new work and to wander those streets and laneways once again.

Shanghai street in the rain, 2011. Photograph Luise Guest

10,000 Things: Reflecting on a Year almost Gone

Cai Guo-Qiang's 10,000 suspended porcelain birds at the NGV. Photograph Luise Guest

On this final day of 2019, sitting at my desk with windows closed against bush fire smoke and horrifyingly hot winds, a fan blowing noisily at my feet, it seems this is the time to reflect on  a year of highs and lows. Lows there have certainly been; it has been a turbulent year of struggle and difficulty, of loss and grief, and of rising anxiety and even fear about the future that I know I share with so many. This is especially true now, when the orange disc in the sky seems almost apocalyptic and we are assailed by warnings about the air we breathe, which is equal in its polluted nastiness to any I have ever breathed in Beijing. But enough of that! One of my new year’s resolutions is to avoid the constant unsettling churn of media stories about Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit, and our own deeply inadequate national leader: the unending reiteration of ‘news’ adds nothing to the quality of my life. Less social media too in 2020 – well, that’s the plan. But highs there have also been, not least the unconditional love of family and the absolute joy of being a grandparent. So, in this post there will be no wallowing. Instead, I’m going to celebrate some of 2019’s milestones, achievements, wonders and delights.

Poster design for the talk at Women's University, Beijing, in April 2019, featuring a work by Hong Kong artist Firenze Lai

Milestones -- there were a few big ones. They included the completion of a significant book project I’d been working on since 2015 (you can find details HERE); the publication of an article in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (HERE); an article in Art Monthly Australasia and a Quarterly Essay about Jingdezhen and porcelain for Garland (HERE); an essay for an NGV publication, ‘The Centre – On Art and Urbanism in China’; the presentation of a research paper at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference in Auckland; a lecture to students at China Women's University, Beijing, a talk delivered via a Wechat video link to students at Peking University’s global Yenching Academy, and two talks at the NGV about the exhibition 'A Fairy Tale in Red Times' – and I’m another year closer to completing my PhD. I’ve continued my now ten-year-long study of Chinese (but, oh God, will it EVER get any easier?) Probably it's not surprising that I'm just a bit tired.

Yan Ping, Still Life, 2011, image courtesy the artist

A work from 2001 reveals Yan Ping's recurring theme of mother and child, and her influences from European modernism. Image courtesy the artist.

In late October I interviewed Beijing-based figurative painter Yan Ping, preparing to write an essay for a forthcoming book about this artist, who is not known as well outside China as her work deserves. Conducting a conversation via a WeChat video link-up late into the evening, with the artist, her assistant and my translator passing around their mobile phones in her Beijing studio was not without its challenges, and I spent a good part of the more than two-hour conversation seeing tantalisingly fleeting glimpses of the artist while the camera focused on pot plants in the background. But the talk was fascinating and revealed the life and work of an artist who was a new discovery for me.

Yan Ping loves to paint theatre and opera troupes, acrobats and musician, often in behind-the-scenes moments.
Image courtesy the artist

Wonders and delights this year included interviews with extraordinary artists visiting Sydney, including Cheng Ran, Wang Guofeng, Cao Hui and Gao Xiawu (you can find those videos HERE) and in China. A meeting with Zhu Jinshi in Beijing in April was an absolute joy, as he spoke about his participation in the ‘Stars’ exhibition in 1979, his time living and working in Germany, and the thinking behind his extraordinary sculptural installation ‘The Ship of Time’. 

Zhu Jinshi 'The Ship of Time', installation view at Tang Contemporary, Beijing, 2018. Photograph Luise Guest

I relished the opportunity to record long, in-depth conversations with 17 artists in their studios in Beijing and Shanghai, from significant established figures such as Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen to rising stars Ma Qiusha and Lu Yang, and to talk with video pioneer Zhang Peili over delicate Longjing Tea and snacks in a teahouse on the shore of Hangzhou’s idyllically beautiful West Lake. An interview with Chen Hangfeng, who now lives and works between Shanghai and Amsterdam, was fascinating, and I wrote about his new work 'Excited with No Reason' in an article called 'Invasive Species and Global Trade Routes: A Conversation with Chen Hangfeng' for The Art Life HERE. 

