Liu Xinyi

City: Hangzhou

www.xinyiliu.net

Q: What have you been up to lately?

I’ve been kind of adjusting my working mode. I used to regard the professional artist career quite highly, but lately I’ve had more and more doubt about it. Now I’m trying out the artist norms I used to avoid, such as teaching part-time.

The way artists build their connection with the world solely through making artwork is too submissive to the narrative of art history. And I also don’t believe in the path from a so-called artist/entrepreneur to cultural enterprise. I think artists must first and foremost come back to being a human – a multidimensional, multi-skilled member of society.

Q: You’re saying you want to avoid the career artist mode, but it seems like that was exactly how you operated for a period of time. In other words, what you want to avoid now is precisely what you were pursuing before, it’s just that now you’ve changed your mind?

Yes, I think we shouldn’t forget that there’s such a thing as self-reflection. Looking back, I realized my approach back then couldn’t solve my problem now, though it took me quite a while to realize that. After a long period of academic art education, I was then basically exclusively working in the art industry, so I was rather disconnected from other facets of society.

Q: It sounds like you think you were too immersed in the art world. Whereas now, you want to become more of an individual in society as a whole, instead of staying inside the art circle and regarding art practice as a job, right?

Yeah, more or less. This may have to do with age. One may have very different understandings of the art system at different stages of their life.

Q: Were there specific incidents or events that led to this change of mind?

About three years ago, I started to have doubts about the way I was working. So, I started to work with artist residencies and non-profit organizations, and experimented with some low-budget projects. I wasn’t sure if by modifying my habits I could adjust my relationship with the art industry. The process wouldn’t be smooth. And all the things that happened during the process can be viewed as different kinds of tests. Doing artist residencies was one kind of test, and doing it in China has a different emphasis versus doing it abroad. What surprised me most was that it seemed like some of the best interactions I had were through collaborations with smaller organizations based in second or third-tier cities.

Q: What happened three years ago that made you start to change your mind?

After my third solo gallery show in 2016, I received some very insightful feedback from the industry, which led to my intuitive doubt about the studio-based production mode, and even made me realize the huge risk therein. Gallery solo shows as a periodic achievement are meaningful; however, I no longer think they’re as exciting as they were before.

Q: The feedback you received and the intuitive doubts you had, was that because everyone started to recognize and validate your work? Or was it that you felt burned out by the repeating production rhythm of the exhibitions?

Not burned out. Even when collaborating on exhibitions with galleries, I’ve always been quite persistent with my vision, and I’ll try all possible ways to realize my ideas. In the young artist sector, the art industry has been paying most attention to their use of new media. For the most part, it’s part of a cultural production chain that emphasizes visual effects. Whereas what I really want to talk about – such as the dilemma of public life -is given a very low priority. Fortunately, there’s at least still a feedback mechanism from the professional art media, which facilitated some exchanges between me and writers of my age. But this kind of feedback happens quite slowly, so sometimes I feel I’d rather work with them directly or communicate in person.

Q: Do you think the insufficient communication was because artwork as a visual language doesn’t translate as naturally as writing? If writing can achieve the level of communication you want better than art, would you be more satisfied with that option?

You can’t really compare the effectiveness of verbal communication vs. the art language in exhibitions. I’m just saying that I wish to shorten the time lag in receiving feedback and starting worthwhile conversations. Take, for example, doing interviews, especially indirect text-based interviews. To me, these are necessary extensions of the exhibition. Words definitely help me organize my thoughts, especially with articulating my intuitive consciousness. But words aren’t the driving force of my art practice. It’s just that I no longer want to use the standard trajectory of the professional career artist to guide my work with art anymore. That kind of art life will be rather short-lived. It’s no different from marketed tastes – soon, you’ll be replaced by someone new.

Q: You no longer want to be labeled this way, but when did you realize you had become a “professional artist”?

Probably around 2014 to 2015. I had my second solo gallery show in 2014. After that, there were all kinds of museum group shows. Then at the end of 2015, I was nominated for the finalist show of the third annual HuaYu Youth Award. By the end of 2015, I was very much identifying myself as a professional artist. The recent incident with the SanYa Art Prize actually gave me a chance to review my own mindset at the time.

Are you asking when I started to think of “artist” as my professional identity?

Q: Like, when did you gain the confidence to call yourself an artist? Because many recent art school graduates who aspire to become artists someday go through the process of “figuring it out, wanting to become, and looking for opportunities”. Maybe many of them wouldn’t feel comfortable calling themselves artists for quite a while.

Indeed. If we don’t talk about subjective cognition, and only look at factual experience, then I’ve been an art worker since 2012, 2013. Because the majority of my time and effort then was already spent on working with art. The reason I say I subjectively started to think of myself as a professional artist from 2014-2015 was mostly due to the income.

