Censorship in Consistency:
The Case of Chinese Contemporary Art (2004-2014)
Giovanni Bottacini (s1735187)
MA Arts and Culture: Contemporary Art in a Global Perspective, Leiden University Supervisor: C. J. M. Zijlmans
Word Count: 17 657 16 June 2018
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Mrs. Catherine (Kitty) Zijlmans of the Arts and Culture Department at Leiden University for the consistent and attentive support she gave me in my research via her enlightening and insightful comments.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my family for supporting me in my studies and for which I express my utmost gratitude. Thanks to my mother for being able to support me even from afar, and my father for helping me in times of doubt.
Finally, I would also like to thank my co-board members, Pepijn and Chris, my friends Elisa, Alice, Alison, Natalie, Selena and so many others, for their academic and moral support and unconditional patience, by being always either physically or virtually present.
Table of Contents
Introduction 4
1. The Research on Censorship in China 7
Censorship 7
Censorship in China 9
1960s-1990s 12
Chinese “Harmonious Society” Policy (2004-2014) 13
Gillian Rose - Discourse Analysis I 15
2. No Pornography 19
No Pornography – Ren Hang – Censored 19
No Pornography – Liu Wei – Not Censored 24
Comparison 28
3. No Violence 29
No Violence – Zhang Huan – Censored 29
No Violence – He Yunchang – Not Censored 34
Comparison 38
4. No Political Criticism 39
No Political Criticism – Cao Fei – Censored 39
No Political Criticism – Zhang Dali – Not Censored 43
Comparison 46
Conclusion 47
Appendix – Images 50
Bibliography 57
Introduction
Artistic freedom of expression has always been a hot topic both in the West and in the East. It is enough to think about the controversy of Richard Serra against the US government regarding the removal of Tilted Arc (1981) from the Federal Plaza in New York City in 1989 or the shutting down, in 2017, of the controversial Guggenheim “Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World” exhibitions featuring abused animals. In the case of China, the issue becomes more complicated, because of what some perceive as the systematic censorship of everything that goes against the government’s narrative and criticizes it. But is this actually always the case? During my research, I encountered the book of a New York art journalist, Barbara Pollack, who for a ten-year long research focused on the Chinese contemporary art market. Here, she discussed two cases: the first is Wang Qingsong, a contemporary Chinese artist who, during the shooting of the video art work in 2006, Blood of the World (fig. 1) was arrested by the Chinese Police under the accusation of pornography. The second is Chi Peng, the first openly gay Chinese artist who reportedly was never censored, even though his statue 2005 I Fuck Me (fig. 2) (naked self-portraits having sexual intercourse) should be as controversial as Wang Qingsong’s, if not more. The author also reports of a conversation with former head of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Feng Yuan, who specifies the “Four Nos” which would, according to him, always cause the censoring of art in China: “no pornography, no violence, no attacking the government or making fun of political leaders.”1 From this, a question spontaneously arises: “Why do some artist get censored and others do not?”
As I will present below, in researching the theoretical frame of censorship in China, I discussed the two main government’s discourses on it: the Harmonious Society Policy (2004-2014) and the Forum on Literature and Art’s speech (2014-present). Even though I will be focusing my research on the time frame of 2004 until 2014, I think it is also important to introduce the current situation as a reaction to and also informative of the previous state of censorship policies in China. In fact, as journalist Xuechun Murong points out from the columns of the New York Times, after the 2014 speech, many artists “gladly”2 started a campaign of self-censorship with requirements, which were very different and “softer” than the previous policy’s. This, alongside the history of censorship in China suggests a series of discontinuities in the direction of censorship policies throughout Chinese modern history.
1 Barbara Pollack, The Wild Wild East: an American Art Critic’s Adventure in China, (Hong Kong: Timezone 8,
2010), 182
2 Xuechun Murong, “The Art of Xi Jinping,” The New York Times, November 21, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/opinion/murong-xuecun-china-the-art-of-xi-jinping.html.
Following from this, my research question is “Do censors’ and artists’ discourses from 2004 to 2014 suggest consistency and continuity in the enforcement of the Chinese art censorship or not?” This question’s answer will help define the state of art censorship in China in the above-mentioned period, but also its development from the previous decades and into the current state. In order to research this issue, I will have to answer two sub-questions: “What elements of the artists’ and officials’ discourses could have caused the censorship?” This question is aimed at understanding what triggers censorship in controversial cases. The second one is “What elements of the artists’ and officials’ discourses could have helped them in avoiding censorship?” This will be mostly focusing on artworks which could potentially be infringing the “Nos” but were not considered controversial, and I aim to understand why they were not so. In order to answer my research question, I will use the method and model drawn from visual analysis specialist, Gillan Rose for analysing the single case studies, the censored and the un-censored cases for each of the “Nos.” Through this method, I will be discussing the possible triggering factors for censoring art works and the elements that saved other artworks from censorship by searching into primary and secondary documents.
The case studies are censored and not censored artworks for each policy core concept exhibited in the period between 2004 and 2014. These artworks were selected after researches in various Chinese and international, art-related and not, magazines reporting on censored art in China. The selection was made based on the availability of the sources, given the recent time frame of the research, but also on the peculiarities and interesting backgrounds of the various artists. The “censored” case studies were thus selected based on the cases of censorship that hit the artist in the specific 2004-2014 time frame. The “non-censored” case studies were more difficult to select, and I was mostly interested in artists with controversial aspects in their careers and artworks. The case studies are solely regarding controversies (or the absence thereof) for artworks exhibited in Mainland China. The case studies are the following: Ren Hang’s Untitled (2012), Liu Wei’s It Looks Like a Landscape (2004) on the topic of pornography, Zhang Huan’s Giant no. 1-2-3 (2008), He Yunchang’s One Meter of Democracy (2010), for the topic of violence and Cao Fei’s RMB City: a Second Life City Planning (2007) and Zhang Dali’s Second History: Chairman Mao Reviews the Red Guards, 1966 (2005), regarding political criticism.
The sources for the research are mostly located online; this is a consequence of the recent time frame, which implies an overwhelming majority of online magazines, blogs, video interviews and website-based content. Furthermore, much of this virtual content derives from the websites of the artists and the galleries representing them. Besides this, some of this content is not signed by
any specific author, as often happens in the case of art galleries’ websites and private blogs. Therefore I listed these “authorless” contents under “other sources.”
The present research will be thus structured: I will begin by presenting the secondary sources, on the topic of censorship in general, and on the specific case of censorship in China. Then I will provide a detailed definition of what the used method will be and introduce the case studies divided into three chapters: the first chapter will deal with the cases of censored and uncensored artworks related to pornography, the second one on the case studies related to violence, and the third will present two artworks related to the topic of political attacks. I mean to point out that this research is not only aimed at discussing censorship in China per se, but also at giving a better understanding of mechanisms which are behind it and the case of Chinese censorship to non-specialists. Another core objective of this research is to encourage the shift of current state academia from its still Western-centric perspective towards a more flexible, transcultural perspective.
