Shen Yuan, Yin Xiuzhen, Kan Xuan, Cao Fei-- Four
Woman Artists in the Chinese Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007.
The rapid development of contemporary art in China and
its suddenly major impact on the international art scene have been as
spectacular and significant as the modernisation and global emergence of China
itself. First-tier Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are
increasingly attracting the attention of the international art world, while
Chinese artists are now an indispensable presence at major international events
such as the Venice Biennale. The presence of the Chinese Pavilion in the
Biennale, despite its brief history, has become a necessary element of this
event, while its influences on the Chinese art community are equally
significant. A project for a national pavilion in the Biennale should be a relevant
reflection on the current tendency of the development of the art world in a
given nation. More importantly, it should be able to answer to some of the most
urgent questions raised from the ongoing reality of that particular society, or
more precisely, the negotiation between individual creators and their social
context, offering insightful visions. At the same time, a national pavilion is
also a particular, specific but open platform to contribute to the enrichment of
the global art scene itself. The artists present should be able to carry out
relevant projects to implement such a dynamic but often complex, mission.
After examining carefully the general situation of today's Chinese art scene
and the specific context of the 52nd Biennale, we would like to focus the
Chinese Pavilion on the work of four female artists, a project which seems to us
both urgent and valuable in both the Chinese and international contexts. They
are Shen Yuan, Yin Xiuzhen, Kan Xuan and Cao Fei. Ranging in age from their late
20s to their mid-40s, and with highly personal, original and diverse languages,
they exemplify in particular ways the evolution of the engaging relationship
between female artists and the Chinese art scene, and speak to the claims of
women on the rapidly changing Chinese society of the last two decades.
While it is true that Chinese contemporary art, like contemporary Chinese
society and culture more generally, has been going through a booming
development. However, both inside and outside of China, the passion for Chinese
contemporary art often overlooks the particular importance of female artists as
well as intellectual and social issues related to the situation of women's
particular roles in China's contemporary life. China's modernisation process has
rested upon a highly masculine vision of the world: rational, linear, speedy,
vertical, progressive, efficient and utopian. Typical images can be found in the
spectacular urban expansion full of skyscrapers and hyper-scale infrastructures
of transportation. More seriously, the main social organisation remains
essentially male-centric. And this tendency has been increasingly enforced by a
reality that systematically pursues material growth. The contemporary art scene
in China today embodies a similar vision celebrating the spectacular, the
sublime and the powerful. This leads not only to a clearly visible economic and
cultural "progress," but also causes some problematic concerns regarding social
harmony. In terms of cultural and artistic production, the obsession with
quantity and material efficiency considerably reduce the space for real
imagination and poetry, as well as psychological life. It is no surprise that
the presence of female artists, with their particular modalities of imagination,
expression and action, is largely marginalised. However, without simply falling
into the cliché of feminism, a significant number of female artists have been
creating some of the most sensitive, profound and innovative works, although
they are often discreet and somehow marginalised. In fact their work often shows
the most authentically creative and spiritually liberated aspects of the Chinese
art scene today. This distant position and intellectual freedom allow them to
acquire the most independent individuality and adopt the most original
strategies of negotiation with the outside world.