Q: You were able to start living off selling your artwork by then?

That year, me and my partner were able to separate our living space from the studio, and were also able to invite friends over for a housewarming party when we moved to a new place. The same year, we invited our parents from Hangzhou to come celebrate the Spring Festival with us in Beijing. Perhaps it was that kind of relative financial independence that made me think I was a professional artist. 

I remember that year, the boss of the gallery invited their collaborating artists and all the gallery employees to gather at a private karaoke room for some sort of team-building group event. She took the opportunity to tell us, “You young people still have a long way to go in order to become professional artists. ” What she meant was that being a professional artist is more than just having career achievements. Besides frequent exhibition showcases, you also need the will and ability to extend your social circle.

But I have to say, at the time our income was neither high nor stable. Not only were we not in a position to feel happy about our situation, we didn’t even have a sense of security. This can even be related to the artists’ insecurity that exploded in the recent incidents around the SanYa Youth Award’s jury selection, and the artist community’s demand for artist fees. Artists generally have the anxiety, “How much longer can I stay in this industry?”

Q: But why now? Why is this the incident that surfaces all these problems? The art world in China has been operating like this for many years. In fact, in the past few years, artists’ chances to show their work or received exhibition funding are much greater than the early days. People accepted the situation then; why are they now protesting?

If you look at the demographic of the young artists who were chosen as HuaYu Youth Award finalists in recent years, you see a lot of them have a foreign education background – some of them actually live abroad, or even those who didn’t study abroad had experience showing works in foreign exhibitions. The majority of them have experience working with public organizations that operate with relatively legitimate standards. When working in the exhibition system in second or third-tier cities in China, they have to face cultural and systemic differences. It’s not hard to imagine that the catalyst of the protest was not only anger toward the committee’s imperfect handling of the jury process, but more likely because of concerns regarding artists’ dignity and protection over the years. The dissatisfaction has accumulated to a point where, personally, some people no longer want to tolerate their condition of survival between these two parallel systems.

The most important part of that publicized dispute was the question posed to peers working in the industry: “How did you people even manage to survive like this? How could you tolerate such a bad environment? ”This mood isn’t limited to the discussion of “award vacant” or “demand for artist fees”. As the basic living expense keeps on rising, the opportunity and future for professionalization as an artist has been dramatically reduced. The anxiety of young artists and curators about their future survival has reached a critical point. 

Perhaps the best way to answer your question is: it’s because the new generation of art workers generally come from a wealthier family background and received better education, and they have a higher expectation of the art industry ecosystem. Yet in many situations, the art world in China is still operating under the old paradigm established more than a decade ago, which functions on the idea of motivating the general majority of artists with examples of the very few lucky ones who were able to gain both fortune and fame. However, the new generation can no longer put up with this system.

Q: I think the most interesting part in the dispute is that the judges themselves were the young generation who challenged their predecessors. But now, when the younger generation start to question their roles as gatekeepers, they just hide in silence. At least, I think the fact that people are still willing to talk about these things is a good sign.

In our social environment where information and resources are all subject to unequal access, it’s a really difficult thing to ask people to share a common concern and have empathy for each other. In order to gain their own personal growth and economic advancement, the senior generation of artists had to break free from an even older system, and they had to experience even more obstacles than we do. On the other hand, we more or less grew up watching their experiences, though most of the intergenerational experiences isn’t directly applicable, because our society has changed so drastically. Nowadays, the young artists are living in a very different world from their predecessors. Ever since our time at the art academy, those kids who were willing to devote themselves to contemporary art already set their career goals to become professional artists while in school, where the industry depicted a future for them and motivated them to become the next successful, lucky prodigy. In most scenarios where the two generations interact with each other, it’s more like the interaction at a venture capital business meeting. If they don’t have a teacher-student relationship, or are already friends regardless of their age difference, it’s very unlikely that they’ll have any deep communication.

I think this coincides with larger social conflicts: on the one hand, opportunities and resources are concentrated in the hands of juries of predecessors. But for younger generations, the seniors’ vision and experience creates obvious bias and preferences. There’s this upper and lower class distinction in the art world, and they don’t trust each other. Everyone knows the judgment of art is very subjective, so it’s especially important that the jury system is open and transparent. However, the burden of limited exhibition set-up time and non-ideal working conditions were borne by the artists, and the finalist jurors used “unsatisfactory exhibition presentation” as an excuse to arbitrarily make the controversial “award vacant” decision. Together with the awful precedent of the Jimei x Arles Photo Festival, young artists finally realized the arbitrary rules behind these kinds of talent selection shows. So, the main demand of the protest this time was about rights protection; it was a collective resistance to fight against their gradually marginalized role. However, I don’t think this will make more people willing to refuse the current mechanism of selection.

