Editor’s Note
Mainland China’s museum and gallery scene has evolved rapidly over the past decade. Yishu 84 opens with two essays examining Shanghai, a city that is taking strategic approaches in its recognition of culture as an essential component of a vibrant urban experience. John Clark focuses on the influence the Shanghai Biennale has had on galleries and museums, and Xing Zhao looks into the phenomenon of the private museums that have recently populated Shanghai’s West Bund district, both writers taking note within this growth of the challenges faced by the art professionals who must fulfill the programs. These two essays build upon those presented in earlier issues of Yishu by Biljana Ciric and Julie Chun and exemplify our aim to encourage ongoing discourses.
Next we present conversations Biljana Ciric carried out with six Chinese artists who are included in the collection of KADIST, an organization based in Paris and San Francisco that believes in the freedom of creativity. The artists Ciric selected are for the most part relatively young, highly experimental, and make work that operates outside of the art mainstream. Julia Gwendolyn Schneider and Helen Wong discuss a Hong Kong-based artists, Pak Sheung Chuen and Tsang Kin Wah, respectively, who also take non-conservative approaches to their artwork. What is distinct is their mix of the poetical with the political, which results in a disconcerting and provocative aesthetic experience.
Denisa Tomkova examines Zhu Fadong’s Identity Cards project, which began in 1998, and Chan Shing Kwan focuses on Zhang Huan’s seminal 1994 performance 12m2. These two artists, whose work in the 1990s reflected their discontent with the implications of mainland China’s urban renewal for migrant workers and the disenfranchised, explore the idea of what constitutes full participation as a citizen.
Our cover features a portrait of artist Geng Jianyi in recognition of his recent passing in December 2017. Geng Jianyi was an uncompromising artist who made an indispensable contribution to contemporary Chinese art beginning with his first exhibition in the mid-1980s. He was recipient of the 2017 Art Award of China as Artist of the Year.
Image (top): Pak Sheung Chuen, display tables with court drawings and archival materials; on the wall: The Seals, 2017, acrylic paint on wall, exhibition view of Chris Evans and Pak Sheung Chuen: Two Exhibitions, Para Site, Hong Kong. Courtesy of the artist and Para Site, Hong Kong.
Keith Wallace