1. The Research on Censorship in China
In the present chapter I discuss my literary sources on the topics of censorship, censorship in China, the Forum on Art and Literature Speech, and the Harmonious Society Policy (henceforth HSP).
Censorship
I will start by defining the concept of censorship by discussing the perspective of the philosopher Michael Foucault. He addressed the topic of censorship, meant as part of a discourse on sexuality in Victorian society. He provides convincing arguments on the logic of censorship itself. His argument is that repression operates “as a sentence to disappear”, it states the non-existence of something existing, being that the object of censorship “had no right to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least manifestation – whether in acts or in words.”3 Then, he recognized three different forms of interdiction of the object of censorship: “affirming that such a thing is not permitted, preventing it from being said, denying that it exists.” He argued that the relation among these three forms of censorship is problematic. In fact, the not permitted, the unspeakable and the non-existent are related “in such a way that each is at the same time principle and effect of the others.”This logic of power in censorship is, according to him, “paradoxical”, being that there is a law that expresses “an injunction of nonexistence, nonmanifestation and silence.”4 Thus a censored artwork finds itself recognised in its existence only in a negative sense, being defined as an object that should not exist or be visible. Visibility is in fact a core element of censorship. Such a reading of the concept of censorship, then, implies an act of what one might call “direct” censorship. This direct censorship requires an active role of the state and society in the disappearance of the object of censorship.
A good case study for the topic of censorship is American artist Richard Serra’s defence of his work Tilted Arc (1981) against its removal, given in Des Moines, Iowa on 25 October 1989. His speech denounces “the government's commitment to private property over the interests of art or free expression.”5 In fact, Serra sued the US Government for the dismantlement and removal of his artwork from the Federal Plaza in New York City in 1989, deemed a waste of public money and
3 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: an Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random
House Inc., 1978), 5.
4 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 83.
Provoking the most negative and disruptive response to the site the sculpture dominated with an arrogant disregard for the mental well-being and physical convenience of the people.6
The Government, in response, declared that “an owner's '[p]roperty rights in a physical thing [allow him] to possess, use and dispose of it” and that these rights applied to Serra’s artwork. This meant that the artwork had become a federal property after he received the payment for the work. Serra lamented that the property rights were fully protected but the moral rights were not; in fact, the US did not join the Berne Copyright Convention until 1989. Even though the Berne Copyright Convention was adopted by US law right before the destruction of Tilted Arc, the congress refused part of it. Unsurprisingly, given the pressure of the lobbies, the excluded section was the moral rights protection. Therefore, this made the Convention virtually meaningless for cases such as Serra’s. The Convention’s refused moral rights provision, the Article 6bis, stated that
Independently of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author[s] shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action.7
The exclusion of this provision from US law was one of the main reasons why Serra lost his appeal. He saw this as a way of the government to set a precedent for demonstrating “its right to censor and destroy speech.”8 Serra also claimed he was victim of infringement of his freedom of speech, as stated in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. However, the governmental answer was that no real censorship was enforced in changing the guidelines of the General Service Administration9 (GSA) and its Art-in-Architecture Program.
The philosopher Anthony O’Hear reports on a similar situation. In fact, Senator Jesse Helms, in his provision for changing the guidelines of the National Endowment of Art (NEA) proposed to cut off public funding for art which depicts:
Sado-masochism, homo-eroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged sexual acts, or material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of adherents of a particular religion or non-religion.10
As Serra points out, in the cases of the GSA and the NEA, both political moves were coming from the same need to control the intellectual ownership of the artistic production. However, in the case of the NEA, journalist and critic Hilton Kramer claimed “there was no effort to prevent
6 Serra, “Art and Censorship”, 577. 7 Ibid, 576.
8 Ibid, 578.
9 The US institution managing federal property and the commissions for art in public spaces. 10Anthony O'Hear, “Art and Censorship”, Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 258 (Oct., 1991): 515.
publication or distribution of obscene material” but simply “barring the use of taxpayers' money for such projects.” 11
O’Hear, criticized the Helms Amendment (1989) of Senator Jesse Helms who aimed at modifying the NEA guidelines. O’Hear claims that Helms is “glossing over essential distinctions […] between the erotic and the pornographic, and between types of offence works of art might cause.”12 However, the author argues that Senator Helms is right in refusing direct in favour of indirect means of censorship, being that, while the former is “counter-productive”, the latter is efficient in downplaying the resonance of art deemed indecent. O’Hear concludes by arguing that the functioning of the “funding of the arts raises questions about public taste and decency.” Furthermore, he claims that the art critics themselves have a central role in defining what is moral and immoral in society.
It appears, then, that while Foucault is focusing on a kind of censorship that we could define “direct”, O’Hear’s analysis and Serra’s case study show a certain “indirect” approach on censorship. These different types of censorship can be found in the Chinese context, as represented by the most recent policies on the matter: Harmonious Society Policy (2004-2014) and the Forum on Literature and Art’s speech (2014). I will present them in the following sections along with a brief explanation of the previous decade’s situation in China and lastly defining the method and model, drawn from Gillian Rose, I will be using in analysing the artworks.
Censorship in China
Even though I will be focusing my research on the time frame of 2004 until 2014, I deem important to define today’s situation as informative of how Chinese censorship was in the previous decades. Therefore, I will be sketching the state of Chinese censorship from the Cultural Revolution period up to my research period: my research’s time frame will be discussed in a separate section. However, I will first start by presenting the current state of art censorship in China.
