Damaged Souls and Contemporary Art in China
24th May, 2020
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children. Nelson Mandela.
In a post-cultural revolutionary China—particularly since the economic opening up of the country by Deng Xiaoping—there has been a developing contemporary art movement, with the Star Art Exhibition in 1979 generally accepted as its inception (Jiehong, 2018). Shen Yinong and Muchen are husband-and-wife collaborators working as contemporary artists in the wake of the Stars Exhibition. Some of their more famous works includes photography which asks the viewer to explore the viewer’s memories as actors in China’s more recent history. One set of images in particular, the Fairy Tales in Red Times series, are hand coloured photographs depicting disabled children, styled in the image of the rosy-cheeked idyllic propaganda images from China’s recent past. Muchen (2019) thinks the disabled children are ‘beautiful’ and that ‘we are all disabled’.
Shao Yinong & Muchen, Anyuan, 2002, C-print, 122 x 168 cm.
In this paper I have interviewed Shen Yinong and Muchen particularly in relation to the Fairy Tales in Red Times series, to explore the concept that current contemporary Chinese art is acting as a conduit through which artists are studying and expressing people’s pain in relation to China’s recent history. It is my contention that they are bringing to the fore an examination and discussion of the often difficult and sometimes traumatic times that they experienced as children. These now-grown children are showing us their damaged souls. Importantly, they are also asking us to consider this history in light of contemporary China. The disabled children of the Fairy Tales in Red Times series represent the underlying imperfectness of a perfect image, thereby exposing the underlying mental scars of the past manifesting as the disability of a generation.
First introduced to the art of Shao Yinong and Muchen on a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria in May 2019, my interest in portraiture, combined with the works’ large scale, bright colours and subject matter of disabled children drew my attention. This was further engaged by the didactic noting the artists’ focus on China’s twentieth century socialist history (National Gallery of Victoria, 2019). A subsequent visit to China resulted in an opportunity to meet and interview these artists.
Both born in the People’s Republic of China, Shao Yinong was born in 1961 in Quinhai, and his wife Muchen was born in 1970 in Dandong, Liaoning. Currently living in Beijing, this husband and wife team have largely worked collaboratively as artists since 2000 on thoughtful works that often connect to their personal memories of China’s recent past, and invite viewers to connect and reflect on their own memories of the past and to consider where they are now.
Given this context, it is important to note that both of these artists were children during the time of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). The Cultural Revolution was used by Mao Zedong to both ‘stamp out once and for all the remnants of bourgeois culture, from private thoughts to private markets’ to create a socialist world free of revisionism, but also to eliminate his enemies (Dikötter, 2016). It ultimately claimed the lives of several million people and inflicted cruel and inhuman treatments on hundreds of millions of people. (Yongyi, 2011). Many lives were ruined through endless denunciations, false confessions, ‘struggle meetings’ and persecution campaigns (Dikötter, 2016). This resulted in a loss of culture and of spiritual values, loss of status and honour, loss of career and dignity and a loss of trust and predictability in human relations, as people turned against each other (F. Thurston, 1987).
For Fairy Tales in Red Times Shao Yinong and Muchen photographed disabled students from a special needs school located near to them in Beijing. The series of six photographs, produced in 2003, are enlarged, have been hand coloured, the children face the camera straight on and their gaze is direct. A study of the photos does not immediately reveal the physical disabilities of the children. However, on closer examination anomalies in the eyes of the children in three of the portraits hint at issues related to disability.
In our interview Muchen noted that the enlargement and size of the images of the children is in reference to Chinese leader portraits (Muchen, 2019). Stylistically they are similar to Mao Zedong’s portrait at the gates to Tiananmen, with commonalities in position and scale of the children in the image, the direct gaze of its subjects and the use of similar colouring for the background, being a faded orange representative of backlit sunshine rising to the colour of a clear blue sky.