Shanghai's former French Concession in Spring - bicycles, washing lines, and  neighbours chatting in leafy streets. Photographs Luise Guest

Just being in China is always a joy, and Beijing and Shanghai in April, with blossoming trees and gorgeous gardens, are especially beautiful. Not to mention the dancing aunties, Peking Opera performers and mahjong players in the parks. And the food! 

My translator, Jane, and kind-hearted driver Mr Zhang, at dinner at Shengyongxing in Beijing

In the ‘wonders and delights’ category - and as lists appear to be essential at this time of year - I add my favourite exhibitions of 2019. (Apart from the wonderful 'Hot Blood' and 'Then' at White Rabbit Gallery of course):

Qiu Zhijie, 'Mappa Mundi' (detail), UCCA April 2019

1. In Beijing, at UCCA, 'Mappa Mundi', the significant exhibition of Qiu Zhijie’s satirical socio-historical cartography of the strange world we now inhabit.

A detail of Qiu Zhijie's obsessively detailed map of China's modern and contemporary art history

2. In Shanghai, at ShanghART Westbund, the installation work of Ouyang Chun in which every piece was constructed with objects retrieved from junk salvaged from the staff living quarters of Xi’an University of Technology, where the artist had once lived with his parents. The compound was about to be demolished, so Ouyang made three trips from Beijing to Xi’an and collected almost 12 tons of rubbish and household goods. From toilet seats to timber doors and windows, from thermos flasks and crockery to rusty bedsteads, battered suitcases and broken furniture, for Ouyang every object was imbued with traces of time and untold histories. I wrote a review of this exhibition, and an account of his work, in 'Reconstructing Memory: Ouyang Chun’s ‘The Mortals’ at ShanghART Gallery' for The Art Life. Find the article HERE

Ouyang Chun, 'King and Queen Number 2', 2018, assemblage of found objects - wooden cabinet, plastic bed pans, wood, concrete, White Rabbit Collection Sydney. Photograph Luise Guest

3. At Shanghai’s Long Museum,  I loved the major retrospective of the work of  extraordinary painter Yu Hong, 'The World of Saha', which she conceived as a 'visual opera' dividing her life into four acts. The exhibition included her 'Witness to Growth' series of self-portraits and her reflections on her life at the age of 50, 'Half Hundred Mirrors'. 

4. 'Remapping Reality' at OCAT Project Space Shanghai - the first comprehensive presentation of Wang Bing’s collection of Chinese video art from the post-Olympic era. OCAT said 'In this moment of historical rupture, the exhibition attempts to take the collection as a point of departure to develop a new narrative framework that, on the one hand, is able to account for the ironies and complexities of China in the age of globalization, while on the other hand addresses the possibilities of “continuity” that is emphasized in China’s public discourse as an integral part of the Chinese experience.' 

Pang Tao (detail), installation view at Pearl Lam, Shanghai

Portrait of a teenage Lin Yan preparing to enter CAFA when it re-opened after the Cultural Revolution, by Pang Tao

5. At Pearl Lam in Shanghai, 'Material Lineage', an exhibition of work by Lin Yan and her mother Pang Tao, who is now in her 90s and recently had a solo show devoted to her work at Beijing's Inside Out Art Museum. This was especially interesting, as on the way to the airport in Beijing I'd seen the exhibition of works by Lin Yan's father, Lin Gang, at the CAFA Art Museum. Her grandfather, Pang Xinqun, was one of the founders of the modernist 'Storm Society' in Shanghai when he returned from Paris in 1930. You can find my story about Lin Yan and her extraordinary artistic lineage, 'Lin Yan: A Tale of Three Cities' in The Art Life HERE.