The current government’s discourse on censorship concerns the Forum on Literature and Art’s speech (2014). For its assessment, I used the analysis of the speech from China-based scholars, the Chinese literature specialist Wang Guilu, the philosopher Huang Jingjing and the art historian Shi Hong. The new course of the policy started in 2014, with Xi Jinping’s speech during the Forum on Art and Literature. This policy is part of the larger government plan for the “great
11 O'Hear, “Art and Censorship”, 581. 12 Ibid, 516.
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”13 In this perspective, art must have a moral message and “help the ideological and political education in the new era of centred development”; people-centred in the sense that ordinary people must be able “to understand and accept” it. At the same time, art should be avoiding “negative and obscure things” and “ethical confusion.”14 Secondly, the “Chineseness” is a key element of acceptable Chinese art, because:
Nowadays, some artists evade the Chinese symbols in artistic creation, deliberately undermining the Chinese identity and pursuing the so-called cultural integration. ‘China's national image of the arts’ absolutely cannot cripple China's cultural identity.15
On the same note, he also pointed out that this happens because “the international community wants to understand the emotions, customs and national characteristics of the Chinese people.” Finally, the speech promotes the fundamental role of the submission of art to politics even though “the party's leadership in literature and art does not mean that literature and art serve politics or is subordinate to politics.”16 At the same time, Xi also stated that
Party leadership is the fundamental guarantee for the development of socialist literature and art. The fundamental purpose of the party is to serve the people wholeheartedly, and the fundamental purpose of literature and art is also to create for the people. 17
This was interpreted by Huang Jingjing as a conception of art that “possesses certain attributes of a certain class and serves subordinate to the leading of the party.” 18 According to Xuechun Murong from the columns of the New York Times, after the 2014 speech, these arguments appear to have been more effective than the Harmonious Society Policy ones. In fact, he noticed, the Chinese media started advising artists to resist “unhealthy thoughts, low tastes and mistaken ideas”, identified with “Western theories.”19 They would be then promoting a campaign of
self-censorship with requirements that appear to be “softer”, thus hinting at an “indirect” form of censorship.
13 Guilu Wang, “When the Renaissance in New Age China will Arrive: An Interpretation of the Five Key Terms in
Xi Jinping’s Talk on Literature and Art,” Journal of Tianshui Normal University 35, no.4 (2015): 6. [trans. G.B.]
14 Shi Hong, “Study of the Speech of the General Secretary Xi Jinping in the Forum on Literature and Art: On
Establishing the China National Art Image,” Journal of Henan Institute of Education 34, no. 1 (2015): 50. [trans. G.B.]
15 Shi, “Xi Jinping in the Forum on Literature and Art,” 49.
16 Xi Jinping in Huang Jingjing, “Xi Jinping’s Thought of ’Literature, Art and Virtue’,” Journal of Ningxia Communist Party Institute 19, no. 4 (2017): 24. [trans. G.B.]
17 Huang, “Xi Jinping’s Thought,” 25. 18 Ibid, 25.
In fact, Jemimah Steinfield, editor of the Index on Censorship, complains of “the rise of self-censorship as artists ‘sell out’ to commercial interests.”20 This apparently supports O’Hear’s claims that this form of indirect censorship can be more effective than the “traditional” direct censorship. However, Steinfield also reports that art professionals in Beijing believe that the current Xi Jinping’s policy on art is “very authoritarian” and “very aggressive.” Some others, though, believe that censorship is becoming “less and less” nowadays.21 Furthermore, the art historian Joan Lebold Cohen reports that, being that the government itself is the biggest “patron” for contemporary artists, makes it easy for the officials to influence them with “guidelines that define what are acceptable subjects and styles while excluding others.”22 In fact, Barbara Pollack reports that the few private museums in China in the 2000s were usually lacking in curatorial practices and founded as part of real estate developmental projects.23 This implies that Chinese artists did not have many reliable
institutions that were not under government’s control on the Mainland. Therefore, they tended to comply with the governmental guidelines in order to have their works exhibited by those government-run institutions.
However, Steinfield reports that there are “subtle ways to circumvent censorship”, such as presenting a different version of the exhibition which will be actually displayed, or keeping art “considered too political” in secret rooms in the top galleries of China.24 On the matter of artistic freedom, Pollack reports on an interview with former head of NAMOC, Feng Yuan: he pointed out that “artists are most free in this Chinese generation.” Furthermore he defined the guidelines of the government by the four no-go topics “no pornography, no violence, no attacking the government or making fun of political leaders.”25
20 Jemimah Steinfield, “Art Attack,” Index on Censorship 45, no. 3 (2016): 14. 21 Steinfield, “Art Attack,”13.
22 Joan Lebold Cohen, “Art and Politics in China and Taiwan: Ai Weiwei and Wu Tien-chang”, Modern China Studies 18, no. 2, (2011): 88.
23 Barbara Pollack, The Wild Wild East: an American Art Critic’s Adventure in China, (Beijing: Timezone 8, 2010),
146.
24 Steinfield, “Art Attack,” 16.
1960s-1990s
Returning to the decades preceding the focus of my research, I will begin with the situation of censorship starting from the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Wu Hung, specialist on modern and contemporary Chinese art, studies this particular period of cultural, political and social turmoil. The period was defined in 1987 by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), following Mao Zedong’s death (1976), as having “brought catastrophe to the Party, the state and the whole people.”26 The Cultural Revolution saw Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, inviting artists to “create what is new and original: new in the sense it is socialist; original because it is proletarian.”27 This invitation, Wu Hung argues, concealed “art dictatorship through censorship, prohibition […] and the spirit of the revolution.” This means that Jiang Qing planned to use art as a way to support the then-unstable CCP and as a weapon against the bourgeoisie reactionaries by prohibiting non-socialist and non-proletarian art.
Wu Hung then points out that this tightly controlled cultural landscape caused the flourishing of coterie art clubs or unofficial art collectives such as the Wuming, meaning “no name” collective, and the Stars Group. These small groups of like-minded artists, were the alternative to official, communist propaganda art which organized “three major underground or unofficial art exhibitions” in 1974, 1979 and 1981.28 Art historian Aihe Wang claims that one of these underground art movements, Wuming, was only superficially apolitical. She claims it was actually a “rebellion at heart” against modernity, represented by the Cultural Revolution, which came “through aesthetic creation, through self-empowering and self-constructing creativity”:
It was apolitical in the sense that it excluded political content and avoided public political commentary, pursuing the private and rejecting the official doctrine that “art serves politics.” But this very rejection of the political in such a politicised context was itself a political action, giving apolitical art a political subtext. Ultimately, this art was a rebellion against the state’s ruthless destruction of the private sphere, against its invasion of family and engineering of the soul.29
The period of unofficial exhibitions following Mao’s death (1976) is regarded by Wu Hung as an “art spring” which abruptly ended in 1981, when the central government tried to eliminate this kind of unofficial art exhibitions. This, in turn, led to a gradual increase of self-awareness for many artists, who were subsequently collectively defined as the ’85 Art New Wave. This movement
26 Gerard Lemos, “Feeding the Hungry Ghosts,” Index on Censorship 42, no. 1 (2016): 98.
27 Wu Hung, Contemporary Chinese Art: A History (1970s-2000s), (London: Thames & Hudson, 2014), 20. 28 Aihe Wang, “Apolitical Art, Private Experience, and Alternative Subjectivity in China’s Cultural Revolution,” China Perspectives, no. 4 (2014): 27.