Q: Do you think this has to do with the fact that as we grow older, our cognition of the world becomes more definite, our social circle becomes smaller, and we have less communication and contact with the younger generation? Do you think you’ll act like those jurors when you’re older? Would you have the self-awareness to say, no matter how much you’ve achieved before, that maybe now you no longer fit the new era?

If we don’t change our imagination of this so-called “professional artist” standard, for sure it will repeat again. So, for people my age, we have to be willing to understand the reality of the younger generation. I think, besides paying attention to the current exhibition ecosystem, teaching is another way to be in contact with them. You’ll see the problems they face in the beginning, and it’s an opportunity to understand the cultural influences they’re living under. I see teaching as a window into society, instead of just a job.

Q: The young people you’re meeting now through teaching – do you see the problems they’re having as different from when you were a student?

Some of it remains the same, which is not having access to systemic knowledge. Their way of acquiring knowledge is quite random – basically just grab whatever is around. And most of the information isn’t even second-hand, but third-hand information.

Q: I remember back when we were in undergrad, we would have movie-watching parties. Each time, one person would bring a movie that he or she recommended. I remember you once brought a DVD of Underground (1997, Emir Kusturica).

Right. When we were students, we didn’t really have much insight as to what’s good and what’s bad, and we’d trust the judgment of awards like the Palme d'Or. Of course, I’d already watched that movie many times, and I was sharing it because I really liked it. But for sure, what you consider good is a mix of two things: your personal preference, and whether it was verified by some sort of authority. These two elements form the students’ information selection criteria.

Q: That movie left a really strong memory for me. I was trying to recall what it was like back in 2005, 2006. How did you find it? Where did you usually find movies at the time?

Besides learning art and cultural information from school, we would of course go search for movies in the DVD market. Cut-out and bootlegged DVDs were our second classroom. I first started buying them when I was 16 years old. My favorite thing to do back then was to search for DVDs that were sold in the back of stores at electronics markets, or from a few secret spots by the roadside. This underground movie and music industry flourished for at least 15 years. It was probably still around after we went to study abroad. Looking back now, that was really part of the formative experience that shaped our worldview before the internet era.

Q: I don’t think the so-called internet ecosystem existed at the time. Back then, Google was still accessible without a VPN. It seemed like a very cool foreign tool where you could find out about things that you weren’t supposed to know in China. But the problem was, looking at the search bar, we didn’t know what to search for.

Totally. To run an internet search, you only need a keyword combination, you don’t need to have a fully-formed question. We didn’t know what to search for back then because we lacked the experience of using an index search engine. Nowadays, when students are using Google, Zhihu, or Guokr, there are already massive amounts of Q&A examples, so they don’t have the same problem we had back then.

Q: But I think the problem nowadays is that, when facing such an overwhelming amount of information, one may still not know what they really want to see, and what questions they want to ask.

Something like that. For inexperienced young students, they just grab whatever comes their way, whatever information gets pushed by the algorithm to the top, or shared most widely. I think proactive learning is a difficult thing – no matter what time period it is, technology doesn’t change that problem.

Q: When you were an undergrad student, what was your imagination of future artistic life like? What did being an artist meant to you at the time? 

Back then, what I imagined was to have a studio, and hope there was an audience paying attention to my work. I’m afraid that’s about it. Maybe at most I was also expecting to be able to sell work in order to continue making art. But in terms of a detailed comprehension of being a “professional artist”, or making my work a competitive cultural product in the market, or establishing some sort of personal brand, or working with particular established galleries – those ideas were not clear at all, even when I was studying for my master’s degree abroad. But studying abroad was an option, because you knew all the art knowledge you were learning about was second-hand. So what do you do? You’d better go see the originals in person. 

Q: You first went to study abroad in 2008?

Right.

Q: Do you think that experience had a big impact on your life and art practice?

For sure. I remember you asked a question on WeChat: “What would be the most significant life experience for China’s millennial generation?” And you mentioned, for our parents’ generation, “reform and opening up” was probably the most significant life experience.

Q: So, do you think studying abroad is the most significant life experience for the millennial generation?

No. No matter how you look at it, studying abroad is still a relatively rare experience available only to a very small group of young lucky ones. But I think in terms of big trends, even those who didn’t study abroad have had similar cultural experiences.

For our generation, the really impactful events probably can be summarized in two ways: first, our generation was finally able to pursue an uninterrupted higher education; second, the broader narrative of our experience has been an optimistic globalization process. Both of these aspects made people willing to improve themselves. For example, the millennial generation in general has very different goals from their parents’ generation. For individuals with high standards, they probably want to be a “global citizen”. Regardless of whether one studied abroad or not, or degree variation, the major drive is the same: this generation wants to have similar development opportunities and cultural experiences to people from other parts of the world, instead of being isolated outside of it.

Q: Basically, being globalized.

