Panel 11: Chinese Art

Chair: Jincheng Liu, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Xiyun Wu, University of Notre Dame, “The Personal is Communal: Passive Bodies in Ma Liuming’s Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch I (1994) and Zhang Huan’s 65 Kilograms (1994)”

In Meiling Cheng’s book Beijing Xingwei, she summarizes xingwei art in Beijing's East Village, a low-rent neighborhood in the northeastern part of the city, as “an individual artist-centered, technically universal, but culturally specific art form of embodiments.” Indeed, artists like Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan, recognized as the auteurs of performance art (xingwei yishu) in China, are often canonized for their iconic styles embodied in their use of corporeal bodies: assuming a gender-fluid persona named Fen-Ma Liuming and depicting extreme violence in one's own body. The corporeal center of their practices, as described by Cheng, echoes and subtly subverts the 1970s Anglo-American feminist maxim: “the personal is the political.”

However, the political implications of Ma and Zhang’s performance work is rarely hinted at through their formal qualities, rather, these implications are often generated by analyzing the very act and medium of performance art. Therefore, in order to challenge the activist discourse that surrounds Ma and Zhang's practices, this paper foregrounds the passive and vulnerable use of bodies in Ma Liuming’s Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch I (1994) and Zhang Huan’s 65 Kilograms (1994). I argue that both artists’ passive portrayal of bodies draws relationships with the viewers and the site. Instead of Meiling Cheng’s framing of “the personal is the political,” I propose that both artists perform to a state where “the personal is communal.” Through their performances, both artists prompt the community to experience an ongoing process of configuration through sensual engagements, thus complicating fixations on the notion of individuality in the genre of performance art in China.

Performance art, often translated to xingwei yishu in Chinese, occupies a distinct position in discussions of Chinese contemporary art. It frequently emerges as a banned genre in exhibitions and is known for its “bloody, violent, or erotic” qualities, which later evolved into stereotypes of contemporary Chinese art. However, performance art in China is also distinctive due to the broadness of the term. As Meiling Cheng articulates, “xingwei yishu may draw from all possible behaviors ready-made in the quotidian world and reframe them as art.” This expansive nature of the term xingwei has led to potential oversimplification of the medium, reducing it to mere ideogram-like “behaviors,” such as political resistance. Scholar Hentyle Yapp further highlights issues with the term xingwei, including its tendency to obscure analytic tools that may be applicable in biaoyan, another translated term for performance, due to the antitheatrical stance inherent in xingwei.

This paper aims to reframe the portrayal of violence in performance art in contemporary China through an exploration of Zhang Huan’s 65kg (1994) and Suan Yuan and Peng Yu’s Linked Body (2000). Employing frameworks of the Abject and through analyzing the medium, materiality, and sites, I argue that both performances foreground their abhorrent violence as spaces for contemplation and meditation on the state of living and self-reflexive critiques of art itself. This analysis challenges existing interpretations of the works, which often perceive their violence solely as linear forms of resistance against the state. Instead, the violence in these works becomes discursive sites that engage and even “trap” the viewers, shedding light on a relational perspective on the act of viewing.

Shuya Ye, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, “Regional and Cultural Dialogues in Modern Asian Art: Xu Beihong and Chang Xiufeng’s Artistic Exploration in India”

In the early 20th century, China and India both faced the formidable challenge of resisting colonialism. During this period, Pan-Asianism emerged and gained popularity as a response to the incursion of Western culture. Rabindranath Tagore, a prominent supporter of this ideology, played a significant role in fostering cultural exchanges between China and India. At the end of 1939, Tagore invited Xu Beihong, a renowned Chinese artist, to India. Following Xu’s visit, Chang Xiufeng was recommended to study in India in 1947. He was the first among many Chinese artists who went abroad to study art, choosing India over Europe. There, he learned traditional Indian art, blending it with Chinese art to explore modern pathways for Chinese painting.

From Xu Beihong’s art exhibition in India in 1940 to Chang Xiufeng’s study in India in 1947, this period witnessed significant changes in both international circumstances and artistic perceptions. Amidst the Sino-Indian conflicts, Chang was imprisoned in India, and upon his return to China, he was wrongly accused of being an Indian spy during the Cultural Revolution. Xu and Chang’s works were received differently due to the contrasting political environments, with one representing contemporary Chinese art and the other remaining unknown. This paper aims to explore how, under the influence of Tagore’s Pan-Asianism, Xu Beihong and Chang Xiufeng presented their understanding and artistic expressions of this ideology in different ways. Accompanying this is the transformation of the era, the establishment of modern nation-states, and the consequent dissolution of Pan-Asianism.