shows the rise of the independent modern artists dissociating from mainstream art, and which lasted until 1989. In that same year, the many newly published art magazines started treating the exhibitions of this art movement as of seminal importance. The issues of the magazines, perceived by the government more as calls to action rather than news, prompted officials to shut down some of the exhibitions of the movement. This relative artistic freedom was preserved until 1989, when the Beijing show “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition was shut down at the same day of the opening, officially because one of the exhibiting artists shot one of the artworks with a gun as a performance.30
Following Tiananmen’s demonstrations and repression in the same year, the government’s pressure on the art world started to rise again to the point that, as the art historian John Clark argues, “In China, as of 1995, the avant-garde has almost entirely been suppressed from public exhibition or has been forced abroad.”31 However, the growing international fame of Chinese contemporary art
was counterbalanced by the mistrust and open hostility of the Chinese establishment throughout the 1990s.32 In fact, many exhibitions were cancelled, and censorship increased to the point that certain art forms such as performance art, were considered too violent. They were thus altogether banned for a time in the 1990s. This situation brought many art specialists to begin asking the government for the “legalization” of the arts, meaning, giving to the artists and curators the “control over artistic production, display and dissemination.” This, according to them, so Wu argues, would only have happened once the art market had been “establishing a set of unambiguous rules” and therefore got its “economic foundation.”33 It is clear then that the decades preceding the timeframe of my research present a certain of degree of discontinuity, showing highs and lows in the levels of official pressure on the art world. The following section will focus on the situation in the period of my research.
Chinese “Harmonious Society” Policy (2004-2014)
Prior to defining its characteristics, I will briefly define what the state issued “Harmonious Society” itself would be. Sociologists Zhao Litao and Seng Lim Tin argue that the then People’s Republic of China’s Chairman, Hu Jintao, after coming to power in 2002, had the aim “to shift the focus on garner social support and consolidate political power.” The Harmonious Society Policy
30 Steinfield, “Art Attack,”14.
31 John Clark, Modern Asian art, (Honolulu, HI : University of Hawai'i Press, 1998), 290.
32 Wu Hung, Chinese Contemporary Art: Primary Documents (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 397. 33 Yi Ying, “The Modernist Dilemma and Our Options (1989),” in Chinese Contemporary Art: Primary Documents
(HSP), officialised in 2004, was part of this overarching design.34 In fact, the collection of research reports on the topic of HSP by Renmin University of China in its preface states what an harmonious society means:
Harmonious society means that multiple social subjects - individual, groups […] society itself, as well as the representative of the society, the State, establish a long lasting coordination of actions through the reciprocal process of taking actions that correspond to reactions, on the base of identification and common understanding.35
In other words, the preface states that a harmonious society coordinates the individuals, the social groups, society in general, and the government. This coordination is based on a common understanding that reciprocal actions correspond to reactions, and that therefore any action should be taken with caution lest upsetting the coordination. This reading of the harmonious society hints therefore at a focus on the individual as part of a system rather than on the single individual. Furthermore, the policy appears as a means to pacify the social tensions in society. In fact, back in the 2000s, social tensions were growing stronger because of the widening of the wealth gap among social groups, especially between urbanized and rural citizens. Besides this, the preface also points out that HSP is far removed from the Confucian idea of “spontaneous harmonious order of the traditional society.” It is a social policy that encourages citizens to “accommodation”, to respect the “hierarchy”, promoting their “submissive” attitude, with the aim of preserving the harmony of society.36
In discussing the role of art in the HSP, the Communist Party of China’s (henceforth CPC) Central Committee stated that:
Literature and art should carry forward the truth, benevolence and beauty, create and produce more outstanding works that cultivate sentiments and delight in body and mind and enrich the mass cultural life. Unremittingly ruling out ‘pornography’.37
This means quite explicitly that pornography, albeit loosely defined, is not considered as “enriching” as what the document defines as “beauty” and thus must be carried out. The Central committee also stated that they intended literature and art to
Carry forward the content that is conductive to social harmony in our traditional culture and form a code of ethics and a code of conduct in line with the traditional virtues and the spirit of the times.38
34 Litao Zhao and Lim Tin Seng, ed. China’s new Social Policy: Initiatives for an Harmonious Society, (Singapore:
World Scientific Publishing, 2010), 1.
35 Renmin University of China, Research Reports on China Social Development: Moving Towards a more Harmonious Society, (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2005), 3. [trans. G.B.]
36 Renmin University of China, Research Reports, 3.
37 Library of the CPC National Congress, “Decision of the CPC Central Committee and Central Committee on Some
Important Issues in Building a Harmonious Socialist Society,” October 10, 2006,
This perspective aims at excluding art that goes against this code of conduct, for example art considered too “violent”, or how others defined it, driven by the “decadence of morality.”39 Finally, the document also points out that “the socialist core value system is the foundation for building a harmonious culture”, the importance of stability, and that
Press and publications, radio, film, literature and art, social sciences, all must adhere to the correct guidance and ‘follow the lead’40 creating a good atmosphere of ideological and public opinion for the reform, development and stability.41
Both arguments seem to point out that the artistic practice should not be challenging power represented by the party itself as the “socialist core value system”, or the party leaders by undermining its stability.
In conclusion, we can clearly see that the pressure of the censors on the art world in China has been erratic and that the discontinuity moments are identifiable with seminal art movement’s events such as the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition at NAMOC. In fact, it was following these fundamental moments that the government either tightened or loosened its control on the art world. However, these discontinuities, and the possible ways to circumvent censorship, are what allowed a contemporary art landscape to flourish in China nonetheless. Furthermore it appears that the CPC Central Committee report supports Pollack’s statement on the nature of the “Nos”, in 2000’s China. Also a decisive shift is visible between the HSP, the previous policies, and the current policy following the Forum on Literature and Art’s speech (2014). In fact, whereas the former appears to conform to the idea of direct censorship, the latter seems to orient itself towards an indirect form of censorship. Following this review of the previous and current state of censorship in China, the next section will discuss in detail the model and method of my research.
Gillian Rose - Discourse Analysis I
The central source of methodological inspiration was Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies and more specifically what Rose defines as “Discourse Analysis I.” My choice fell on this specific method for its flexibility, but also for its concern with visual analysis in relation to visual or textual discourses. In my opinion, this method can best answer my research questions “What elements of the artists’ and officials’ discourses could have caused the censorship?” and “What elements of the artists’ and officials’ discourses could have helped them in avoiding censorship?” I intend to focus
38 Library of the CPC National Congress, “Decision of the CPC.” 39 Renmin University of China, Research Reports, 6.
40 Literally “singing along with the main theme” in the original Chinese version. 41 Library of the CPC National Congress, “Decision of the CPC.”
both on the visual elements of the artworks and on the context in which the artwork was produced, by whom, and for which audience. Given the complexity of the discourses around artworks, it is necessary to apply Rose’s model, which will be explained below. The model was a support to the discourse analysis I method in order to help in breaking down the sample in sections, thus making it easier to analyse and at the same time to point out the different layers of analysis a researcher can focus on.