Right. In fact it was a passive process, even though we thought we actively engaged in it.

Q: Some people embraced it wholeheartedly, while others just went with the flow. Speaking of globalization, when you went to the UK to receive first-hand information, did your experience match what you had imagined and expected?

There was actually quite a contrast. Because when we were in China, we engaged with globalization with a generally positive vision. But the dilemma you have to face is: when you finally arrive at the center of Western culture, you realize globalization can in fact go on without you.

Q: You mean as an individual, your personal impact in globalization is barely noticeable?

Or let’s say Chinese people’s impact is barely noticeable.

Q: Really? Didn’t China export a lot of cheap labor for globalization?

Right, but the biggest contribution of cheap labor is to lower the production cost – just like the call centers based in India, you don’t need to move to the center of the empire.

Q: To go there and learn from it?

From the point of view of the receiving country, foreign students can be viewed as consumers of their education industry. After all, inter-cultural education is meant to cultivate a sense of affirmation. It’s the same with young people from Africa and Latin America who are now coming to study in China. I met a few Central American kids once during a layover in Chicago. They were going to study at a university in Beijing that I’d never heard of. Through our conversation, I realized that they really thought China is a wonderland, a place to realize their life value. But I think once they arrived, they found the reality much different from what they’d expected.

As long as the contribution is unequal, then particularly for those who want to work in the culture field, their role will be less consequential in the exchange. That’s what I realized through my work after graduation. For example, introducing information about China to Western audiences. In terms of the history of communication between China and the UK, and contributions made by contemporary scholars and artists, the most “reliable” work was done by Westerners themselves.

Q: Though the whole situation for Chinese students studying abroad now is quite different from your time.

Right. Now it’s no longer the same. The change has been quite drastic over the past ten years.

Q: Things moved really fast.

I have to say, when I was studying in UK, the public image of China was already improved and more objective in the West, though it still wasn’t fully up to date. The renewed impression had a lot to do with China’s economic growth, and also because, these days, the number of Chinese students who go study in English-speaking countries has doubled and tripled. Chinese students now have richer family backgrounds and better language skills, so they can exert their talents better. The amount of immigration has increased very quickly as well, which should have brought a better understanding of contemporary China to the West.

Even during the years I was in London, I could sense the huge change in that time. My most memorable experience there happened when I first started post-graduate work, which also greatly helped me understand the situation in China when I came back. I’ve learned that no matter where you are, or what time period you’re living in, the most difficult question is always about what you can do there. For example, to envision the relationship between myself and the development of China. When you’re abroad, you begin to develop some insight about this relationship; but to examine whether your insight is valid, you have to come back to the country. And when everything is speeding up and changing so fast, you’ll encounter quite a few setbacks.

Q: Perhaps you didn’t realize or think about those questions before. Things were just happening, and you were absorbing the information. Once you’re abroad and living in a different system, you start to interpret and reflect on past experiences. Then, you gain new perspective looking back at the phenomena and problems of where you came from, and try to understand why they’re like that, and what your own relationship to them is.

Indeed. Luckily, in the past few years, I’ve still had the chance to briefly live abroad every once in a while, whether it’s through work-related opportunities such as residencies and exhibitions, or just travel for fun. Even though the length of stay is often too short, at least this kind of flux movement in and out of the country has been continuous. It feels a bit like the Klein bottle in topology, where you can see the outside from inside, and vice versa.

In the first few years after I just returned to the country, I thought those kids who weren’t prepared, who couldn’t handle the psychological stress, were better off just staying in China. But now I think no matter if you’re ready or not, you should try to leave the country at least once. If you can’t afford to study abroad, then you should travel with your backpack; if you can’t go to developed countries, then try Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia. At least to experience the change of perspective, get a sense of China’s position in the world, as well as imagine your future role in the world.

Q: But the young people who are going to study abroad nowadays, their mentality is different from yours back in the day. China is very different from what it was over a decade ago, and so are young people’s perspectives when they go abroad.

Right, it’s different. I can imagine that. Students who study abroad these days are easily affected by the consumerist mentality. A lot of families can’t stand the direction of domestic education anymore, and they would rather pay a very expensive price for their kids to experience a better education product and service.

Q: Have you been back to the UK lately?

I was in London last year, from January to the beginning of March for an artist residency.

Q: Had the UK already left the EU at the time?

At the time, Theresa May was still Prime Minister, and the dynamic was quite nuanced. The British parliament was having huge disagreements, and they hadn’t reached a consensus on negotiations with the EU yet. I think it’s quite interesting how the Brexit decision could remain suspended in the air for so many years. Before I came back to China in 2012, the London School of Economics and Political Science was already talking about the possibility of Brexit at a pubic academic lecture. They thought the EU might collapse, and that the UK was likely to play a very important role in it.

