8 Chinese Artists You Should Know About!

陈天

Chen Tianzhuo

“FLESH IS INHERENTLY WEAK,

AND THE BORDER BETWEEN LIFE

AND DEATH

IS, AS SUCH,

INDISTINCT.”

Chen Tianzhuo’s work is where the sexually grotesque meets exuberant fantasy, ancient ritual merges with blingy, tacky, techno and contemporary performance art blends with outlandish, alternative theatrics. On a video screen, two painted, naked male bodies, each wearing gold watches and amulets, roll around on top of one another in exultant throes of passion and rage. Their genitals are caked in red flaking paint, their colours rubbing off on each other as they smear one another with what looks blood and mud. The figures seem to simultaneously clash against the spiritual relics and holy sites scattered around them, their ostentatious display slowed down to an over-the-top theatrical performance. But these bodies also embody a powerful state of altered consciousness, of pre-human knowledge and animalistic urges that are kept safely hidden and sanitized in an ordered, conforming and dutiful society.

The walls showing his work are painted electric blue, steel chains hold the various video screens and sand, desert plants and a harness made from bones scatter the room. Thumping electronic music leaves us standing enthralled and awed at this scene of delightful chaos, aggressive non-binary sexual energy and cultish re-imaginings of ancient people from another time. Wow.

Currently working in Beijing and London, Chen Tianzhuo was born in 1985 and studied at Central St Martins in London, and received his Masters from Chelsea College of Art in 2010.

胡晓媛

Hu Xiaoyuan

In a vast dark space hover 3 enormous screens, each featuring a different video work by the artist. Axing ice to cross the sea, 2012 is a haunting and absorbing meditation on humanity’s struggle in the face of nature and change. We see the artist engaged in an intense, private encounter at the water’s edge, sometimes dancing, sometimes staggering, sometimes falling in amongst the waves. The infinite stretch of ocean and ethereal soundtrack accompanying an aerial view of ice plains reinforce the sheer magnitude of the natural world. We intensely feel the helplessness and smallness of a human being in the face of such epic vastness.

Born in 1977 in Heilongjiang, Hu Xiaoyuan’s artistic practice examines what it means to be human in different ways, and incorporates a wide variety of media into her practice, including video, painting and installation work.

刘韡

Liu Wei

Behind a glass window and encased in an enormous box, giant silver shapes seem to be frozen still, captured in a moment of time just before they all collide and collapse. These shards, balls and curves appear metal-like in their weight and density, and articulate a sense of space that is active with energy and force. Perhaps these are microscopic particles that have been magnified millions of times, and we’re now seeing them occupying 3D space through a microscope. Perhaps it’s also an organisation of forms arranged to convey a particular reading of space. Either way, we stand in awe in front of these enigmatic, yet mute structures made by the artist.

Liu Wei was born in 1971, in Wuhan and is represented by galleries across China and Thailand.

纳布奇

Nabuqi

Photo: Pinterest

Nabuqi is an artist from Ulanqab, Mongolia, who lives and works in Beijing, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013.

The artist makes connections between objects and their surroundings, elegant in their simplicity and yet striking in their uncanniness. Her inspiration comes from her immediate environment in the form of houses, streets, staircases, doors… She also takes inspiration from the long train trips she took from Inner Mongolia to Beijing during her time of study. Her sculptures reference elements that are designed and built for humans, but are in fact miniaturised versions of these objects, dislocating us from our normal relationships with these everyday items.  We are prevented from entering, from climbing, from seeing through these passages normally associated with human wandering, instead viewing them from either afar, or from far above our normal vantage points.

He Xiangyu

何翔宇

Photo: Ben Westoby, Courtesy White Cube

Born in 1986, and studied at Shenyang Normal University, He Xiangyu is a leading conceptual artist and exhibits internationally. His work is heavily influenced by his Chinese cultural heritage, his upbringing and memories of driving around vast Chinese cities as a child. 