Lin Yan, paper installation in 'Material Lineage' at Pearl Lam Shanghai.

6. Cai Guo-Qiang's 10,000 porcelain birds at the NGV, in an inspired juxtaposition with the Terracotta Warriors. (And, of course, 'A Fairy Tale in Red Times' curated by David Williams from Judith Neilson's White Rabbit Collection).

Cai Guo-Qiang's porcelain birds at the NGV.

And finally, in non-China related experiences – yes, I do occasionally have some of those! – I loved the Cindy Sherman show at London’s National Portrait Gallery in September, the William Blake show at Tate, a tour of the newly re-opened China rooms of the British Museum before the museum opened for the day (what a luxury to be in an empty museum!) and Berthe Morisot at Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I discovered the collection of treasures from across Asia in the Musée  Guimet, and must return there one day.

So, what will 2020 have in store? Perhaps ignorance is bliss. But hopefully, for Australia, RAIN and lots of it! For me, it's writing the PhD thesis, studying Chinese with more discipline and perseverance than before, continuing my research work and - how exciting - taking my daughters to Shanghai in April for their first trip to China. Signing out for now - 新年快乐! Xinnian Kuai Le! and a Happy New Year to all.

Tang Dynasty polo-playing lady from the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris

上海日记: Shanghai Diary Revisited

French Concession Shanghai, photo LG

After 7 action-packed days in Shanghai I have arrived in Beijing - as always struck anew by the stark differences between these southern and northern cities. Reflecting on my week interviewing artists in Shanghai, my impression that the Shanghai artworld is growing ever stronger, and more interesting, is reinforced. The influence of the new private museums, the Yuz and Long Museums, now a major force to be reckoned with, is a significant factor.

Bicycle Repairs, Shanghai, Photo LG

My hotel in Shanghai's former French Concession was in a fabulous location for exploring the city on foot, and for navigating the Metro - wonderfully efficient, although not for the faint of heart during the rush hour. It was, however, of a uniquely Chinese type - on the surface very luxe, with glittery lamps, lots of fairly appalling art (for sale), enormous marble bathroom and pseudo-antique Chinoiserie. The room, however, was pitch dark even with all the lights on and the curtains open, the carpets in the corridors were badly stained and often covered with drop-sheets (Why? Who knows!) and the breakfast was beyond appalling - once tried never repeated, which perhaps is their intention. However, as Chinese hotels go, it all ran pretty smoothly.

My most memorable Chinese hotel experience was in Beijing, in the winter of 2012, at a supposedly swanky "art hotel" (now closed, and no wonder!) I had begun to think I was the only guest, when on my second night at about 11.00pm there was an almighty noise of thundering feet and shouting in the corridor, and then a loud banging on my door. Imagine my astonishment when I looked through the peephole to find a young Chinese man, stark naked, beating the door with both fists. Later, safely home again, I told a gay friend this story and he said, "Give me the name of this hotel immediately!" I, however, was a little alarmed. I called the reception fuwuyuan, who said with apparent resignation, "Oh Miss, what we can do? He drink too much!" I suggested that perhaps in fact they they did need to do something, anything, anything at all! whereupon the manager rang back and told me they would move me to another floor. There was nothing to be done about Mr Naked Guy. Reluctantly I agreed, and waited for the manager to accompany me. He knocked on the door, I opened it, and together we stepped over the naked body of the man who was now completely comatose, lying stretched out across my doorway. The incident was never mentioned again for the rest of my stay. (Except when I told my translator, who refused point blank to believe that it could possibly have been a Chinese man - he told me I must be mistaken, as only a "waiguoren", a foreigner, would behave so badly.)