Q: So, it’s been seven years since you last went back.

I went back to the UK in late 2015 as well, and that was when I really envisioned my life trajectory as a professional artist. But when I went back again in 2019, I’d realized much more clearly that I’m a non-profit artist rather than a professional artist.

In fact, I was quite confused for a long time, and it took me a while to understand the difference between the two. For example, if I went back to UK as a “professional artist”, then I would start to pay attention to my commercial value, weighing which level of galleries I could collaborate with, whether I’d be able to make my work into a brochure for international collectors. Apparently, these aren’t major drives for my practice. Rather, I was still more or less the same person as when I first went to study there – I’m still an artist from China. Most of the people who care about my practice are based in China; the field where I can make use of my talent is in China.

So, besides research on things I’m interested in, another part of the residency in London was to share my recent work. Like other artists and curators who were doing the residency at the same time, to an extent, we were basically there to report to the center of the empire about what left-wing liberals around the world are doing these days. Thinking about how that kind of dynamic never changes, I was quite depressed. 

Q: Was the UK in 2015 still the center of the empire?

I was talking about 2019, and much more so in 2015. I had a group show in Germany in 2015, at the same time Frieze London was happening, and I thought that could be an excuse for me to go back to the UK – though afterwards I realized I was daydreaming too much. No matter how much the world economic structure has changed, or how technology has advanced, some power dynamics in contemporary culture still remain the same. Especially after that artist residency, I thought a lot about the relationship between my work and the global contemporary art landscape, and it felt quite different from when I was just doing short-term travel a few years earlier.

Q: How do you think you’re going to adjust your practice and your relationship with the art world going forward? In other words, who do you want your audience to be?

In the past few years, I’ve had constant anxiety. I want to change that and start doing things that I think are important. Though, due to the social norms in China, we are still dealing with too many pre-modern problems. Today, we still don’t see any good ways to solve these accumulated problems.

Q: What are these pre-modern problems?

Social and political structures that perplexed Western countries before the 19th century. Within the historical experience of modern China, these are the problems regarding, “What’s a better way to structure people’s lives? ”From a personal point of view, it’s the question of whether a person can have the autonomy to pursue the life they want. For example, you’ll be bothered by your parents asking for grandchildren, which requires you to face the concept of family defined by a traditional society. After all, what’s the purpose of bringing a life into this world?

Of course, there’s the problem of whether we have an ample array of choices. But after all these years of economic and social development, I see the majority of people in our society still living in an environment where they’re asked to obey the norms, and don’t have many choices. On the path of pursuing the right to choose, it’s a relatively easy question in terms of how to respect tradition, while the harder question is, “How is this society organized?” Is it through self-disciplined individuals who are bonded by a social contract, or is it through some non-negotiable arrangement that tells you to accept life as it is?

Q: You think because art is made in such an environment, and artists are members of society, that these problems will also affect you as an artist?

Of course, because I still have to live in this society. My reaction to these problems has become part of my life experience. It’s reflected in the same old awkward position that individual art workers have had to face in China, especially the constant defeat when living and working in art district clusters in recent years.

One very important influence is that the urban villages in the suburbs of Beijing have completely implemented the logic of top-down security and resource management. In fact, it’s a nationwide policy. Artists have to endure “force majeure”, disguised in the name of land development or public security. If they’re subject to housing demolition and resettlement, or forced eviction, then neither artists as renters, landlords as owners of the land, nor village committees are entitled to negotiate or protect their rights.

The microeconomic ecosystem in the past, where artists tried to navigate the gaps in law and society in order to find their place, is totally unsustainable. If you want to maintain the relatively low-cost “factory warehouse as studio” production mode, then you can only move to the farthest suburbs of the city where the regulations are relatively loose. As long as artists and art workers aren’t recognized as an occupation category by law, the same illegal production and habitation problems will continue to repeat over and over again. Beijing is determined to kick out almost all informal economies from the city, though the art industry has not been the worst hit by this management strategy, due to its relatively flexible production mode.

Q: Do you feel like the situation could change in the future? Do you think individual resistance, such as recent demands on social media, can be a catalyst for change?

It will definitely take a much longer time than we previously imagined. The movement style of resistance can sometime attract media attention, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of the problem, especially the knowledge and psychology of the majority. Why would the Chinese art world, including a lot of the youth in China, still have a complex about the West? Because these domestic problems are the result of the society’s development stage, it’s impossible to resolve in the short term, and would probably take a generation to change some of the conditions. So, the art workers who don’t agree with the current policies and the dominant state that arbitrarily crushes individual rights, will still hope to get strategic inspiration from Europe and the US.

Q: Speaking of which, the contemporary art that we studied was developed by Western society. When we were learning how to make artwork, we were actually indirectly learning the logic and mentality of Western society, which is about how to manifest personal expression. So, the problem you’re facing is: as a Chinese person, the mentality of the society you come from is now in conflict with the Western liberal ideals that you’ve adopted.