Tank Project (2011–13) is a life-size military tank made entirely of luxury Italian leather, and was exhibited in the White Cube in Bermondsey in 2014. The work took two years to create, and was hand-sewn by an entire factory of female needle workers, specially trained by the artist. The potent symbol of a tank is heavily layered with different connotations: politics, war, aggression, unstoppable force and a symbol that China has often used to represent itself, as well as one that we associate with China. Luxury Italian leather also comes with its own associations of consumerism, personal wealth, gross expenditure; a symbol of Western materialism. And yet this tank is collapsed, deflated. It is a useless object. It is neither able to be used as an actual tank, nor is it anything remotely like a desirable fashion accessory. Through the artist transforming and denying the normal usage of an object, he encourages us rethink what we know about an object and its associations. He Xiangyu brings new and conflicting ideas into being by bringing together contrasting materials that are rich in connotation as well as striking in their visual quality.

程心怡

Xinyi Cheng

Photos: Artsy

A whimsical melancholia slowly seeps out from Xinyi Cheng’s beautiful paintings. Born in 1989 in Wuhan, and educated in Beijing and Baltimore, she paints her subjects with an exquisite delicacy in oils, managing to capture innocuous moments that make us think twice about what it is that we’re seeing, both in and out of the frame.

The artist says she makes paintings based on “love, trust, honesty, sharing, friendship, sincerity, intuition, humour, impermanence, inefficiency, smallness, multiplicity, clumsiness, fantasy, emotion, fertility, misunderstanding, uncertainty, subtleness, harmony, happiness, and perhaps more values that have been confused with the wind disappearing in the night…” Her unusual compositions often seem to skip a critical part of their narrative, exuding a strong sense of the uncanny, whilst the muted and soft tones reassure us somehow in these curious scenes.

Yang Fudong

杨福东

Photo: Jonathan Leijonhufvud, Courtesy Faurschou Foundation

Yang Fudong, born in 1971 in Beijing, is amongst the most influential contemporary artists living and working in China today. Dawn Breaking – A Museum Film Project, 2018 documents the artist’s 10-year project to write, direct and film 2 epic Song Dynasty scenes in the Long Museum in Shanghai. His audience were invited to experience this unusual filming process and were encouraged to wander amidst the film crew whilst scenes were being shot. Spectators thereby oscillated between witnessing historic scenes and navigating current reality. Nietzsche quotes are interspersed between these scenes, initially provoking a sudden and stark change in the viewer’s train of thought, until the words, relating to ideas of society, power and order, begin to melt and fuse with the imagery on screen. All of these components are set against deep, bright red walls, accentuated by a strip of crimson lighting running the length of the room. This seemed to dramatically resonate against the symbolic blues, yellows and reds of the traditional Chinese costumes in the film, making the piece an incredibly lavish and visually rich feast for the eyes.

苗颖

Miao Ying

Photo: https://www.chinesenewart.com/chinese-artists13/miaoying.htm

Miao Ying, one of China’s first internet artists, approaches her themes of censorship, the collective conscious and youth culture in China with an unusually cheerful sense of humour. Her work ‘Chinternet Plus’ (2016) parodies the government’s attempt to essentially remarket the internet with ‘additional data’ in a bid to boost and reenergise a flagging economy. The project presents a guide to viewer on how to rebrand flimsy and vague ideas and dress them up as grand schemes, arguably a trait of many government projects (see China’s epic Belt and Road Initiative). She sees her work as introducing a ‘counterfeit ideology’, and takes a deeply sardonic tone in approaching the ‘Five Pillars of Chinternet Philosophy’, a series of promises and pledges that will occur with the realisation of the project. But, as often seemingly occurs in China, nowhere is there any precise details of what will actually be delivered, how it will affect people’s lives directly and all we are left with is empty, meaningless words, icons and pictures of cats.  

The artist says:

“From one side of the wall, the Chinese internet appears to be a barren wasteland, yet despite its limitations, it has been evolving and growing—even faster than the net outside the wall. New memes are created rapidly, depending on what underground culture decides to make pertaining to mainstream culture and internet with Chinese characteristics, which is self-censorship. If you know something will be censored, you can go around it, using homophones, making up new words, etc., which all involve a sense of humour and intelligence. You will be shocked by how creative netizens are. The limit of the Chinese internet is what sets it free.”

Visit https://www.chinternetplus.com/ to see her work.