WANG YONGPING

14.06.07/14.07.07

The subject of my work, if there is in fact such a thing, is memory. Better yet, the partial intersection of private, personal memory with the constructed memories of the society I live in.

China has become a very unstable idea, as far as our common identity is concerned, despite the stability and steadiness of our economic growth. We seem to be always coming out of something, some developmental stage that we furiously strife to abandon. Most of the people I know now cannot remember who they were just ten years ago (or so they want others to believe). This imponderability of identity came unannounced and has an invasive, viral, quality. It started as a politically induced semi-comatose state whose purpose was to propitiate pragmatic growth (the story of the cat that, regardless of the colour of its fur, has to catch a certain mouse, etc.) and it has now turned into a device for the erasure of personal memories. For no private memory is relevant if it can't be measured against its common, social, generational backdrop. Once more, we see that the management of memory is a political instrument of great importance. Give someone a car and he will soon forget how to ride a bicycle. But the point is to walk as man.

Art is really not an issue for me. My work doesn't try to be art, for I know all too well that art won't save the day. It's just a set of ideas trying to find an appropriate language, and if it fails or falls short, it's OK. I'm still young, I can wait.

W.Y.P, Shanghai, January 14, 2007