Zhu Fadong’s Looking for a Missing Person (1993)

13th March, 2020

As an artist who plays an important role in contemporary Chinese society, Zhu Fadong’s work is based not only on his exploration of self, but also on the removal of barriers within Chinese culture and the development of pluralism (Andrews 2001). This article is intended to introduce Zhu’s artistic development, context and his artwork named Looking for a Missing Person (1993). This, in order to understand Zhu's contribution to the flourishing of Chinese performance art in this era.

Zhu Fadong became interested in art in the late 1970s. When talking about the original motivation to study painting, he thought that it was about changing his destiny (2019). He often sketched portraits in tea houses and there he met many fine painters. Then he felt it was not enough and was determined to become a painter in art college in the future. At that time he thought painters were proud. After graduation from art college, considering the future direction of art development, firstly he painted some realistic and abstract paintings, which was a kind of self-exploration. During the 1990s he adopted a wide range of approaches in a cross-domain way (Berghuis, 2004). He has subsequently had an important role in contemporary society in China.

Art is always derived from life and experience, and Zhu Fadong’s work was born under such circumstances. In Looking for a Missing Person, he plastered his elaborate posters all over the street, featuring a front portrait of himself in a hat. On the poster was written: Zhu Fadong, long hair, an artist, born in 1960, left from Kunming, Yunnan Province in one day, missing (Lorge, 2012). The work was about himself and his own disappearance in the form of a street advertising. The poster produces a brave feeling when seeing it, while also having a feeling of loss.

Of course, this work was not conceived overnight. In his creative career, it is worth mentioning that he also went to Guangzhou to participate in the Biennale exhibition of 1992. Here he exhibited a missing person painting (Minglu, 2012). That trip to Guangzhou had a great influence on him. That exhibition brought together many concerned people and excellent works. He felt a kind of excitement and vaguely felt something new come into being. There he saw the charm of professional artists. And all this gave him a sense that a new era was about to begin. Then little people paid attention to him so that he was able to work in a new way and he had no mental baggage. As he said, his work was in the state of limbo before he left for Guangzhou and he also had no exact confidence, something that was helpful for producing the work about missing people.. After coming back from Guangzhou, he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it.

Zhu Fadong has always had a unique feeling and experience of artistic creation. He thought art was expressing feelings to the fullest so that the ways to realize art were also the most adequate. When asked about if having any concerns in doing this work, he said that he was afraid that people might think he was out of his mind because the form he was going to take was too close to social life. Eventually the need for art overcame his shyness. When he made the Looking for a Missing Person art work public, the social acceptance was much greater than he imagined. People not only accepted it quickly but also wanted to know him personally.

The thirst for freedom and the interest of the uncertainty and unknown is another inspiration of art to him. When asked why he went to Hainan, he said the thirst for freedom and the interest of the uncertainty and unknown (Zhu 2019). At that time Hainan represented a new development trend. In the early 1990s, people started to focus on themselves and started to establish themselves in society (Sheldon, 1997). Zhu was also looking for a new direction in his personal art (Ong, 2012). It was under that circumstances and opportunities that he captured the moment or the key point.

Zhu Fadong, Person for Sale, 1995.

In addition to Looking for a Missing Person, Zhu Fadong also has other works expressing his artistic ideas. He went back to Yunnan in 1993. In 1994, he went to Beijing. And he also brought another of his works to the densely populated metropolis. First it was At that time he cut off the handsome long hair and wore a blue smock with the model of written characters, ‘person for sale’ on the back (Tomkova, 2018). For more than a year, he wore that suit almost every day and wandered through the hutongs and alleys of Beijing. He wore that suit to the labor market and went around the streets of the city. Some people spoke with him, asking him,’ ‘What can you do? Can you do this?’ Person for Sale (1995) gave people a mirror to reflect on themselves. It told people to face many things directly. For decades to come, the work appeared continuously in various retrospective exhibitions and even in textbooks. Person for Sale was more extreme than Looking for a Missing Person (Tomkova, 2018). He presented himself as a living part of his work in front of everyone. When he implemented this work, he was proud and he had a strong sense of his performance within the social conditions at that time.