If this conflict is destined to follow us our whole life, then the emphasis lies in how individuals imagine their role in this kind of society. It won’t be a smooth process. Once they reach a certain age, many of our peers will be totally disappointed by this kind of social environment, and won’t be able to accept a lot of standard behavior.

After all these years, people have started to realize that there are certain regular patterns that can’t be dismissed. Unlike importing technologies for production, which can quickly push society toward a more advanced level of development, things like laws and culture reshape the ideological system from the bottom up, so they’ll require a few generations of continuous work in order to make some change.

Q: Before, not only those who studied art, but the whole general vibe of the society was that we wanted to learn from the West. Now, that mood seems to be over.

That’s because people previously envisioned the goal of development only on the surface level. They really thought of external material achievement as the measuring standard for modernization.

Q: So, in the current climate, as an artist who’s already undergone the transformation of your artistic and societal mentality, how are you going to adapt to this new environment?

I’ll just let myself be more grounded – there’s nothing wrong with realistically acknowledging one’s own cultural heritage. Every time I go live in a more developed society for a little while, I realize that I’m actually quite different from the people who grew up there natively. Where does this difference come from? For sure, the basic expectations for a male in an agricultural civilization had a big influence on my behavioral and psychological patterns. Even if I manage to reduce this influence, the obstacles to understanding each other when meeting people from other cultural backgrounds can’t be eliminated.

You can say that the millennial generation is the first generation of pupils within the transition toward a modern society. Right now, our society is still like a clumsy, middle-aged man-child. The good thing is, at least we can still see a bit of logic in how the designers wanted to build this society. Other than continuing to learn, and trying to be a better version of ourselves, we should have more tolerance for future young generations – try to understand their utmost desire to build their own little universe within the big universe, and to create new subcultures, new careers, or even invent their own languages.

Q: It’s easy to do that when you’re young. Once you reach your 30s, you’ll still have to face the same old problems.

True. Especially when you start to have kids – then you have no choice but to face intense exchanges with mainstream ideas.

Q: You mentioned earlier that during your most recent residency in the UK, you realized you’re no longer satisfied playing the role of someone who comes from outside the world’s culture center, and only goes there to give reports. You also mentioned that the majority of your audience and collectors are based in China. So, for your future work, and the intended audience, will you put more emphasis on the domestic base?

I don’t think I’m going to exclude overseas audiences just because I see how fixed the relationship is. Instead, I should review my work and see if I can break through my previous imagination about artistic practice. If my goal is merely the foreseeable achievements set by the industry, then for sure I can only be a submissive reporter in both the commercial system and academic world. Besides, audiences should update their imagination as well. To a great extent, the art world is already a widespread network of social relations. Its driving force comes from the information exchange and synergistic production between multiple creative hubs and communities.

Q: But when making work and trying to express yourself, you still hope to find someone who can understand you, right? Where do you think this person would be from?

I think they’d be the type who often travels between places, instead of someone who sits tight at a plentiful spot and rarely moves.

Q: In recent years, your work has become more and more mature in terms of visual presentation and your approach. It seems like you’ve also found the topic you want to focus on. How did this gradual clarification happen? Did your experience in the UK make you start to think about geopolitical matters? Will you continue discussing these topics in your future work?

Regarding why I started making this kind of work and my process of developing it, I’m not going to repeat it again, since I’ve said it many times in other interviews. In my future work, I’d like to focus on the intertwined relationship between basic technology and bio-politics. I’ve always felt this is an area I don’t know well enough, but it actually closely coincides with the work I do. So, I need to pay extra attention to my relevant personal experience that had a deep impact on me.

I used to think artists have to work within a focused field. For example, embracing a specific topic brand like “21st century geopolitical landscape”. Even though it’s the right term to summarize the intersection of my experience and my interests, the actual effect of such self-definition is merely to suggest exclusivity, rather than helping me develop new self-reflection.

Q: Expert.

Exactly, that’s a very accurate word – aiming to become an expert. Now, I no longer think contemporary art should remain in its current frame. Besides having a focus, one shouldn’t forget to have empathy for the human condition, nor should we forget about traveling and holism.

In recent years, a lot of artists have been making works about artificial intelligence. But besides the technical part, one should also realize that AI applications are just part of the automation process. The purpose of the intelligence is to improve recognition accuracy and processing efficiency, so to meet the accelerated speed requirements of contemporary society. But I’m afraid it won’t make current social management logic more legitimate, nor does it respect humanity or nature. If current artificial intelligence is still just a form of development of existing modernity, then it’s all the same – merely a new tool that serves the old desires of modernity.  

Q: What you’re talking about is quite in line with a major trend the government has been focusing on in recent years.