A more ludicrous (and less amusing) Chinese hotel experience happened in Xi'an, where I sent some clothes to the laundry and then waited for their return. And waited. When I rang reception they were most apologetic and concerned. A farce ensued, where I received knock after knock on my door, with staff from the laundry bearing ever more preposterous items of clothing and attempting to persuade me they were mine: mens' leather jackets, assorted tiny dresses for tiny Chinese ladies, and enormous jeans for enormous men. It culminated around midnight, with a staff member who simply could not accept that a sequin-covered blue suit (think Xi Jinping's wife on a state occasion) was not in fact mine. He became argumentative and kept trying to shove it at me through the door, which I eventually closed in his face. I never did get my best David Jones blue sweater back.

And of course, there are the two most bizarre experiences of all: the "Art Hotel'' in Chengdu where I discovered to my surprise - and horror - that I was expected to make a speech at the opening of an exhibition of an Australian and Sichuan artist. With about two hours to write it and have it translated, and with no fancy clothes in my overnight bag (perhaps I should have taken that sparkly suit after all!) I fronted up and discovered that my speech was to follow the local Party chiefs, the Chengdu Art Academy bigwigs, and the Australian Ambassador. I was introduced as a "famous Australian art critic" (ha!) and began in Chinese with an apology for my poor language skills. The artist's son then translated my speech line by line. I began to see my entire life flashing before my eyes as time seemed to stop and then go backwards. Dripping with sweat, I ploughed gamely on, filmed by three local television stations - thank God nobody is ever likely to see that footage.

But the honours for first place must go to the "Vineyard"- and I use those inverted commas advisedly -  about two hours out of Xi'an, where I was taken to see an artist's work. My lunch with the artist, a property developer, and a returned Chinese movie producer from Hollywood is a story for another time. I will just say that the wine, the wisteria and even the fields of grapes stretching into the distance are all fake. The local farmers have been persuaded to stop growing corn and vegetables and instead grow table grapes so that wealthy city people can come on weekends and go grape picking and stay in the "chateaux". Truly a Marie-Antoinette at Le Petit Trianon experience.

Yang Fudong, still from video at Yuz Museum

But back to Shanghai, and to art! On my first visit to Shanghai, back at the start of 2011, a number of artists told me they felt almost like the poor relatives of their peers in the art centres of Beijing. Now, they talk about their independence from Beijing, their capacity to innovate and the ways that each individual artist can pursue a unique vision. One said that in his opinion Beijing artists indulge in way too much "liao tianr" - too much chat and communal thinking. I am quite sure, of course, that artists in Beijing will tell me an entirely different story! However, the fact remains that with a unique history of European Modernist influence, and a sense that Shanghai is a truly global city, artists here work in distinct ways. I was fascinated to be shown the extraordinary studio of Xu Zhen - the 'MadeIn Corporation' - where with the assistance of 40 artists/collaborators/assistants some incredibly ambitious and monumental projects take shape. Some say, with a bit of a sneer, it's merely "art as spectacle". I say, "Bring it on!"

Xu Zhen, Guanyin and 'Shanghart Art Supermarket' at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2014, Photo LG

The massive Xu Zhen retrospective at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing last year was one of the most exciting exhibitions I had seen in years, from his enormous fluoro-coloured Guanyin to the Shanghart Art "Supermarket" where all the packaging is empty, and "grannies" shuffled around in slippers, following you through the aisles. "Eternity",  a sculpture for which 3D printing technology created absolutely accurate moulds for casting the replicas of figures from Greek classical sculpture and ancient Chinese Buddha figures, is currently showing at White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney. The artist agrees, without apparent irony, that he is the successor to Andy Warhol and his "factory". He says, "Andy Warhol made a connection between art and commerce, but we recognise that art IS commerce and we aim to make the commercial, artistic." There is a similarly cool Warholian demeanour evident in conversation with this artist, who turned himself, literally, into a brand, recognising the global reach of the art market. At the same time, Xu Zhen supports young emerging artists with the MadeIn Gallery in Shanghai's M50 art district.