The similarities between these images and that of portraits of Mao Zedong are difficult to avoid. Stefan Landsberger has collected and researched Chinese propaganda posters for many years and notes that:
Mao appeared prominently on propaganda posters as far back as the 1940s, despite his ambiguous warnings against a personality cult. The intensity of his portrayal in the second half of the 1960s, however, was unparalleled. Under Lin Biao, the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] increasingly was employed to bolster the personality cult around Mao, and thus to produce art that would contribute to the construction of Mao's god-like image. (Landsberger, 2019)
He also writes of Mao that:
Mao had to be painted hong, guang, liang (red, bright, and shining), with no grey allowed for shading, and the use of black was interpreted as an indication that the artist harbored counter-revolutionary intentions. His face was painted usually in reddish and other warm tones, and in such a way that it appeared smooth and seemed to radiate as the primary source of light in a composition. In many instances, Mao's head seemed to be surrounded by a halo which emanated a divine light, illuminating the faces of the people standing in his presence. (Landsberger, 2002)
Similarly, the photographs in the Fairy Tales in Red Times Series show children’s faces painted with reddish and warm tones and smooth skin. Another similarity is the sunlit haloed treatment of the children in the images, which has the effect of giving them the same importance, elevation and respect that was intended for the original image of the leader. During our interview the artists noted that ‘[t]he children are physically disabled, but we can see dignity in them not so different to the dignity of the leaders’ (Muchen, 2019).
The children are dressed in their own clothing which is coloured brightly to be consistent with colours used in propaganda posters from the 1950s and 1960s (Muchen and Shao Yinong, 2019). The predominant colour used in their clothing references the individual image titles, being blue, cyan, red, yellow, black and pink. Given that the artists noted on interview that they spent considerable time determining colour as a tool by which to express the sentiment in their art (Muchen, 2019), and the above reference to the use of black in art, it can be inferred that this is a deliberate tool used to enhance the messages in this body of work. It would appear that it is their intention to question China’s recent history and note the damage it has caused to its people.
Muchen indicates in our interview that their use of photographs of today’s children represented in the manner of propaganda from times past is a deliberate ploy to blur the lines between a nostalgic view of history and an exploration of the current situation in China. She comments that while we can look nostalgically back on the propaganda of the 1950s and 1960s, the art’s modern subjects and context suggest that it would be naïve to believe that those times and the effects of the upheavals in Chinese history from that time are gone, noting ‘[o]ur life now is not completely disconnected from the past, we are still living in a situation like the past’ (Muchen, 2019). It is relevant to note that the economic opening up of China by Deng Xiaoping related to economics and not to the relative freedom of the Chinese people from communist rule and ideals—that is, economics rather than democracy (Dikotter, 2016).
Given the above, there are clearly multiple layers of meaning woven into these photographs. However, I believe the most impactful and important aspect of the images, and what drew me to examine them more closely and interview the artists, was the use of disabled children. Asking the artists they used disabled children, they answered that it was a way to give the disabled people respect, as normally only the leaders were photographed this way, but also to make the point that disabled people are like ‘Us’ (Muchen 2019). By ‘Us’ the artists indicate they believe everyone [themselves and Chinese people generally] are reflected in and represented by the images of the disabled children. Muchen (2019) noted that ‘disability is not just physical disability but can be mental disability as well. The children are physically disabled, but we all have the scars left from that time that hurt, we are all disabled. Even though we still look healthy, from some perspective we are disabled, mentally.’ Muchen (2019) also notes that the children are ‘beautiful’, ‘they are me’.
Other significant works by Shao Yinong and Muchen include two of their most famous photographic series, the Family Register Series and the Assembly Hall Series. The Family Register series is a photographic timeline (somewhat in the manner of a family tree), which presents photos of Yinong Shao’s paternal family. The final work is represented on 45 meters of sepia coloured scrolls and again invites us to explore memories from the past. The family members are all photographed in Mao jackets worn over their own clothing. Importantly this work was the result of a search for Shao Yinong’s lost paternal family members who were dispersed by the Cultural Revolution. Their commonality, other than that they are family, is their shared experiencs during that time. Shao Yinong and Muchen (2019) want people to ‘explore their own memories from that time’ and to reflect and remember.
