February 6 – March 1, 2014
The White Box at the University of Oregon in Portland is pleased to present PICTURING GLOBAL CHINA, an exhibition of contemporary photography and video art from the People’s Republic of China.
Over the past few decades, China has developed at breakneck speed, with many Chinese cities emerging as world centers of thriving economic and cultural activity. Nonetheless, general perceptions of Chinese culture within the United States remain vague, and are often filtered through local media and biases. Seeking to complicate grand narratives and mythologies attached to China’s global rise, this exhibition showcases images by dozens of artists, photojournalists, professional and amateur photographers, and people from all walks of life from all over China. PICTURING GLOBAL CHINA reflects China’s incredibly diverse and radically altering landscape, highlighting images and artistic interpretations of the Three Gorges Damn, ethnic minority villages in Yunnan Province, Chinese Communist Party cadres, punk youth culture, the seaside tourist industry, daily life in rural communities, urbanization in booming cities like cosmopolitan Shanghai, and much more. These surreal, quotidian, experimental, and quixotic pictures map the dreams and realities of China’s unprecedented development amid globalization.
Featured artists include John Alexander, Chang He, Patty Chang, Chen Fei, Chen Xiaofeng, Chen Yina, Chen Yuan, Gu Zheng, Hai Liang, He Pei, Hu Chengwei, Huang Shizun, Huang Xiaoliang, Ji Tao, Jin Xu, Jing Yi, David Kelley, Liu Jiajia, Liu Jianhua, Liu Jie, Liu Kai, Liu Tao, Liu Wanyi, Liu Yanpeng, Liu Yuanyuan, Luo Dan, Ning Zhouhao, Tong Dazhuang, Wang Wenlong, Wang Peibei, Wu Pengfei, Xie Ying, Xu Yang, Jay Yan, Yan Yibo, Yang Ming, Ye Baoliang, Zhang Wenfeng, Zhang Xiao, Zhang Yujiao, and Zi Bai.
This exhibition is curated by Jenny Lin, University of Oregon assistant professor in art and the history of art and architecture. She specializes in contemporary Asian art, architecture and film and art theory. PICTURING GLOBAL CHINA was organized in conjunction with Lin’s fall 2013 course, “Contemporary Art Amidst Globalization, Asia Focus.” The exhibition and related events are made possible with generous support from UO’s White Box, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Confucius Institute for Global China Studies, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Oregon Humanities Center, Department of Art, Office of Academic Affairs, National Resource Center for East Asian Studies, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and Asian Studies Program.
The Gray Box media room features Flotsam Jetsam (2007), a 1 channel HD video installation that was produced in the Three Gorges Dam area of the Yangtze River in China by David Kelley and Patty Chang. The project regards landscape’s relationship to identity, particularly in the midst of extensive infrastructural changes at the Three Gorges site. The video details the process of fabricating a large faux submarine, its launch below the Three Gorges Dam with a crew of local actors, the submarine’s progress along the river and through the dam’s boat locks, and into the reservoir. Along the journey various performances are enacted: actors’ dreams are recounted during a psychodrama session in a swimming pool, a theatrical play is filmed in a ship factory, and actors’ concerns about making this video are voiced. Interlacing a broad collection of sources including: Mao Zedong’s historic swims in the Yangtze, Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,” and current news accounts of China’s rapid economic development, and related imaginaries of Asia’s modernization and environmental impact.
