Issue No. 2:
Photography (2020)
Guan Kan is a journal dedicated to thinking about contemporary art made by Chinese artists. While the first issue, focuses on performance, Issue no. 2 takes photography as its subject. Artists use photography to critique and document life in contemporary China and rethink its history. Essays in this issue address how photography has developed and its primary currents within contemporary Chinese art. This issue has a focus on Wang Qingsong, as well as essays on contemporary artists Shao Yinong and Muchen.
Inward and Eastward
From growing up in a remote Chinese village to working and residing in Perth, Tami is the exception to the rule; a needle plucked from the haystack of systematic poverty and granted a chance at tertiary education and class mobility. What sounds like something out of the Hunger Games is normal for tens of millions. The gaokao, China’s national college-entrance exam, is notorious as the world’s toughest yet it is skewed against rural students. There is a 10-year lag in rural versus urban education, provincial intake quotas and a household registration system that governs where students may sit the test.
Pictures and Perspectives: The contemporary photography of Wang Qingsong, Muchen and Shao Yinong
Photography became an important medium for the expression and documentation of personal histories in China, and often a means for oblique social criticism. The contemporary photography of Wang Qingsong, Muchen and Shao Yinong is imbued with this history. This essay traces the evolution of Chinese photography and critical discourse in the late 1970s to interpret the contemporary work of these artists.
A Conversation with Wang Qingsong
In July, 2019 Wang Qingsong spoke with a group of art history students from the University of Western Australia in his Beijing studio.
The Roof may have caved in but the Building still stands: The Motif of the Assembly Hall in Chinese Contemporary Art
The term ‘assembly hall’ conjures memories of sitting cross-legged on the cold floor in rows by my peers, while the principal addressed the school. I imagine many people can relate with their own version of the long monotonous speeches and numb limbs, that constituted school assemblies. For people living in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) the assembly hall does not evoke the same innocent, mundane experience.
A Conversation with Shao Yinong and Muchen
On a humid Friday afternoon in July 2019, a group of art history students from the University of Western Australia arrived at the residence of artists and couple Shao Yinong and Muchen. Welcoming the group into their home, the artists presented and discussed their work, before beginning an informal Q&A.
Photography: Socio-political criticism in Contemporary Chinese art
Photography has, over the last two decades, proven to be a tactical vehicle for criticism of the tedious socio-political condition of Chinese society. Communist China’s increasingly large place in the global capitalist market, and the local repercussions of consumerist Western influence fuel the criticism and satire of artists such as Wang Qingsong, and Muchen and Shao Yingong.
Damaged Souls and Contemporary Art in China
Shen Yinong and Muchen are husband-and-wife collaborators working as contemporary artists in the wake of the Stars Exhibition.
Wang Qingsong as journalist and social critic
Wang Qingsong uses applied photography as a way to respond to the rapidly changing society, repeatedly stressing that he is a ‘journalist’, arguing that the news does not just stay on the surface, but also functions in a more essential way. Working with exaggerated content and shocking, spectacular scenes, Wang reflects social issues. His work arranges details within complicated, large images, as just one image can deliver the impact of a whole issue.