There are a lot of similarities. A lot of the problems that many scholars and intellectuals are concerned about nowadays are exactly what the government, together with corporations, are trying to push forward. There are two ways to view governing: one is from the perspective of the social engineers or rulers. The other one is you and I as the governed; are we willing to understand how the situation will unfold?

Q: You talked about how you’re paying attention to what the government is doing, and you reflect on what you can do as an individual. But when it comes down to making the artwork, you’re facing an environment that’s full of censorship – all the exhibitions have to be reported to the culture bureau. On the one hand, you have to face it, challenge it; on the other hand, would you first instinctively self-censor your work? Or do you try to find more strategic ways to present your ideas?

I’m definitely practicing self-censorship every day. Being cautious about what you say and what you do has long been a part of the Chinese culture and lifestyle. Perhaps because of these experiences, it’s really hard for me to believe censorship will ever completely disappear from human society. Perhaps, to some extent, my works are a result of my interaction with the censorship culture. But I don’t agree that finding ways to deal with censorship is being calculating. The real difficult part is to activate an emotional response and engage in conversation within oneself, and figure out how to co-exist with the ubiquitous prohibitions and control – and to dig into something that you really want to talk about in a dangerous and difficult environment. 

I think on the matter of fighting for more space for artistic expression, the last thing to give up on is presenting a path that’s different from news investigations and academic research. If you study the history of modern censorship systems, you can easily see the logic it’s based on, and what kind of disasters it will bring. Despite the rationalizations and excuses from developed countries, what’s happening in China now is merely a replay of history. There’s not much difference in terms of imaginative space.

Q: But I think the current attitude of Chinese censorship is that they’d rather go overkill than let something slip through.

In recent years, the supervision and security intelligence departments have hired more personnel, and are constantly upgrading their technology. They’re much more efficient now.

Q: Then how do you tell them what your work is about? How do you explain what you’re trying to express? From what I’ve heard, if you want to participate in large-scale exhibitions such as art fairs, you need to first submit your work description to the culture bureau.

If it’s through some accidental encounter that I meet their employees, I should be willing to explain my ideas behind the work. At least they’re individual human beings who are willing to understand what’s behind the sensual experience. But I anticipate they’re probably more like the majority of art audiences – they don’t really want to communicate with the artist.

Art fairs do require you to submit the work introduction first, because the event is public, so the culture bureau for sure will send someone to check. Since I refuse to use art as a way to express my political opinion, I’m even less willing to turn this kind of political statement into a commodity in the art fair setting. Nowadays, the exhibition programs of Chinese art museums have become more cautious. They’re very careful about artists’ work that has a focus on social or political matters. So far, galleries and project spaces haven’t yet reached the point where they have to report every detail of their exhibitions. We can only wait and see what happens.

Q: But don’t you think, in this kind of environment, an artist will first practice self-censorship? When I look through interview transcripts, I’ll sometimes think that one part may sound a bit too sensitive, even though maybe it’s not really a big deal. But my first assumption will be the worst-case scenario.

Artists’ desires are actually quite simple: they just want to say what they want to say, and they want to be able to constantly say something. I think the general principle is just that. Though artists should nevertheless have different standards than self-published media in terms of delivering concepts. For example, in response to ubiquitous limitations, artists should confront the slow and subtle psychological and cultural influence of mainstream ideology, and understand their relationship with such influence.

Q: But for example, the icons and elements you choose to use in your work, they do seem to embed political connotations.

Most of the iconic images I’ve used in the past are from the public domain. The goal of public domain is to be recognizable to all humankind. They’re the symbols everyone learns about though textbooks and news. Just like common sense, they’re likely to embed the mark of their times, carry traces of historical ideologies. They’re universal enough, and they’ve long been inhabiting the grey area of our consciousness. Therefore, in my past work, I thought they were the first things that needed to be reexamined.

But now I no longer think I have to rely on them in order to continue my work, because I realize the deeper syndromes that lie in our mindset come not only from external systems and historical influence, but also from our emotional dependence on popular narratives. I’m afraid this point is unlikely to be suggested through those perfect-yet-enclosed iconic images. 

Q: I remember in art school, the teachers would tell us to try make an impact on the public through our work, make people realize things they didn’t realize before – there was a sense of mission. It was as if we knew better than ordinary people, so they needed to learn something though looking at our work.

That’s quite in vain. It’s true that a lot of people in the art world hold that view. Perhaps your New Media department had a strong elitist sense. We sculpture majors were probably the quickest to accept the fact that “I’m just a worker,” which has resonated with me more and more in recent years.