Rose defines in her model “three sites at which the meanings of an image are made”: the site of the production of an image, the site of the image itself, which the site where it is seen by the audience.42 Alongside these three sites, Rose added a new one in the 2016 edition of her Visual Methodologies: she identified what she calls “the site of circulation”, the site linked to the physical or digital movement of a particular image.43 Each of these appears to have what Rose calls
“modalities” or aspects, which “can contribute to the critical understanding of images”. These modalities are technological (defining a visual technology), compositional, “the specific material qualities of an image or visual object”, and social, “the range of economic, social and political relations, institutions and practices that surround an image and through which it is seen and used.” 44 This structure might appear too rigid at first, but just as Rose points out, the separation between these modalities, and between the models is rarely clean-cut and tends to be blurred. Therefore a researcher should use these models and modalities as conceptual hubs around which organizing the information, avoiding thus what would be a chaotic report of data.
The method I will be using in my research is discourse analysis I, as outlined by Rose. Discourse analysis in general is defined as the two strains of visual analysis influenced by Foucault’s philosophy, which is founded on the concept of discourse as “a group of statements which structure the way a thing is thought [about], and the way we act on the basis of that thinking.”45 Discourse analysis also revolves around the concept of intertextuality, namely the fact that the meaning of a visual image is indissolubly linked with the meaning of other visual or textual images, in its analytical process. Furthermore, Rose aims to analyse what a discourse in itself is, by defining a discursive formation through the words of Foucault as “relations between parts of a discourse.”46 A core argument is that the power of discourses depends on the “assumption and
42 Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: an Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials 1947-1995,
(London: SAGE, 2007), 146.
43 Rose, Visual Methodologies (2016), 34. 44 Ibid. 13.
45 Rose, Visual Methodologies,142. Next to other visual analysis methods, Gillian distinguishes discourse analysis I
and II.
knowledge that their claim is true”, making therefore knowledge and power both founded on the claim of truthfulness, with a focus not on the “why” but on the “how.”47
In the specific case of discourse analysis I, according to Rose, the method is mostly concerned with the image itself and with their social modality, that is their social production and effects. The preliminary research implies to immerse oneself in a considerable amount of literature and progressively widening the range of one’s research. Once the sources have been familiarized with, it is important to start the analysis focusing on two specific points: the analysis of the discursive statements and the social context of those statements with a specific approach on the “rhetorical organization of the discourse.”48 This is how a particular kind of knowledge is produced by means of its discursive structure. The analysis then moves to a coding process in which recurrent themes and the connections or intertextuality among them are recognised. In fact, Rose quotes Foucault by saying that in the coding process our task is to examine:
Relations between statements (even if authors are unaware of them; even if the statements do not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each other’s existence); relations between group[s] of statements thus established (even if the groups do not concern the same, or even adjacent fields; even if they do not possess the same formal level; even if they are not in the locus of assignable exchanges); relations between statements and group of statements and events of a quite different kind (technical, economic, political, social).49
This specific quality of her reading of discourse analysis I, gives me freedom in aiming to connect elements apparently distant. Rose acknowledges that this has sometimes been regarded as a weakness of this research method, and this is why researchers sometimes tend to make an excessive amount of tenuous connections. According to her, limiting one’s intertextuality to a smaller set of stronger connections can solve the issue.50 It is also important to remember that each discourse presents sub-discourses, or “interpretative repertoires”51 which sometimes are conflicting and contradicting each other. This complexity is indeed another key-element of discourse analysis I, since a researcher can argue for radically different perspectives on the same topic, if adequately supported. Furthermore, she argues that discourse analysis I is naturally “reflexive”, which means that it “demands some sort of critical reflection on your own research practice”52: in fact, the task of the discourse analyst is to disturb easily accepted claims of objectivity and taken-for-granted meanings, tasks which in turn reflect on the author’s work itself. Rose argues then that it is
47 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 144-145. 48 Ibid, 156.
49 Ibid, 157. 50 Ibid, 169. 51 Ibid, 164. 52 Ibid, 168.
sufficient for the researcher to acknowledge his/her own biases in the choices made throughout the research and also to recognise what is the institution where one is researching and who is the intended audience.
In conclusion, in relation with my research I mean to study each one of the artworks separately on the four different sites of the production of meaning (production, the image itself, circulation, and the audience). Firstly, I will research the site of production by analysing the past of the artist, his previous visual and textual production, his connections with other artists and institutions to try to find possibly socially and politically controversial elements throughout the artist’s life which could have caused the reaction of the censors. Then, I will research the site of the image itself by trying to define the socially and politically controversial elements in the artworks’ themselves and in relation with other visual and textual sources. Furthermore, I will observe the site of circulation by analysing the institutions hosting the exhibitions where the artwork was featured and the ways in which the image circulated; hence, I will try to define whether this was part of the response of the officials to the artwork. Finally, I will focus on the site of the audience by analysing the response of the Chinese art world, through key factors such as the context, the critics and general public’s response, and the government’s response (or lack thereof) to the artwork itself. These four sites are obviously not reciprocally exclusive and I expect them to present internal connections among them and between the artworks for each of the “Nos.” These I mean to compare and contrast by the means of the analysis, in order to highlight the key discourses arguing for and against the artworks’ censorship. Thus, I will define which elements of the discourses might have triggered or not censorship. The following chapter will be focusing on the case studies of the first of the “Nos”, that is “no pornography.”
2. No Pornography
No Pornography – Ren Hang – Censored
Ren Hang (1987) was born in Changchun, Jilin province. He graduated in advertisement from the Communication University of China in 2010. In 2007 he decided to become a self-taught photographer, beginning shooting photos of his closest friends with a “point-and-shoot” camera.53 Defined as “equally celebrated and censored”54, he died aged 29 in 2017. His 2012 Untitled (fig. 3) was selected as case study because of the controversy on nudity surrounding the artist, but also because in 2012 he was already famous and the sources regarding his photographs of that period are plenty. From the production site, I will here search for previous controversies involving Ren and might indicate reasons for his successive censorship. The discourse could start from the fact that his art practice plainly shows naked bodies: this, in China, is considered pornography and along with nudity in the open were both formally illegal since 1949.55 Ren admitted this peculiarity of Chinese society:
People are more restricted by physical traditions and conservative attitudes. They think that nude is a kind of disrespect, and even a kind of downfall, because the nude photos show what people think should be private. People here are generally disgusted with nude photos. Hide the body in our culture.56
However, even while producing “softcore pornography” 57 his arguments appeared going in the exact opposite direction from controversy. He claimed that his art was not trying to “push boundaries”58 and that:
My pictures' politics have nothing to do with China. It's Chinese politics that wants to interfere with my art.59
53 Sue Wang, “Solo exhibition of Ren Hang Photography ‘Physical Borderline’ Opening August 2 at Three Shadows
+3 Gallery,” CAFA Art Info, July 24 2014. http://en.cafa.com.cn/solo-exhibition-of-ren-hang-photography-physical-borderline-opening-august-2-at-three-shadows-3-gallery.html.
