'Is Anybody Listening?', film still, by Tseung Yu-Chin
A six-panel jury, and collector Uli Sigg, has announced the winners of the 2008 Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, or CCAA. Ai Weiwei, just 50, received a Lifetime Contribution award, while Liu Wei, 36, was recognized as the Best Artist of 2008. Both awards came as little surprise to the art world in Beijing, where both Ai Weiwei and Liu Wei are based. The jury also minimized any possible political interpretations of selecting a Taiwanese artist, Tseung Yu-Chin, as Best Young Artist in 2008. Juror Hou Hanru called the decision only a 'small heart-attack.'
Mr Sigg, who founded the award in 1998, said that the selection is not intended to raise controversy. 'There has been pressure from the art world to look at it as one space,' he said, 'and to give artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan an opportunity to participate.'
'It's not a political issue,' Sigg added. 'This is a Chinese cultural space, which in a way is a coherent space. That's why it makes sense.'
Ai Wei Wei
Mr Hou, who currently serves as Director of Exhibitions and Public Programmes at the San Francisco Art Institute, said that Tseung's video art references the short vignettes of Taiwanese cinema and pays homage to, among others, Chinese video art pioneer, Zhang Peili.
'Tseung's work also serves as an important bridge,' Hou added, 'between the changing modernity of the Mainland and the changing modernity of Taiwan.' While he has shown rarely on the Mainland, Tseung was an important discovery at last year's Documenta 12.
The jury also assessed the role of the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in the current global and Chinese art markets.
Liu Wei installation
Juror Chris Dercon pointed to a lack of fresh work in China, noting that the jurors had, in years past, previously seen most of the work that went up for consideration this year. He also said that the amount of 'fast production' of artwork in China 'is on the verge of becoming standardized.'
'We do have a crisis,' said juror Ruth Noack, 'that has to do with the quickness that new artists are being taken up by the market. This problem is not exclusive to China, but it seems possible in China to make a lot of money very quickly even at a very early stage.'
Ms Noack added that 'although the nationality - or the place - where the artist comes from did not play a role in our discussions, a [winning] artist coming from Taiwan may be an indication of a problem that we have in Mainland China.'
When Sigg initiated the awards, he was hoping to raise the awareness of Chinese contemporary art to what he saw as the 'gatekeepers of contemporary art in the west' and to stimulate more cooperation between Western and Chinese curators. But over the last ten years, the landscape has radically changed as Chinese contemporary artists have become more popular in the West, commanding record prices in both international and domestic auction houses.
'There is a new role for the Contemporary Chinese Art Award,' said Mr Sigg. 'In this very heated situation, there needs to be room for an unexcited discussion, without vested commercial or market interests, of what is important and what is less important.'
The CCAA awarded Pauline J. Yao a prize for art criticism. Mr Sigg initiated the award in response to China's depleted network of independent art critics as more writers hopscotch to curatorial, gallery, dealer and other more lucrative positions within the Chinese art system. Even so, some observers are concerned that the CCAA is simply another way of increasing the market value of an elite group of artists close to Mr Sigg, including those artists who are often perceived as fiercely independent and even maverick, like Ai Weiwei.
One local Beijing gallerist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the prize was 'really a way of giving awards to themselves.'
'But in my experience,' said juror Gu Zhenqing, 'the award actually has little bearing on the market value of an artist.' Gu, who also edits the Chinese-English art magazine, Visual Production, said that if anything, 'the award brings more media attention and recognition to the artists.'
Chris Dercon noted that Ai Weiwei is hardly visible in international and domestic auctions; Liu Wei's projects - many of them large-scale installations - are too cumbersome to be collectible; and Tseung Yu-Chin, like many young filmmakers, are vastly underpaid in comparison to visual artists. Mr Sigg asserted that the international art community is paying attention to the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards. Dercon was less optimistic. 'Now,' he said, 'the art market is much more stimulated - or stipulated - by who sleeps with whom, or how someone is dressed, what kind of music he is listening to, and at which airport the artist is arriving first. So, actually, we really have very little influence.'
A group showing of work from the Chinese Contemporary Artist Awards goes on tour later this year.
Stacey Duff
Stacey Duff is Saatchi Online magazine's China correspondent and Time Out Beijing's art editor.
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