Xu Zhen Éternity' at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing 2014

Artists such as Yang Yongliang, Chen Hangfeng, Lu Xinjian and Hu Jieming reinvent and recontextualise  Chinese tradition and history in different ways, both subtle and overt. From papercutting to "Shui Mo" ink painting, from Gongbi realism to the revolutionary photography of the 20th century, each is taking elements of the past and making work that is absolutely contemporary and reflecting the realities of our world today. Chen Hangfeng is working on a significant project about the notorious village in southern China where most of the world's Christmas ornaments are made, an industry which has filled its waterways with glitter, tinsel and assorted festive crap. It's a village of great historical importance in China, in a most beautiful landscape where significant poems were written. Chen Hangfeng's work is a metaphor for globalisation, a theme which concerns many of these artists. Yang Yongliang continues to make beautiful digital works, and now also narrative films, relating to the destruction of the environment as Chinese megacities eat the countryside, devouring tradition in their wake. He takes thousands of photographs for each digital animation, often choosing to shoot in Chongqing. And no wonder - the greater municipality of Chongqing is now, by all accounts, the largest city in the world. Lu Xinjian continues his ''City DNA" and "City Streaming" series of paintings, inspired by aerial views, Google Maps and Mondrian. And Hu Jieming has begun several new projects, including one for which he has written computer coding that can take a photograph and reproduce it, making subtle and not-so-subtle alterations. From this he makes a painting, then scans it and repeats the process, over and over again. Each painting is further from the original image, more abstract. He is asking questions about the relationship between human observation and artificial intelligence.

With Lu XInjian in front of one of his "City DNA" series

After seven intense conversations with seven artists, a Saturday morning walk around the former French Concession provided breathing space, and time to re-acquaint myself with the idiosyncracies of Shanghai life, from the wearing of pyjamas as streetwear to the washing hanging on every street corner, and from powerlines and railings: "Shanghai flags." The sun shone, the oppressive humidity vanished, good coffee was readily available, the trees were green and beautiful, and life seemed very good. Visits to exhibitions at as many galleries as I could cram into one day, including Chen Zhen at Rockbund Museum, Yang Fudong at Yuz Museum, and an exhibition of work by women artists at Pearl Lam, provided a visual feast.

Chen Zhen Purification Room, 2000 - 2015, found objects, clay, photo LG

Chen Zhen, Crystal Landscape of Inner Body, 2000, crystal, iron, glass, photo LG

Yang Fudong, still from video work, Yuz Museum

Lin Ran "Lesbos Island" - traditional Chinese medicine cabinet with drawers "filled with gifts and mementoes given to the artist by lesbians" at Pearl Lam Gallery Shanghai photo LG

My Shanghai experience concluded with the Zhou Fan exhibition at Art Labor Gallery - beautiful works that appear marbled, or as if pigment has been gently dripped onto the surface with an eye dropper. The artist told me that every nuanced gradation of colour and finest line has been carefully applied with tiny brushes. Zhou Fan's practice exemplifies the subtlety and thoughtful refinement that co-exists with the chaotic frenzy of life in modern China.

Zhou Fan, Mountain #0003, 2014, Acrylic ink and mineral color on paper, 38.3 x 56.7 cm image courtesy the artist and Art Labor Gallery

Fear, Anarchy and Hope: Art Serves the People at the White Rabbit Gallery

You Si, 'Transforming', Acrylic Ink on Ricepaper, image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

I have now seen 'Serve the People' at White Rabbit Gallery four times and have found new details in familar works and new ideas to think about each time. The exhibition provides a fantastic insight into the diversity of practice and the multitude of ideas preoccupying Chinese artists right now, and in the last few years. With works ranging from video, to installation, to painting, to ink-on-paper, to sculpture, to digital media, to a form of wet-plate collodion print photography there is pretty much no stone left unturned. 

