Editor’s Note
In its seventeen years of publishing, Yishu has frequently presented special features on women artists. Yishu 87 continues this legacy and offers texts by Eliza Gluckman and Phoebe Wong, who employ a conversational methodology in their research on the lives of women artists in Hong Kong; Margarida Saraiva, who considers how museums in Macao and elsewhere can, through their collections and exhibitions, play an inventive and decisive curatorial role in representing women artists; and Quincy Ngan and Lingling Amy Yao, who each discuss mainland Chinese women artists, Xiang Jing and Cui Xiuwen, respectively, whom they identify as having taken bold, even controversial, directions in their work. Feminism is an issue that arises in each of these texts, but, at the same time, the authors recognize it is a conflicted discourse that is yet to be resolved relative to art history and in an Asian context.
Mai Mang turns his attention to a particular series of ink paintings by Zhang Hongtu that blurs the binaries of East and West. Zhang Hongtu reimagines Vincent van Gogh’s self-portraits rendered in the style of Bodhidarma, creating a surprising hybrid through combining two different cultures and epochs; we discover that the conception of this work is not without its logic. Hybridity is further elaborated in Alexandra Grimmer’s conversation with filmmaker Sun Xun, who reflects upon his in-process animated feature film and his distinct approach of juxtaposing cultural, geographical, and political references from a disparate variety of countries and historical eras to produce a narrative alive with unexpected complexities. On a different note, Romain Maitra explores the second iteration of Gallery Weekend Beijing and its endeavour to create a distinct event for contemporary art in Beijing by promoting a celebratory but profitable format that distinguishes it from the standard biennial or art fair.
Image (top): Xiang Jing, Are a Hundred Playing You? Or Only One? (detail), 2007, acrylic on fiberglass, 240 x 140 x 240 cm. Courtesy of Xiang Jing Studio, Beijing.
Keith Wallace
