Wang Qingsong: China’s Cultural Commentator

Describe your creative style in three words.

The three catchwords for my art making are cooperative/confrontational, realistic/suspicious, and documentary/creativity. Each duet seems to conflict with each other. But they make sense together. First, my art works are confrontational targeting at cooperation. These photos pose suspicion towards problems/social vices in reality. Thirdly, these photos are staged/creative but documentary.

Follow Me, 2003 ©Wang Qingsong

Your work often deals with consumerism and globalization within the Chinese economy, especially as it relates to the influences that Western culture has had on your home country. You also touch on the life of migrants, war and sickness and even education. What are your favorite social causes and how do they influence your work?

The most interesting feeds from this world, or this society, is its multi-faceted stories. They have so many rich dimensions and diversities. Endless stories from life have kept inspiring me.
Moreover, the confusion that one thing is right today and the next day it is wrong, which is so conflictual, keeps me interested in learning about why. The most frustrating fact of life is that China is trying to set up a new order, a new way of thinking as we lose our traditions and values. The traditional ideologies have been broken down. There have been so many contradictions in China’s economic and political systems in addition to its cultural rifts. China is the second largest economic entity in the world. We say that out of the 10 highest skyscrapers in the world, maybe 7 are built in China. In this crazy rush to rapid development and modernization, China must re- establish its own value system to hold its people together. The last forty years of modernization witnesses people to be pushed away to the shore of desperation for fortune and fortuity where we can see the glory on the other shore, but it is just too far to see it to be realized. Like the beautiful term, Dream, which is discussed in both the Chinese government and the West, I think it is very positive, but it has lost its previous glamour.

List three main differences that you see between Chinese society and Western society in terms of art and the ability to prosper as an artist.

To prosper as an artist, three prerequisites are freedom of expression, active and supportive academic system and healthy gallery/auction system. First, it seems valid to assume that both Chinese society and Western society offer freedom of expression to artists. But underneath, surveillance and censors- hip exist in two societies.

Talking about supportive and active academic system, these two societies seems to differ a lot. China has quite a number of art academies, art critics, committees and research centers, private and public museums. But the structure and validity of these institutions still need quite some time to build up. In this regard, western academic researchers or scholars might be more independent and analytical or even critical of their artists and art works. Thirdly, both markets, gallery and auction systems, seem now to be more interested in getting well-known artists to make money for them. They care less and less about nurturing and cultivating real passion for art. Hence young and emerging artists have to face lack of support.

With a degree in Oil Painting from the Sichuan Academy of Art, most of your recent work uses the medium of photography. Explain the shift in mediums from painting to photography. How has this change helped your self-confidence as an artist in telling your story through your work?

I graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. I have been painting between 1993 to 1997. The reason that I moved to Beijing in 1993 was because of my two experiences in Beijing in 1993. The rst was when China National Art Gallery was exhibiting some Japanese art. I walked in and was amazed at how many people, old and young, were trying to emulate the strokes and colors. The second was my encounter with a shoe-repairer. I lost my way during my visit to the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) since it was located inside a small alley of neighborhood. I asked this shoe-repairer. Then he told me where to go. He probably thought I was a student of art school and he asked about what I planned to do there. I told him just to buy some canvas. Then, this old man on the street started to elaborate on what kinds of canvases there were and how to differentiate good ones from bad ones. I was completely impressed by how much Beijing people were cultivated and Beijing must be the ideal place for artists.

China started to change dramatically after 1992. I did not think that paintings can sufficiently fulfill my discoveries. Hence, I moved from painting to photography. I am a very sensitive person. Whenever I find some interesting, I’d like to keep it in my mind. Then I start to think about it before I take steps into making a “staged” photo.

Why is it important for an artist such as yourself to incorporate sarcasm, irony, satire and humor into your work? How does using these artistic styles of expression help to expose the truth behind the ideas in your so-called protest art, thereby making your work more relatable to your audience?

As I said earlier, one must apply Chinese Taiji boxing to deal with ongoing social, cultural and political issues. One should not be dismayed by social realities. He needs to release observations, comments, and criticism through elaboration, description. Hence sarcasm, irony and humor are applied. is is to pose questions, throw doubts, and offer possible solutions or at least provide personal perspectives to weird social phenomena.

As an artist who has overcome adversity, you once struggled to pay rent as you found yourself penniless moving further and further from the capital of Beijing into the marginal artist’s villages outside of the city where you experienced the forced detachment from the city’s mainstream society. Eventually, China adopted the Open-Door Policy which opened the countries trade to outside markets. How did this experience and/or policy affect your outlook as a young artist? What influence did/does this have on your work?

It is hard to say which era is better. Before the Open-Door Policy initiated, all people seemed to be equal though we were restricted from knowing what has been going on outside China. But after the open-door, drastic movements force people to move around, chase after making satisfying livelihoods.

We all feel disoriented, both physically and psychologically. Political polices change with di erent party lines. For artists, like common people, they must readjust to new life, new situations.
The policies are like rubber bands. If one walks far, the rubber band gets tight and brings one back. If one walks not far, the rubber bank is loose. Then one can try to reach out a little further. So one can maneuver over some range.

Presently, you’re married to art writer and academic Zhang Fang, whose scholarship includes writing, curating and organizing contemporary art exhibitions. Tell us how you met. Does your work go hand in hand? Are you a collaborative couple in terms of your work?

That is a long story. In October 1996, Zhang Fang worked as an interpreter to take some Danish people to visit Chines artists’ studios.
Within 10 days, they visited almost more than 50 artists. She was impressed by how much creativity and daring came out from the artists about her age. Their oil works describe what she felt strongly about the social movements. I was one of the helpers to guide through them to find artists’ studios amidst the farmers’ houses. Then, I was called back to identify the artist works with photographs which miss the names, titles of works… There we met again. At night, we went back in a cab. At that time, we used beepers.

So, beeper messages were the only contact we got in touch with each other. By Jan. 1st, I reached out to say New Year greetings to her. We to touch base again.