Image of the author in Zhu Fadong’s studio, with sculpture.

In 1998, 100 Days, 100 Jobs was made. It was about interacting with people and surviving. It was a way to prove himself, and had practical significance (Tsai, 2016). In 1998, the Identity Cards series was born. These paintings of identity cards are symbols of breaking down barriers to identity and became symbols of equality. In 1998, there was another work Homage to the 90s. What was its meaning? Or what did it want to express? He said that it was inspired by the passing of the 1990s and by the unpredictability of the future (Tsai, 2016). He said it was a way of fareweling the decade, and to honour it. The new century was coming and nobody knew what it would be like and everyone had something to look forward to. Later, the Sulfate Papers series was inspired by drawings of industrial design. Sulfate paper is often is used to copy images due to its transparent texture. He did away with the usual copying, however, and resorted instead to embroidery. He broke down those commercial images into dots and lines. The innovation not only enriched the commercial advertising of those large companies but also infused the cold advertising and logos with humanity by his working day and night.

In Zhu’s works, the lasting theme is the relationship between people and consumer society. Unlike the critical attitude of most artists, his approach to this relationship was more complex and ambiguous. It seemed that he never liked that dogmatic approach. He was willing to approach the interior of society in a his unique way to find a different life evidence, which made him and his works be a distinctive landscape in the contemporary art world (Visser, 2004).

Nowadays, Zhu Fadong still keeps working on his art, such as oil painting. When asked about the impact of the internet on society and art, he said the internet has changed many aspects of society but it did not impact art (Zhu 2019). Art has no limits and it is various (Zhu 2019). When asked about the view of art, he said that art comes from life (Zhu 2019). People can focus on more things to feel it and it is likes, curiosity, uncertainty, anxiety, hunger,demand and so on. The best art is to follow the heart. Regardless of the previous artistic creation or the present artistic persistence, Zhu Fadong is still willing to approach the society in a unique way, looking for different evidence of life. He still keeps working on art, full of enthusiasm for oil painting. And as he said, there is no limit to art, no matter what.

References

Andrews, J. 2001. ‘Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century’. CAA.Reviews. New York: College Art Association, Inc.

Berghuis, T. 2004. ‘Considering Huanjing: Positioning experimental art in China.’ Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 12, no.3, pp. 711–731.

Chunchen, W. 2012. ‘The Art of Anxiety: China’s Social Transformation and the Uncertain Reception of Chinese Contemporary Art’. Journal of Visual Art Practice, vol.11, no.3, pp.222–229.

Lorge, P. 2012. Chinese martial arts : from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Minglu, G. 2012. ‘Changing Motivations of Chinese Contemporary Art Since the Mid 1990s.’ Journal of Visual Art Practice, vol.11, no.2, pp. 209–219.

Sheldon, L. 1997. ‘Global POSTmodernIZATION: The intellectual, the artist, and China’s condition’. Boundary 2, vol.24, no.3, pp.65–97.

Ong, A. 2012. ‘“What Marco Polo forgot”: contemporary Chinese art reconfigures the global.’ Current Anthropology, vol.53, no.4, pp.471–494.

Tomkova, D. 2018. Zhu Fadong: Why Art Is Powerless to Make Social Change. Yishu, vol.17, no. 1.

Tsai, S. 2016. M+ Sigg collection: Four decades of Chinese contemporary art. ArtAsiaPacific, pp.98.

Visser, R. 2004. Spaces of disappearance: aesthetic responses to contemporary Beijing city planning. Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 13, no.39, pp. 277–310.

Zhu, Fadong. 2019. Talk to University of Western Australia student group, 29 June, 2019.