54 Randian, “PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai Presents First Major Exhibition of Renowned Chinese Artist Ren Hang Since
His Death, and Honors the Masters of Color Photography,” July 25, 2017, http://www.randian- online.com/np_event/photofairsshanghaipresentsfirstmajorexhibitionofrenownedchineseartistren-hangsincehisdeathandhonorsthemastersofcolorphotography/.
55 Alexandra Genova, “Controversial Chinese Photographer Ren Hang Dies at 29,” Time, February 24, 2017, http://time.com/4682189/ren-hang-chinese-photographer-dies/
56 Ren Hang in Ding Zhenghai, “This Documentary About the Late Artist Ren Hang Made Us Understand
Depression,” Art-Ba-Ba, December 15, 2017, http://www.art-ba-ba.com/main/main.art?threadId=187877&forumId=8.[trans. G.B.]
57 Cathy Fan, “Provocative Chinese Photographer Ren Hang Dead at 30,” Artnet, February 24, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ren-hang-obituary-872024.
58 Genova, “Ren Hang Dies at 29.”
59 Ren Hang in Ashleigh Kane, “Ren Hang on Nature, Nudity and Censorship”, Dazed, March 10, 2015, http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/24031/1/ren-hang-on-nature-nudity-and-politics.
In a 2016 interview the artist said:
I have never been arrested by the police until a few days ago. I’ve always known this day would come, since I am shooting naked bodies. In China, this causes trouble sooner or later. I think now, in this environment, “artist” is a negative term instead of positive. So I don’t like to call myself an artist in Beijing or China. I just shoot photos.60
This is of interest because he points out he was never arrested before 2016. This obviously does not imply that he was not censored before, nor that he wasn’t at risk of being arrested before that time. 61 However, it hints at the fact that maybe the officials started to censor his art practice more harshly only in the last two years of his life, and therefore not in the period of my research. The implication is that therefore the officials in charge of censorship did find his art controversial but were only prompted to exercise their powers towards the end of the HSP period. This could also mean that his early art was not considered as controversial as the later production, or that maybe his figure got too renown, becoming more of a perceived threat by the Chinese Government.
Nonetheless, some critics, especially Western ones, read his art as a rebellious act against censorship “accompanied by a self-celebrating satisfaction that ‘we are in the liberal part of the world’.”62 Xiang Zairong, PHD Researcher at Potsdam University in Germany argues that:
In interviews, Ren Hang sensed the danger of reducing his own work to a cheap political dissidence that would be simplistically received and celebrated out of context. When asked about working with nudity in public space, he always added, “like everywhere else”, after critiquing China’s censorship or conservatism. He did not feel completely free to shoot nude models in New York’s Central Park, capital of the “free world.”63
In fact, in a 2012 interview Ren reports that his exhibition in the liberal Sweden was partially self-censored because of the decorum of the cultural institution, which decided to take a conservative stance and not letting him and the curator show photos of breasts.64 In the same
interview, he argued that he was distrustful of Western as much as Chinese media, because they both “aggressively” give their own angle of the stories on China. But Xiang goes even further and claims that most of the critics completely missed the central argument of Ren’s art, which is: “I
60 Ren Hang in Alternative Beijing, “Getting Close to Ren Hang,” accessed May 21, 2018, http://www.alternativebeijing.com/getting-close-to-ren-hang/.
61 Kane, “Ren Hang on Nature.”
62 Xiang Zairong, “How to Unhear and Unsee: Reflections on Ren Hang’s Photography,” OpenDemocracy, May 5,
2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/xiang-zairong/how-to-unhear-and-unsee-reflections-on-ren-hang-s-photography.
63 Xiang, “How to Unhear and Unsee.”
64 N. E. O. Bernhardsson, “In conversation with Ren Hang (2012),” Vantage, January 30, 2012, https://medium.com/vantage/ren-hang-2012-eccbf96b136c.
don’t want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots with no cocks or pussies.”65 This is according to Xiang an exemplary refusal of the colonial-old narrative of Chinese people as asexual working machines. Thus, the artist showed that he did not care for being seen as a controversial dissident artist, as many Western sources tended to depict Ren, because he did not feel like one. In fact, he was sometimes criticized for being not socially-engaged enough.66 However, other critics believe that his artworks are representing victims not only of the government (not necessarily Chinese), but also of the corporate system and the consumerist society.67
Another possible controversial aspect of Ren is his sexual orientation. In fact, China is known for its trend towards discriminatory behaviour towards LGBTQ.68 Therefore, one should take this aspect of his life in account when defining controversies around his figure. Si Han, curator, reports that the artist was openly speaking about his homosexuality but he just didn’t like to label himself as such.69 One exhibition in particular “Secret Love” was completely themed on sexual orientation
and gender: however, the artist himself seemed to prefer to avoid focusing only on this aspect of his art.70
In conclusion, controversial elements are evident in his artistic production. In fact, Ren Hang’s photographs, considered as “soft porn” and as social activism by the discourses of some art critics and officials, prompted the censors to act many times to partially or completely censor his exhibitions and his website on which he would upload the latest photographs. However, the artist presented his counter discourse by refusing the framing which sees his artistic production as a defiance to censorship per se and claiming many times his complete disinterest in the matter of politics, since, he said “I just shoot photos.” Furthermore, the homosexuality of the artist could be an element in the censorship cases, but not necessarily.
However, since most of Ren’s photos are untitled and it is virtually impossible to understand which artworks exactly were censored and which ones were not, I will also extend the discourse to his art practice as a whole in 2012. In fact, as previously mentioned, in 2012, the year in which the photograph I selected as a case study, Untitled, was shot, his website was, once again, censored. This could mean that the artwork itself, or at least the series of artworks from 2012 were considered controversial. Therefore, this counts as a form of censorship for this Untitled 2012 series.
65 Ren Hang in Xiang, “How to Unhear and Unsee.” 66 Bernhardsson, “In conversation with Ren Hang (2012).” 67 Ibid.
68 Equaldex, “LGBT Rights in China,” Accessed May 11, 2018, http://www.equaldex.com/region/china. 69 Si Han, “Ren Hang,” World Culture Museums/Världskulturmuseerna,
http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/exhibitions/secret-love/artists/ren-hang/.
