228 hong kong tatler. september 2017
LIFE | ART
in 2015 and 2016 respectively. A single person’s
view wouldn’t have been enough to approach the
rambunctious period covered by the show.”
Unlike most “China shows,” the focus of Art
and China is not the present, but the period
spanning 1989 to 2008, crucial formative years for
China—and the world at large—in recent history.
It is the first display of the country’s contemporary
creative practice from a historical perspective.
“That’s the era that most defined China’s
trajectory into modernity, from Tiananmen to the
Olympics,” says Munroe. “But it’s also a time that
was extremely significant worldwide, with the
global financial crisis and the rise of social media.
The exhibition considers all these aspects, and
aims to present Chinese artists and their work as
intrinsically connected to the global context, rather
than insular players preoccupied only with their
own reality. That’s why it’s Theatre of the World;
the show presents a global outlook, rather than just
a China one. The main question we pose is what is
Chinese art on the global stage?”
Chinese contemporary art was born in Beijing
in 1979, soon after the country began rolling out
Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. That year,
a small art collective organised an unofficial
exhibition on the park railings outside China
Art Gallery (today known as the National Art
Museum of China), only to be shut down and
declared illegal by the police after just two days.
The subversive act set the stage for the country’s
grassroots arts practice.
Ten years later, in February 1989, nearly 200
artists, including some of today’s leading names
in Chinese contemporary art, were allowed inside
that same art space for the China/Avant-Garde
exhibition, the country’s first official large group
show. It lasted only two weeks but provided
another seminal moment for the local postmodern
art movement.
“China/Avant-Garde put an end to the
experimentation contemporary Chinese art had
been focusing on since that first unauthorised
show,” says Tinari, “but it also marked theCHINESE
EXPERIMENTALISM
The works on show
at the Art and China
exhibition will include
(clockwise from top left)
Huang Yong Ping’s
Theatre of the World,
(1993); Zhang Hongtu’s
In Memory of Tseng
Kwong Chi (detail,
1991); Zhou Tiehai’s
There Came a Mr
Solomon to China
(1994); and Zhang
Peili’s 30x30 (1988)IMAGES: HUANG YONG PING, THEATRE OF THE WORLD, 1993, COURTESY GUGGENHEIM ABU DHABI; ZHANG HONGTU, IN MEMORY OF TSENG KWONG CHI,1991, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST;ZHOU TIEHAI, THERE CAME A MR. SOLOMON TO CHINA, 1994, COURTESY THE ARTIST; ZHANG PEILI, 30X30, 1988, COURTESY GUGGENHEIM ABU DHABI.