Chen Wenling, 'Happy Family', bronze, car duco, image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery
(background image: Gonkar Gyatso, 'Buddha for Our Time', stickers on paper,
 image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery)

My two favourite works in the exhibition are Sun Furong's 'Nibbling Up' series of Mao suits that appear to have been shredded by a giant vindictive pair of scissors, and Jin Feng's brave and politically charged installation of carved 'chops' and the resulting prints, telling the story of China's cruel and dramatic 20th century history. But I also have a very soft spot for Chen Hangfeng's video installation of vegetables in crazy conversation; and Wang Zhiyuan's ginormous pair of pink fibreglass knickers, with all their promise of desire assuaged that a consumerist pop culture can offer.

Jin Feng , A History of China’s Modernisation Volumes 1 and 2, 2011, rubber, marble, rice paper installation,
 image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery

In my review of the show for The Art Life, I focused on only a few works - there is a wealth of riches here to be discovered anew on each visit. Here is my take on the exhibition:

"In Mao Zedong’s famous exhortation to the Red Army at the 1942 Yenan Forum on Art and Literature, he emphasised the close relationship between art and revolution, stressing that art must ‘serve the masses’. He probably wasn’t envisaging a gigantic pair of gaudy pink knickers made of fibreglass and car duco; a three-headed conjoined baby skeleton in a scientific bell jar; vegetables growing in an illicit Shanghai garden engaged in a sexually explicit conversation courtesy of Chen Hangfeng’s video installation; or a baby stroller customised with spikes on the wheels, symbolising the fierce struggle for success that characterises parenthood in today’s China. Imagine the bewilderment of Mao and his revolutionary comrades in an encounter with these works and others in the new exhibition at White Rabbit Gallery. ‘Serve the People’ has been curated by former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon, from Judith Neilson’s impressive collection of contemporary Chinese art."

Edmund Capon with Judith Neilson celebrate the opening of 'Serve the People',
 image courtesy White Rabbit Gallery

The notion of how art might “serve the people” has an entirely different resonance in today’s China. Artists born before Mao’s death in 1976 cannot help but look back and attempt to reconcile their life experience with the strangeness of the present day. The dislocations of social transformation, globalisation, demolition and urbanisation which have swept away the revolutionary past, ushering in a world filled with uncertainty, have rendered many of the tropes of the first 1990s wave of contemporary Chinese art passé. A new visual language is emerging, with which artists can respond to the strangeness of their contemporary world, in which enormous disparities of wealth, education and personal freedom are creating new schisms in the social fabric. It is in reflecting this 21st century world back to audiences, both within China and in the West, that artists ‘serve the people’ today.

When Neilson asked Capon to curate the second White Rabbit exhibition for 2013, Capon says that he didn’t hesitate for a moment before he enthusiastically agreed. When he began to select the works for the show, he was irresistibly reminded of his first visit to China in the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. He saw the slogan “Serve the People” everywhere; on posters, on exercise books and calendars, and graffitied in large letters onto walls all over Beijing. In the context of art, serving the people meant, of course, Socialist Realism. All other art forms were banned. One of the great stories of contemporary culture is the extraordinary flourishing of art in China since the ‘opening up’ period. Innovative, technically accomplished and, unsurprisingly, highly adept at creating many layers of complex (and sometimes well-hidden) meanings, Chinese artists are responding to a society in great flux. Capon believes the artists of today “serve the people” by liberating their spirits and giving shape to their anxieties, confusion and ambitions. Three threads run through this show, he says: fear, anarchy, and hope. In fact, I found more hope than fear; a healthy thread of cynicism and doubt; as well as the delightful sense of the ridiculous which is such a characteristic feature of Chinese art..... 

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Wang Zhiyuan ‘Object of Desire’, 2008, fibreglass, lights, sound, 363 x 355 x 70 cm
 image courtesy the artist and White Rabbit Gallery