Similarly the Assembly Hall series is a collection of photographs laden with memories. Assembly halls were established all over China under communism as meeting places and were ostensibly used to disseminate information related to the communist ideals and how people were expected to conduct their lives. Many of the above noted persecutions of people during the Cultural Revolution are connected to the activities conducted in and through these halls. Shao Yinong and Muchen (2019) ‘recognise that these places will hold different memories for different people’, depending on their personal situation and political position during those times. However, they invite people ‘not to forget those times, but to acknowledge and remember them’. After the Cultural Revolution, these halls largely fell out of use for political purposes, and many have been demolished, have fallen into a state of disrepair, or have been refashioned into buildings for alternate purposes. Shao Yinong and Muchen travelled to 23 different provinces to photograph the halls, front on and with a direct gaze, in an attempt to not let that part of history be forgotten. (Shao Yinong and Muchen, 2019).
Shao Yinong & Muchen, Huangpu, 2005, C-print, 122 x 168 cm.
While in China I was fortunate enough to visit and interview a number of other artists and noticed a common, but not altogether unexpected theme. A desire to show the past, and the resultant scars, but through a new clear lens not tainted by propaganda. As with Shao Yinong and Muchen, in addition to examining their recent history and the scars it left on them, most were also mindful that not everything has changed since those times.
Contemporary artist Zhang Linhai’s studio comprised many captivating paintings containing babies and children, often set against dark looming backgrounds. Zhand Linhai (2019) noted that ‘a lot of his work is related to his childhood experience’. They reflect the loneliness he felt as a child. ‘I spent a lot of my time at assembly halls in my childhood and this is a strong memory for me’. Of his many works, one is of Hitler in front of an assembly hall. All are emotional paintings and I left the interview feeling a sense of weight and sadness for his experience which is captured so well in the paintings in his studio.
Artist Ai Song, famous for creating works with barbed wire, noted that the barbed wire he used was related to suppression and hurt. Of his many works, the barbed wire portrait of Mao Zedong was made at the same size as the portrait of the leader at Tiananmen Square. Ai (2019) noted that ‘up close the barbed wire makes a scary impression, but from a distance it looks like a warm person’. Again, there is a reference to the hurt beneath the history.
Art critic Li Xianting has an artwork of Shao Yinong and Muchen’s on his wall above his desk. It is immediately recognisable as an image from the Assembly Hall series noted above. In our interview Li (2019) noted that ‘in the past lots of fake art was used for propaganda, to show happiness to audiences. After the Cultural Revolution people realised they lived in a world of lies, not the perfect world that they thought they lived in’ and they ‘wanted reality in their art’. Although contemporary Chinese art has been evolving since that time, he believes that an important aspect of contemporary art in China, and the key trend, is the production of art that responds to social reality. He noted that old things such as the photography of Shao Yinong and Muchen in their Assembly Hall and Family Register series’ are used as a commentary on the past, but also to comment on how China is now. His belief is that good contemporary Chinese art is a representation of the inner feelings of the artist in a genuine way, presented in a way that relates to other people.
Whilst more substantial research on this issue is required, through surveying in more detail the vast array of contemporary art available and the motivations of its authors, it is the contention of this paper that, like the artwork of Shao Yinong and Muchen discussed above, particularly with reference to the Fairy Tales in Red Times series photographs, many contemporary Chinese artists are in fact showing us their inner feelings, including the scars from their personal history. Now grown children who have become contemporary artists are showing us their own and by inference Chinese society’s damaged soul, reflecting not just on the scars from the past and the disabilities it has caused, but also asking us to consider issues in contemporary China and it’s future as they relate to that past.
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