Embedded Files
Great art has, through time, been made in many guises. It has been made as protest and as propaganda, made to disturb and to sooth, made to question and to express. Our increasingly globalized media-driven world brings us closer to many people's struggles; it also brings us stories, and beauty, from everywhere.
Great art has, through time, been made in many guises. It has been made as protest and as propaganda, made to disturb and to sooth, made to question and to express. Our increasingly globalized media-driven world brings us closer to many people's struggles; it also brings us stories, and beauty, from everywhere.
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention. - Ai Wei Wei
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention. - Ai Wei Wei
“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” - Ai Wei Wei
“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” - Ai Wei Wei
“My work is like a scientific laboratory”
“My work is like a scientific laboratory”
The installation practice of Liu Zhuoquan
The installation practice of Liu Zhuoquan
Artist's Practice
Artist's Practice
Liu Zhuoquan works with traditional craftsmen who have mastered the ancient art of 'inside painting', or ‘neihua’ once used on the beautiful snuff bottles dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties. In Liu Zhuoquan's practice, however, they become ways of making a comment on many aspects of life in China today. The bottles, which in Liu’s practice are found objects, used bottles which have held a range of products, in varying sizes and shapes, are delicately and precisely painted on the insides. Precise technique and the use of fine brushes create immensely detailed and realistic representations of people, the natural world of plants and insects, as well as political imagery from the Cultural Revolution and contemporary events in China and the wider world. Barack Obama features on one bottle. Liu sees his work as suggesting a scientific laboratory, as the bottles (discarded and 'found' objects referencing the everyday) contain beautifully painted, miniaturised 'experimental material' relating to nature, biology, human society and also to politics. Liu Zhuoquan, although born in Wuhan, spent many years in Tibet, and the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism have profoundly affected his world view and his own art practice. The artist is assisted in the creation of these works by artisans trained in traditional techniques - in this way his practice may be connected with other contemporary artists both in China and internationally, such as Ah Xian, Antony Gormley, Patricia Piccinini and Janet Laurence. They also comment on our mania for classifying and thereby containing the world and everything in it – a wry Buddhist comment on the impossibility of controlling our world. (Luise Guest)
Drawing on her volatile personal history as a child growing up in China, Echo Morgan, whose real name Xie Rong, creates devastatingly emotional performance art. One piece titled Be the Inside of the Vase performed in 2012 at The Royal College of Art in London was based on a conflicting childhood memory. Her mother would tell her “Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” while her father would say, “Women should be like vase, smooth, decorative and empty inside!” Beginning with this memory, Morgan pulls the audience deep into her personal history and psyche.
Drawing on her volatile personal history as a child growing up in China, Echo Morgan, whose real name Xie Rong, creates devastatingly emotional performance art. One piece titled Be the Inside of the Vase performed in 2012 at The Royal College of Art in London was based on a conflicting childhood memory. Her mother would tell her “Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” while her father would say, “Women should be like vase, smooth, decorative and empty inside!” Beginning with this memory, Morgan pulls the audience deep into her personal history and psyche.
Echo Morgan is the English name of Xie Rong, a Chengdu-born, London-based, multi-disciplinary artist whose work is underpinned by a dark family story. She works with stereotypes of ‘Chineseness’ and femininity in order to subvert them. Morgan has written texts on her skin using red lipstick, black Chinese ink, white ‘ink’ made from jasmine tea, and her own breast milk after giving birth to her second child. She has played with tropes of Chinoiserie, painting her naked body to resemble blue and white porcelain, and then inviting the audience to violently wash the patterns away by hurling water-filled balloons at her. Her work mines her own experiences of childhood, family, marriage and motherhood – and those of her female ancestors. She is a story-teller.
Report abuse