The photograph shows a bent over person with the buttocks in the air. Some pubic hair is showing; in between the butt cheeks, a bed of whipped cream is surmounted by six red cherries. The background is a white wall. The subject matter is obviously controversial, showing a naked body and what Chinnie Ding, art journalist, defined as a “fetishy feel.”71 Other critics, such as Cathy Fan, saw this artistic production as both casual and provocative, “hinting at the erotic and playful energies” 72 between Ren and his models. Art journalist Sue Wang agrees and argues that his photographs capture “the exaggerated, absurd, and extreme” and “challenge visual and psychological norms.” 73
Other art critics believe that Ren’s artworks can, after all, be read as a social critique: Ding Zhenghai, art blogger, believes that Ren’s art is important because it makes the viewer aware of the existence of different people and different fetishes. He also linked Ren Hang’s art practice to Xie Hailong’s Big Eyes (fig. 5), reflecting poor education in rural China, Wu Jialin’s Yanli people of Yunnan (fig. 6), portraying ethnically different Chinese people and Lu Nan’s Psychiatric Hospital (fig. 7) showing living conditions in psychiatric wards in China.74 These series have in common a certain social activism in favour of a minority or a left-behind social group that implies an indirect criticism on Chinese society as a whole. Therefore it appears that this critic claims a certain social activism in Ren’s work, which the artist himself refuses. Nonetheless, this discourse on his work could be taken into account as one of the reasons for which the website was censored in 2012 and some of his exhibitions were subsequently closed or partially censored.
In this section, I will define where the images from the 2012 Untitled series were shown. This obviously involves the physical exhibiting of his 2012 artworks but also other channels such as photo books and his website. In fact, in a 2012 interview Ren reports that he was in the process of publishing a self-produced photo book and was starting to rebuild his website after the government shut it down.75 These can all be considered sites of the circulation of Ren’s photographs.
Xiang reports that, contrarily to what one would expect, Ren had at least an exhibition each year between 2009 and 2016 hosted in China. This does not imply that the exhibitions were not at least partially censored by the authorities, since the artist reports that before the openings the authorities would sometimes confiscate his works. 76 However, between 2012 and 2014 Ren was featured, according to his CV, in over nineteen either solo or group exhibitions on the Chinese
71 Chinnie Ding, “Ren Hang,” Artforum, accessed May 21, 2018, https://www.artforum.com/picks/ren-hang-51059. 72 Fan, “Provocative Chinese Photographer.”
73 Wang, “Solo exhibition of Ren Hang.”
74 Ding Zhenhai, “Ren Hang Made Us Understand Depression.” 75 Bernhardsson, “In conversation with Ren Hang (2012).”
76 Hannah Ongley, “Ren Hang’s New Photo Exhibit is a Punk Protest to Censorship,” Vice, June 15, 2016, https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/43vebj/ren-hangs-new-photo-exhibit-is-a-punk-protest-to-censorship.
Mainland. Besides participating in exhibitions in art spaces, he took also part in various biennales and international art exhibitions in China, hinting at the relative freedom to exhibit he had. Nonetheless, it is not possible to tell with certainty which artworks were admitted during the exhibitions and which ones were not. This gives room to the idea that Ren was indeed allowed to exhibit his artworks in China during the period of my research time frame, but it doesn’t reveal much of the content of the exhibitions themselves.
A further channel for the circulation of Ren’s photographs was the publication of photo books. In 2012 he was trying to unofficially publish his first book in Mainland China, although this was illegal, both because self-publishing in China is an illegal practice and because the content of his book was considered as “spreading pornographic material.”77 Therefore he had to act illegally with
a private printer in the Hebei province.78 This implies that, albeit indirectly, being labelled as
pornography in China hindered Ren’s images circulation in the format of a book. Moreover, another channel for the spreading of his photographs is Ren’s website: the artist reported in 2012 that it was subject to continuous crackdowns, apparently because of the nudity there featured.79 Each time this happened he immediately started rebuilding it from scratch.80 Nonetheless he “had an influence on China’s online community”81, given the thousands of users following his blog and website to watch his photographs and read his poetry. The obstinacy of the censors to shut down his website could be read through the lens of the official discourse of the wide reach that images have on the internet and the problematic consequences of the online presence of such a controversial artist.
From the above, one can see how the circulation of Ren’s artworks was actively hindered on several levels: the physical exhibition of the works, and the publication on both paper and digital formats.
In a 2016 interview, when asked how people in China reacted to his work, Ren answered: I don’t know what most people think [of my work]. What I know is the feedback
I get from my shows. Sometimes I am told on the day of the show that I can’t exhibit a [certain] photo. When an image is considered “porn” and I can’t print it out, I just exhibit a frame. Sometimes the police comes on the third day of a show and call[s] it off. Or I go to pick up a photo after a month of a show being up, and find out it is covered in spit.82
77 Bernhardsson, “In conversation with Ren Hang (2012).” 78 Si, “Ren Hang.”
79 Bernhardsson, “In conversation with Ren Hang (2012).” 80 Si, “Ren Hang.”
81 Pan Yiling, “Remembering Ren Hang: How the Late Photographer Left His Mark on Art and Luxury in China,” Jing Daily, March 9, 2017, https://jingdaily.com/remembering-ren-hang-art-and-luxury-in-china/.
However, part of the public seemed to enjoy his art, which became even part of advertisement campaigns for Gucci and GQ China, getting into the mainstream visual imagery of Chinese society.83 Therefore, one can see that the audience response to Ren’s work is problematic, facing censorship in the public sphere, but also appreciation from a part of the public.
No Pornography – Liu Wei – Not Censored
Liu Wei (1972) was born in Beijing and graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts of Hangzhou in 1996.84 Coming of age in the period of 1989 Tiananmen movements, he was defined by curator Gunnar B. Kvaran as part of the first generation of “post-Mao children.”85 I
selected 2004 It Looks Like a Landscape (fig. 4) as a case study because of the interesting artist’s background but also because of the contradiction between the context of the artwork’s production and the public reaction to it. Liu, graduated from the National Academy and started collaborating with a group of like-minded artists which would become prominent throughout the decade: the Post-Sense Sensibility who, according to curator Pauline J. Yao, “embraced irrationality, improvisation, and intuition and strove to create extreme experiences.”The group consisted, as most prominent members of Liu, Sun Yuan, Peng Yu, Yang Fudong, and Qiu Zhijie as driving force of the group and curator. Yao claims that the ideological background of the group was anti-ideology and anti-art, and that the members shared “distaste for the political idealism and rational leanings of their predecessors.”86 In fact, Liu stated that whereas the previous generation of artists born in the 1960s still had a connection to politics and purpose, “we thought art should be free, it should be whatever you want it to be—it can be disconnected from politics and everything.”These elements were all clearly visible in the first exhibition of the group named “Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion”87 in 1999. Located in a private basement, it exhibited “extreme”shocking art artworks including a dead foetus’ corpse on an ice bed, a live goose glued to the floor and nudity.88 Liu’s contribution included 1998 multichannel video Hard to Restrain (fig. 8) featuring naked
83 Tessa Wong, “Ren Hang: Death of China’s Hotshot Erotic Photographer,” BBC News, February 28, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39100128.
