a little history:
During the Cold War era following World War II, China was a closed society. The Cultural Revolution (1966–76) sought to destroy the artistic and intellectual heritage of centuries of imperial rule. Mao Zedong, the founder and longtime leader of the People's Republic of China, died in 1976. By 1980 his successor, Deng Xiaoping, had begun to pull back the curtain. However, China was still largely rural and poor, the Communist Party was omnipotent, censorship was severe, and artists remained under suspicion. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the uprising in Beijing's Tiananmen Square the same year caused further, more radical, change. Deng Xiaoping called for a new period of Reform and Opening.
In the past 20 years, China's economy has made huge strides to become the second largest in the world. The rapid transition has meant great progress in the way art is taught, made, and talked about in China's flourishing urban centers. Artists who went abroad to find freedom of expression have returned to establish studios and provide mentoring. In an effort perhaps to quiet rebellion and encourage tourism, the ever watchful state now furnishes space, such as the former factory that is now the arts complex 798 in Beijing.
This newfound freedom of expression means a newfound voice for the Chinese artistic community, and they have a lot to say. Wang Qingsong's photographs struck me the most. His photographs speak of the new commercial attitude of Chinese culture, who has now surpassed the United States and Japan as the world's economic leader. Despite their economic leeway, the artist's work speaks of the east's cultural devotion to western lifestyle. They are wearing the west's clothes, they are eating its food, they desire and emulate its people, and they are losing their own cultural history along the way. The photographer communicates this by placing an overtly Arian figure in a rickshaw surrounded by the Chinese people, who come to his aid in defense of a figure who raise a Chinese flag. Some beg for his mercy, some fan him, and only one questions him. Interestingly enough, the photographer has placed himself as the driver the rickshaw, suggesting that all Chinese people are seduced by lust for the west and embrace it despite the elements of their identity they lose in return.
