| Years ago, an artist friend of mine from Los Angeles, Ming Hsu, was preparing to visit China. He had family there, a relative who taught in a university and, as a visual artist and scriptwriter, China promised a great landscape and vocabulary for his work. Today, he lives and works in Beijing, writing film, skateboarding, sleeping and enjoying a local camaraderie amongst a growing community of Beijing artists who both resist and employ Western and Eastern ideologies. Whether spoken overtly or not, the politics are prevalent. It’s a city that’s produced cool music acts like the Re-TROS (Re-Establishing the Rights of Statues), Lonely China Day, Joyside and Subs, and, as part of a rhizomatic commentary on scripted bodies, these artists riff on everything from consumerism to authority. |  |
Spinning Topias in Beijing – Cecilia Muhlstein
“CAT 938’s primary duty is to the artist. There is a tremendous pool of talent that is not being shared with the world and it is our mission to change that.”
—David Barnes
Years ago, an artist friend of mine from Los Angeles, Ming Hsu, was preparing to visit China. He had family there, a relative who taught in a university and, as a visual artist and scriptwriter, China promised a great landscape and vocabulary for his work. Today, he lives and works in Beijing, writing film, skateboarding, sleeping and enjoying a local camaraderie amongst a growing community of Beijing artists who both resist and employ Western and Eastern ideologies. Whether spoken overtly or not, the politics are prevalent. It’s a city that’s produced cool music acts like the Re-TROS (Re-Establishing the Rights of Statues), Lonely China Day, Joyside and Subs, and, as part of a rhizomatic commentary on scripted bodies, these artists riff on everything from consumerism to authority.
Enter cyberspace. It was into this topia, that my friend Ming eventually hooked me up with his friend, David Barnes, who, along with Douglas Allan, who founded China Art Trust (CAT 938) in Beijing, China, in 2006, an organization whose goal Barnes says “Is not only to help artists with the means to create, but also to help the less fortunate members of Chinese society through various charities. Ours is not a political cause at all, just one of expression and compassion through art.” However you define it, CAT’s compassionate gestures include representing “many artists in Songzhuang, also called Xiao Pu, and for the arrangement of “charity art events to benefit orphans, street kids, battered women and special needs kids and adults.” These acts confirm and support an increasingly art-friendly city whose population includes a significant amount of ex-patriots from all over the world as well as artists from throughout China.
Historically, Songzhuang (XP) was a section that provided a response to the increasing representation of Chinese artists. As Barnes cites, “One could easily make a case that Xiao Pu artists are granted the most freedom to create in all of China. Artists were really spread all over Beijing years back, and the government really wanted all of them centralized, yet out of the city center, hence Songzhuang, Xiao Pu. The idea here was that, if they’re going to paint, let’s create a place somewhat isolated so as not to ‘let in too many flies.’” These are artists who respond to ideas subverting cultural assumptions; an epicenter of conflicting linguistic signs and ruptures while also morphing their creations into revenue for the burgeoning capitalists who frequent the village. Some of these artists, like Guo Jin Yi, Gao Yan, Guo Lei Yuan, Zhang Dong Hong, Hong Fang and Long Dai Fu, depict in their work images of interrogations, guns, sex, uniforms and faces obscured by hands or scarves.
Compared logistically to Songzhuang (XP), the commercial downtown art scene of Beijing, the 798 district, is made up of factories that have transformed from worker/production sites into galleries and studios. More commercially accessible, however, this area does have, as Barnes points out, “more regular visits from government officials. However, since the Japanese lease holders are trying to sell 798, perhaps one day most of the artists and galleries there will return to XP.”