So, the emphasis of the recent article about “artist fees” that went viral among Chinese artist peers was precisely about the image of “artists as worker,” and questions about “labor ethics”. While in fact, I really think a lot of artists don’t actually consider themselves “workers” at all. They think they occupy a more important or higher-ranking role in society. Indeed, I don’t think what artists are facing now is just a simple labor problem. Today, even art school students are trying to act more like suppliers in the industry chain. A lot of the labor in the art world is actually invisible – for example, labor performed by artists’ assistants, art handlers, writers for art publications, photographers, package shippers, frame builders… yet some artists choose to ignore their rights as workers. So, it’s quite problematic to let artists be the industry representatives to talk about labor ethics.

Q: What do you think is the most pressing problem that needs to be addressed, given the current state of the Chinese art world?

It’s hard to reach consensus on this question, because different participants will have very different perspectives. But looking at the problems artists are having now, I would say that young artists shouldn’t be too eager to pursue a professional identity and personal glory. Instead, they should establish social consciousness to help each other out from early on, take care of their peers in the community who are of a similar age, and pay attention to other communities’ relative positions and fluid relations in society.

Q: What kind of people collect your work?

A lot of them are close to my age; some are even younger than me. Some of them are in finance, some in investment, and some are artists as well.

Q: Do they collect your work as an investment, or do they really appreciate it?

Quite possibility both – I can only hope the latter part is greater. Fundamentally, my work is about how to loosen up fixed modes of cognition. If they collect my work because they like it, then perhaps they feel like they can identify their own experiences in my work.

Q: It sounds like your collectors are people of your generation who shared similar life experiences, but they engage with society more than you do.

I think so. The collectors of contemporary art in general are a group of people who have a youthful attitude and understand China’s problems well, whereas artists’ understanding of the reality can be quite limited. Though, these two parties won’t actually have much substantive communication.

Q: What sort of impact do you think these young art collectors have had on the Chinese art world?

Each generation definitely will have differences in what they value most. Nowadays, having an international identity is a very common goal for the young and affluent. The cultural choices that young collectors have are definitely also constantly expanding. I guess whether they want to support domestic art is up to chance and fate.

Q: So, these people together form the so-called “art world” ecosystem.

If you’re talking about the commercial aspect of the art world ecosystem, then we shouldn’t forget about galleries. The galleries that managed to establish their reputations all have unique insight about the contemporary art market. They facilitate and promote cultural innovation through selling artwork. For living artists, especially young artists, there’s a lot of uncertainty in crafting their legacy – it’s very different from managing traditional artwork.

So, collectors and galleries hold more of an investment mindset when looking at artists, which is inevitably different from how artists view themselves. Maybe because, to them, the excitement of art is always beyond life itself. When they’re used to thinking like that, it’s quite easy to have a bias toward their own identity, as if artists can automatically detach from normal people’s concrete everyday life problems. Thinking the artist’s job is to extract different kinds of aesthetic interests… I’m afraid such a view is training artists to become entertainers.

If we separate artwork into two categories, those that “celebrate established values” and those that “question established values”, then some artists will still rather choose to work in the dumpster. The recycled and digested work they do in there is invisible, and the only visible part is the tangible labor they perform when reinventing the already existing reality.

Q: To engage with the art world, artists digest the experiences and questions they encounter in society and turn them into work, while others participate by exhibiting or purchasing the work.

Exactly. Galleries and collectors participate in the post-production sector of the art industry chain, which is also very important. But the most crucial part is the initial phase. During this time, artists have to endure everything all by themselves. Galleries can help artists in the production, promotion, sales, and archival stages; but the transformation stage where artists turn life experiences that had an impact on them into materials they can work with – especially the invisible thinking process – those parts are impossible for the later-stage participants to fully understand. Granted, there are some artists who have very strong communication skills. They’ll inform the gallery and collectors about their progress in the early stage, and they’re willing to “live broadcast” it. This way, not only do they allow galleries and collectors to witness the whole process, but also enable them to become actual producers. But I’m still not willing to open up this initial stage yet.

Q: In the past, Chinese contemporary art has been basically learning from the Western mode, copying the existing art system in the West to China. But today, after over 30 years of development, judging from the China’s domestic policies and its renewed attitude internationally, do you think China could someday provide a new art mode or cultural landscape for the world?

The future is quite likely to be a very different world. In the past, due to our status as a less-developed country, the art world here was keen on randomly grabbing foreign cultural debris in the context of split geopolitical relations. For sure this situation will further continue. If there’s any “new landscape” in the future, I think it won’t emerge from those cultural superpowers or cultural enterprises that proclaim missions for themselves in the name of national or political beliefs, but from scattered small creative communities. If we look into how to establish more constructive intellectual exchange, how to devote ourselves to the circulatory system of world culture similar to practicing a total holistic system view in ecology, then a different future is totally possible.

Interviewed on January 8th, 2020 via video chat. The answers to the questions were updated by the artist after the outbreak of COVID-19.