84 Randian, “Radical Materiality Mary Corse, Liu Wei, Nari Ward,” June 28, 2016, http://www.randian-online.com/np_event/radical-materiality-mary-corse-liu-wei-nari-ward/.
85 Andrew Russeth, “‘I Wanted to Get Rid of Style’: Liu Wei on His Show at Lehmann Maupin,” The Observer,
May 3, 2013, http://observer.com/2013/03/i-wanted-to-get-rid-of-style-liu-wei-on-his-show-at-lehmann-maupin/.
86 Pauline J. Yao, “Dark Matter,” Artforum, January, 2012, http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liu-wei/press/1520.
87 Barbara Pollack, “Liu Wei: China’s Trickster Mixer-Upper,” Artnews, February 26, 2014, http://www.artnews.com/2014/02/26/liu-wei-chinas-trickster-mixer-upper-artist/.
actors scurrying like insects under a spotlight. The police shut down some of the Post-Sense Sensibility group exhibitions throughout the group’s life.89
In 2003 international curator Hou Hanru invited Liu to participate in the Fifth Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition, “The Fifth System: Public Art in the Age of Post-planning”, an official, government-sponsored event. Liu’s proposal was rejected but this was a turning point for him: the refusal of his project’s proposal made him more aware of the capacity of the system to “thwart” his art practice. It is interesting that such a potentially controversial artist, given the discourse built around his previous art practice, was invited to participate in an officially sanctioned art event. Moreover, the artist, discussing his art practice not only says to be inspired by “what causes problems”90, but also deconstructing assumptions on art in a “humorous and satiric”91 way.
The artist argued, “the political in art does not need to be presented as politics,” creating therefore a discourse that keeps a certain distance from the political debate but preserving an “acute criticism and cynicism against the reality of present-day China.”92 In fact, as curator Philip Tinari points out, Liu defines himself in an “outcast” position, not through the envisioning of a rebellious artistic perspective but as the most meaningful way of political engagement, which, eventually, requires reaching a compromise.93
Given these circumstances it is easy to define the potentially controversial elements in his art practice preceding the production of my case study (2004): the discourse around his profile is one of a dissident artist part of a highly anti-systemic artists’ group “at the centre of controversy.”94 Furthermore, he broke the rule on nudity and had first-hand experience with censorship. And yet, he participated in government-sponsored events in 2003 and, after recognizing the power of the government to hinder his artistic projects, defined a personal “in between” position of the outcast, not rebellious but politically active and inclined to compromise. This did not mean that his artwork became uncritical; in fact he still maintained a certain social and political engagement. I think, that this ability to compromise in his discourse is one of the core elements that made his art practice not excessively controversial in the eyes of Chinese censors. Furthermore, I believe that there was a certain influence exerted by Hou in inviting Liu for the first time to an official art venue that helped him becoming less threatening in the eyes of the officials.
89 Widewalls, “Liu Wei: Artist’s Profile.”
90 Liu Wei in Jerome Sans, “Interview with Jerome Sans,” Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 2009, http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liu-wei/press/1425.
91 Widewalls, “Liu Wei: Artist’s Profile.”
92 Sue Wang, “PLATEAU presents Liu Wei’s Solo Exhibition in Seoul,” CAFA Art Info, April 28, 2016, http://en.cafa.com.cn/plateau-presents-liu-weis-solo-exhibition-in-seoul.html.
93 Philip Tinari, “Rigid Compromises: Liu Wei’S Art and Hard Reason,” Lehmann Maupin Gallery, September
2004, http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liu-wei/press/1416.
The political engagement intrinsic to the role of outsider is clearly recognisable in discourse around the work I chose as a case study It Looks Like a Landscape, a digital chromogenic print from 2004. The creation of this artwork was prompted by the refusal of Liu Wei’s project for the 2004 Shanghai Biennale. As Tinari reports:
Liu Wei wished to install a train car, rotating axially on a giant turntable, identical to the ones that are used to move train cars from track of one gauge to another when they cross the border between one system and another. It was to be a freight car, not a passenger car. And inside the container atop the chassis was to be hidden an entire miniature exhibition thus “smuggled” into the official biennale. 95
The miniature exhibition would have been featuring some of the artists that had been excluded by the organizers of the Biennale. Liu, received a last-minute conditional refusal of the Biennale organizers and decided, once again, to compromise in his own way: not to alter the project, but to drop it altogether. Instead, he chose to present It Looks like a Landscape, a mural-sized photograph of what appears to be a traditional Chinese landscape evocative of the Yangshuo river’s views. However, under a closer inspection it reveals to be a collection of twelve buttocks of people bending over, some of which hairy, rising amid the mist. Later, Liu declared that ‘'It was a rebellion against the system. The butt was a replacement for swearing.”96 Its subversive discourse, as for Ren Hang’s, stood for the fact that, as Wu Hung puts it “unlike classical Western art, ancient Chinese painting offers no space for the nude: unclothed figures appear only in crude, pornographic drawings.”97
However, even though the artwork went down in history as result of a caprice, the subversive act has been seen by Tinari as a “witty”98 interplay between Chinese traditional culture and the
Chinese culture as imagined by Western observers. Kvaran, instead, believes that the use of naked bodies to create a landscape is a “conscious nod to John Coplans”99 who in fact used identity-less
naked bodies to create aesthetic compositions. Others claim that the photograph is simply a mockery of the arbitrary institutional standards of the Biennale itself.100
95 Tinari, “Rigid Compromises.”
96 Liu Wei in Lee, “Art Against the System,” 16. 97 Wu, A History (1970s-2000s), 348.
98 Tinari, “Rigid Compromises.”
99 Gunnar B. Kvaran, “Liu Wei: The Creative Gesture,” Lehmann Maupin Gallery, March 2012, http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liu-wei/press/1419.
100 West Kowloon Cultural District, “M+ Sigg Collection Exhibition Highlights: It Looks Like a Landscape,”
accessed May 21, 2018, https://www.westkowloon.hk/en/siggcollection/highlights-1384/it-looks-like-a-landscape-liu-wei-born-1972-beijing-2004-1/page/15.
