Art and China after 1989 presents work by 71 key artists and groups active across China and worldwide whose critical provocations aim to forge reality free from ideology, to establish the individual apart from the collective, and to define contemporary Chinese experience in universal terms. Bracketed by the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008, it surveys the culture of artistic experimentation during a time characterized by the onset of globalization and the rise of a newly powerful China on the world stage. The exhibition’s subtitle, Theater of the World, comes from an installation by the Xiamen-born, Paris-based artist Huang Yong Ping: a cage-like structure housing live reptiles and insects that coexist in a natural cycle of life, an apt spectacle of globalization’s symbiosis and raw contest.
For art and China, the year 1989 was both an end and a beginning. The June Fourth Tiananmen Incident signaled the end of a decade of relatively open political, intellectual, and artistic exploration. It also marked the start of reforms that would launch a new era of accelerated development, international connectedness, and individual possibility, albeit under authoritarian conditions. Artists were at once catalysts and skeptics of the massive changes unfolding around them. Using the critical stance and open-ended forms of international Conceptual art, they created performances, paintings, photography, installations, and video art, and initiated activist projects to engage directly with society. Their emergence during the 1990s and early 2000s coincided with the moment the Western art world began to look beyond its traditional centers, as the phenomenon of global contemporary art started to take shape. Chinese artists were crucial agents in this evolution.
Art and China after 1989 is organized in six chronological, thematic sections throughout the rotunda and on Tower Levels 5 and 7. For all the diversity the exhibition encompasses, the artists here have all sought to think beyond China’s political fray and simple East-West dogmas. This freedom of a “third space” has allowed for a vital distance, and a particular insight, as they contend with the legacies of Chinese history, international modernism, and global neoliberalism of the 1990s. Their rambunctious creativity can expand our ever-widening view of contemporary art and inspire new thinking at a moment when the questions they have faced—of identity, equality, ideology, and control—have pressing relevance.
This exhibition is organized by Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; with guest cocurators Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; and Hou Hanru, Artistic Director, MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome.
Curatorial assistance is provided by Kyung An, Assistant Curator, Asian Art, and Xiaorui Zhu-Nowell, Research Associate and Curatorial Assistant, Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The archive section was developed in collaboration with Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong.
San Francisco, California — Beginning with the student movement held at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the grand Olympic Games in 2008, "Arts and China after 1989: World Theater" explores Chinese contemporary art in this historical period. . It examines some of the bold movements that anticipate, document, and provoke widespread social change and make China the center of global topics. The exhibition has been exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The exhibition was first exhibited on the West Coast. The exhibition examined the status of Chinese artists as important observers and promoters of China's rise in the world by focusing on the concepts and behavioral practices of two generations of artists and social and political commentary.
“Art and China after 1989” brings together a vibrant group of two generations of artists who are active in the transition of Chinese history and Chinese art. Since we held the turning exhibition “Inside Out” in 1999 Since the beginning of the transformation, the exhibition has refreshed the audience's perception, highlighting the importance of continuing to challenge our assumptions about Chinese art traditions and the globalization of these traditions and even China as a whole.” Elise S. Haas Painting and Sculpture senior curator Gary Garrels said.
The Art and China after 1989: World Theatre will feature more than 60 works by leading artists and art groups living in China and abroad at the beginning of the globalization process, covering more than 100 photographs, movies, videos and paintings. Sculptures, ink paintings, performances and installations, and participatory social projects. These works are from private and public collections around the world and are featured in six contemporary art galleries on the seventh floor of SFMOMA. Visitors can enter the "Arts and China after 1989: World Theater" from Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium after entering the museum's third street entrance. There, the first thing that caught your eye was an 85-foot long dragon sculpture "Hurrying Childbirth" (2000) suspended from the ceiling. The artist Chen Yu used bicycle inner tubes, bicycle parts and toy cars. The creation of materials that are available. In the works, Panlong emerged from the belly of many cars, which symbolized the great change of China from a bicycle kingdom to a highly industrialized country.
The exhibition is divided into six main themes in chronological order, including:
• 1989: No U-Turn (1989: no U-turn) – The first part of the theme focuses on the “Chinese Modern Art Exhibition” held at the National Art Museum in Beijing in 1989. The exhibition showcases a series of works that are not easy to understand, including performances, installations and ink abstracts, aiming to point out the new direction of Chinese contemporary art. In addition, this section includes works reflecting the Tiananmen protest movement and the June 4th incident, which occurred several months after the exhibition, which led to the abrupt end of liberal reforms since the 1980s.
• New Measurement: Analyzing the Situation – In the aftermath of the 1989 event, the artist experienced a crisis of trust in authority systems, bureaucracy, artistic language and ideology, turning their eyes to conceptual art Practice shows the consolidation process of structural authoritarianism.
• 5 Hours: Capitalism, Urbanism, Realism (5 hours: capitalism, urbanization, realism) – economic liberation, urbanization and globalization that began in the 1990s brought about all-round change, and China also moved from socialism to In this context, realism has begun to recover, and artists have created works that show the original state of daily life in China.
• Uncertain Pleasure: Acts of Sensation – The artist's vision is relaxed beyond China and begins to participate in international biennales through tourism and publications, reconnecting with contemporary trends. This section focuses on the development of lasting performing arts and video art as an important tool to explore the tension between individualism and collectivism in the mid to late 1990s.
• Otherwhere:Travels Through the In-Between – This section explores the parallel history of Chinese artists living overseas from the 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century, during which time they mastered Living in a “super-experience” between multiple cultures and worldviews, Chinese domestic artists have begun to criticize their participation in a new global art world.
• Whose Utopia: Activism and Alternatives circa 2008 (Who's Utopia: About Activism and Alternatives in 2008) – The success of Beijing's Olympic bid in 2001 has raised questions about the catastrophic events of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the global financial crisis. It has spawned a concerted social action in the form of many years of Utopian thematic projects. The Internet has spurred artists, collectors, activists, critics and curators to advocate that art go out of museums and galleries, enter the society, and restore its revolutionary purpose of changing society.
The famous work of the exhibition — Huang Yongzhen's two-part installations, World Theatre (1993) and Bridge (1995), opened the seventh floor of the museum. This two-part sculptural device metaphorically accelerates the globalization and explores the duality of social unrest and peaceful coexistence by keeping insects and reptiles in a cage-like prison. The Ring Prison is an architectural structure created in the 18th century to monitor prisoners in all directions. The "World Theater" and "Bridge" installations at SFMOMA will replicate the form of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the time, due to the strong demands of the protesters, there were no live insects or reptiles in the cage. An artist statement was issued. Two historical video works in the exhibition - Xu Bing's "Cultural Animals" (1994) and Sun Yuan, Peng Yu's "Dog Close" (2003) will also be presented in a deactivated state, and will be exhibited in New York. The same is true, and the artist’s statement is attached to show the commemoration of the work. These artists' statements have now become the history of the exhibition and part of these three works, which illustrate the causes and consequences of these works of art being criticized and protested before they were truly exhibited in New York.
SFMOMA has a long history of exhibiting for important contemporary Chinese artists. As early as 1999, the museum held "Inside Out: Chinese Art", which was the first exhibition in the United States dedicated to artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong since 1986 and overseas Chinese artists. In addition, it also launched "Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Logan Collection" (Half a Dream: Logan Contemporary Chinese Art Collection Exhibition, 2008) and "Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea" (China) , Japan, Korea Contemporary Photography, 2009).