Editor’s Note

Yishu has an extensive history, since 2003, of reviewing the work of artists of Chinese descent at the Venice Biennale. In this issue, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker examines the exhibition at the China Pavilion, which brought together individual works as well as collaborations between folk artists and contemporary artists. She probes the challenges of attempting to convey traditional Chinese communal means of creativity to such a diverse audience as that attending Venice. Ornella De Nigris engages in conversation with Tang Nannan, one of the artists who participated in the China Pavilion. Tang Nannan delves into his personal experience of partaking in these collaborations while maintaining his belief that the meaning of his work should be transmitted in the most direct way possible. Yeewan Koon discusses the work of Samson Young, who represents Hong Kong at the Biennale, and who has created multifaceted installations addressing the dubious impact of “charity songs” meant to raise money for various disasters. She notes how the artist’s work, in contradistinction to that of Tang Nannan, is contingent upon its complexity.

Alexandra Grimmer speaks with Liang Yue about her video projects and the role that intuition and the poetic play in evoking feelings of familiarity and memory through works that focus on the discreet or often-overlooked details of life. Stephanie Bailey converses with Wong Ping about his approach to psychosexual narratives and how animation provides him with a sense of freedom that photographic film does not. Vivian Kuang Sheng explores three important installations by Yin Xiuzhen that involve the direct interaction of viewers and the uncertain or disquieting experiences that this interaction can entail. Through the highly staged photographs of Fang Tong, Dong Yue Su deliberates on the immigrant experience of mainland Chinese who have relocated to other parts of the world, in this case Canada.

Yishu 82 concludes with an in-depth look at the April Photography Society, active during the late 1970s, which, as Adam Monohon proposes, has not been given its due credit for what he considers the first important photographic movement to emerge following the Cultural Revolution.

Image (top): Wong Ping, music video still from “Under the Lion Crotch,” by No One Remains Virgin, 4 mins., 38 secs. Courtesy of the artist, FRUITPUNCH, and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong.

Keith Wallace