Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai ChowDafen art village
Lin Yi-Chieh mentions Dafen briefly in her introduction to a monograph primarily concerned
with counterfeit culture and economy in China. Framed in the discourse of “fake,” Dafen is
where “painters, artisan-painters and apprentices are working to produce commissioned paint-
ings of Western masterpieces” (2011, 2). In other words, they produce “fake stuff,” the main
title of Lin’s work. In a book-length interrogation of the creative economy and the requisite
concepts and practices of IPR, Pang includes a discussion of Dafen in her concluding chapter.
Like us, Pang situates Dafen in shanzhai culture, but the key question she poses is about possible
alternatives to the dominant global development logic, and the route she takes is guided by the
“appropriation” artworks created by two well-known artists, not shanzhai practitioners and
practices (Pang 2012).
Wong’s study is based on substantial ethnographic, art historical, and archival research, mak-
ing it by far the most comprehensive investigation of Dafen (2014). After locating Dafen in the
Chinese tradition of “export paintings” and “trade paintings,” Wong examines and punctures
the discourses of originality, authenticity, and creativity that continue to frame prevailing ways
of understanding Dafen. Her inquiry follows “the process by which Dafen production comes
to represent ‘China,’ ‘the copy,’ and the alienating effects of ‘the market’” (Wong 2014, 22–23).
Wong, for example, demystifies the idea of factory labor by showing how most galleries consist
of one or two persons. She explores the craftsmanship and artistic ideals of the painters, and
shows how the policy measures of the local and national governments have a limited impact on
the daily realities of Dafen. She also shows how in many artworks and events related to Dafen
the painters and their works are used as props and are thereby denied their individuality. For
example, an exhibition involving Dafen practitioners at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 con-
tinuously framed them as “migrant workers.”
Our current inquiry builds on this body of research. In contradistinction to Wong, we hope
to further a more productive line of discourse around the notion of shanzhai. Choosing to see
Dafen as part and parcel of shanzhai culture, this inquiry departs from the dominant framing of
the practices in Dafen in terms of copying, counterfeit, or mimicry. It also redirects the trajectory
from the product towards the people and what exactly they are doing. While we are aware of
issues of inequities, the position taken up by Pang strikes us as too simplistic, if not paternalistic,
when she writes, “the industrial operation of Dafen Village is a typical form of class exploita-
tion, and there is nothing romantic about the mass reproduction of trade painting” (2014, 229).
Wong’s analysis shows convincingly that this portrayal is one-sided and highly problematic, as
“the vast majority of Dafen painters work independently in their own homes and studios, pro-
duce paintings that are made to order, paid for by the piece, for patrons whose commissions and
prices they are free to accept or reject” (Wong 2014, 15).
When we take shanzhai as a heuristic device, we see more indeterminacy and more com-
plexity than the commonly presented narratives of exploitation or mass reproduction (or faking,
copying, and counterfeiting). We hesitate to see the people working in Dafen as victims by
default; nor do we want to give precedence to the artists working on or with them—we want to
focus solely on the painter–workers and their practices. During the summers of 2012 and 2013,
we spent more than a week in Dafen. Indeed, we found fake Van Goghs and fake Mona Lisas
virtually everywhere, but we also found much more by talking with people working in Dafen’s
alleys, shops, and galleries.
Occupying four square kilometers in an area called Buji, Dafen has long been a small incon-
spicuous village, one left behind by the rapid economic and urban development in Shenzhen.
The metamorphosis of Dafen from a small village to “the centre of a big industry, with about