INTERVIEW WITH XIAO XIONG
The following dialogue from Manhattan Is a fine tool for negotiating the winding lanes and alleyways of conversation with artists about art in China:
Isaac: I did not try to run her over....it was dark...the driveway was very slippery...you know I don't drive well...
Jill: Oh yeah? What would Freud say?
Isaac: Freud would say I wanted to run her over. That's why he was a genius.
Sunday March 15th, a sunny afternoon in Beijing's art district--798--named after a military installation previously located there. Excavation for a sewage system is currently underway in the neigborhood's dirt roads, so everywhere is piled high with clods of earth and mounds of dirt. Laborers stand around armed with shovels, chain-smoking and bemusedly eyeing sunglassed art tourists decked out in Prada, Fendi and the ubiquitous Beijing dust coat.
The Long March, a joint New York -Beijing art space founded in 2000, is hosting the aptly titled "Building Code Violations." An exhibition of typical conceptual, video and installation art. At the center of the show sits a straightforward concept piece--a rusted-out police cruiser with a disembodied flashing red light lodged in its depths.
A week later, on Tuesday, March 25th, the centerpiece of "Building Code Violations" is still the disemboweled wreck, but it is now shrouded in a very large black and grey tarpaulin. As seems to be the rule in Beijing, where every artist on view is a friend of someone, and things either happen instantly or not at all, Xiao Xiong, the creator of the innocently titled "Bumped Into Installation, 2008" is available for an interview within 15 minutes. "You can't even see my piece!" he jokes on the phone.
Xiong is a rogue-ish looking 40-something "dude" clad in the de rigeur somber hued standard-issue Beijing artists' gear. Sitting expansively on the couch of the Long March Cafe (he's also an Artistic Director there) he puffs away on his 555 Export Brand cigarettes. And he is dumbfounded by the idea that his work is about the police. "It is not a successful piece," he says ruefully, "because people keep asking me about that." He explains that his artwork is simply a metaphor for the general problems of society, and the imperfections inherent in a system that represents both the interests of the populace and the government. Nothing so specific as the police or the justice system--he quotes Foucault to cover his bases. The one thing that can definitively be said is that the creation of the work predates the conflagration in Tibet, so it's probably not about Tibet.
What brought Woody Allen to mind comes next when Xiong began to talk about his childhood in Fujian, the son of a schoolteacher mother and...a policeman father. "Why do journalists keep asking me about that connection? --The piece is a sociological study." He reaffirms brusquely.
Charting Xiong's transformation from a realistic figurative painter into a dyed-in-the-wool installation artist gives an insight into contemporary Chinese art--the carefully choreographed dance between plausible denial and when to shut up, or perhaps saying too much and then covering it up with an apology, or a sheet.
Xiao Xiong graduated in 1979 with top honors from the best art school in Fujian, with a degree in traditional painting, also known as socialist realism. He worked for over a decade at a local government-run arts-and-crafts center, serving mostly, as Xiong puts it, "the common folk." He won an award in 1996 that granted him a scholarship to study in Beijing. "That's when I discovered the word 'postmodern,'" he confessed.
In the heady days of the late 90's, many Beijing artists were trying out conceptual art and minimalism for the first time. Initially, the painter Xiong was incredulous, intoning the inevitable "is it really art at all?" But he was quickly converted--this was something new and an unknown quantity that the government had no claim on. When pressed for the names of the artists who most influenced him, Xiong drew a blank, "most shows were closed before they opened back then."
By the turn of the century, Xiong had gotten involved with the Long March Project and was well on the way to creating much more experimental work. His ideal? To pursue "pure philosophical concepts." Oddly enough, he finds his work is frequently misunderstood for it's unintended implications--"It's a great pity for what I do."
As for the sheet over the work, Xiong's explanation dances in the Chinese No Man's Land between inflammatory ideas and censorship. Mysterious and shady suggestions were made that the piece ought to be removed from sight. maybe the local police were "upset" by the sight of one of their own vehicles so desecrated. Definitely it was felt that the work had taken on a new and distasteful meaning after the revolt in Tibet--where a menacing red light flashing in a disabled and useless carcass could be seen as some sort of commentary. Based on these murky criticisms, from whom, Xiong won't say, he decided to cover the piece. It was just too big to remove, and taking it out would have necessitated reorganizing the entire exhibition!
"So there was no trouble because I covered it myself." This drew the question "would there have been trouble if you hadn't?"
"Yes, well, maybe no, I really can't say since I covered it myself."
Xiong ended the interview again lamenting the pitiable state of affairs in which an artist's work is always being misunderstood--this seems a pretty habitual refrain for him, and one that might itself be suspisciously misconstrued to represent a large facet of Xiong's oeuvre. Perhaps that work of art--an overturned wreck of a police car--right in the center of the Long March covered with a sheet, is rather thinly veiled.
Xiao Xiong will have a solo show at The Long March in May. Very special thanks to Wang Yang for his help translating.
Will Corwin is an artist and curator from New York City, currently based in Beijing doing a residency with the Red Gate Gallery. He has curated visual art exhibitions for the AugustArt art festival in New York and the Flushing Town Hall in Queens, a Smithsonian Affiliate. He has shown at the LaMama Gallery in NYC, Gallery Aferro in Newark, and has done site-specific projects with chashama and the Theater for the New City in New York, The Taipei Artists Village, Taipei, and Red Gate Gallery and the Pickled Art Center in Beijing. He is also involved with Smartspace NYC. He currently teaches with the Meet the Met program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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