JUAN XU 庸现

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    • Bald Girls Iberia Center 2012
    • Bald Girls A Door 2013
    • Made in China 2013
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    • Bald Girls meet Fluxus 2014
    • Bald Girls Pink Solution 2014
    • Bald Girls Nanjing Forum 2014
    • Fluxus Nanjing 2014
    • Li Xinmo Excluded 2015
    • Performance Day 2015
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    • Art Tour Live Tour 3 / Join us to Kassel 2017
    • Feminist Activism in China: In Conversation with Li Maizi 2017
    • Tianjin Live Art Exhibition 2018
    • Denn ich habe schon alles schon gesehen Frankfurt 2018
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    • Capital @Art. International Frankfurt 2018
    • Feelings as Facts - Memory as Identity Tianjin China 2018-2019
    • Spectacle International Art Exchange Jiangxi China 2019
    • The 7th UP-ON International Live Art Festival 2019
    • 0 Edge Shift Europe A 2020
    • Sharing Crisis 2020
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    • A Very Serious Game
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    • Who is Mary Bauermeister?
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    • We are the Revolution
    • Capital in the Digital Age @ Art
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    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • At Least the Pain is Real
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    • Xiao Lu
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    • Artists and curator
    • Preface
    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • Operation Thanatos in Action
    • At Least the Pain is Real
    • Money Is Time
    • Feelings As Facts
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    • 秃头戈女- 北京伊比利亚
    • 秃头戈女 - 一个门
    • 中国制造
    • 社会雕塑 - 博伊斯在中国
    • 秃头戈女- 时差
    • 红颜女强 –从杨贵妃到“秃头戈女”
    • 油烟才女 - 秃头戈女 遇见激浪
    • 秃头戈女- 桃色策略
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    • 2016威斯巴登行为艺术节
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    • 第三届现场艺术巡展參展: 谁要同去卡塞尔?
    • 女权行动在中国:与李麦子的对话
    • 2018 天津现场艺术创作邀请展
    • 2018 我都看过了
    • 2018法兰克福行为艺术节
    • 资本@艺术. 国际 2018
    • 感受即真实 -记忆与身份认同 2018-19
    • "景观”国际艺术交流展2019
    • 第7届Up-On 向上国际现场艺术节2019
    • 0界 移位 欧洲篇上
    • 共享的危机 2020
  • 文章
    • 共享的危机
    • 记忆与身份认同
    • 谁是玛丽·包麦斯特 (艺术国际版)
    • 信息资本主义时代的博伊斯
    • 秃头戈女 - 和吴味谈男权视野的局限
    • 访谈包麦斯特
    • 托尼•克拉格
    • 庸现与李勇政、 周斌对话。
    • 关于“西方主义”
    • 从 清洗 谈肖鲁对 颠覆 之 再颠覆_
    • 重要的不是秃头-再次回应吴味
    • 驳徐乔斯
    • 严肃的游戏: 对话李勇政
  • 媒体报道
    • 中国来鸿 纽约时报 狄狄
    • 凤凰艺术 : 策展人篇
    • 与画刊谈《博伊斯在中国》
    • 答复新京报记者李健亚
    • 《山花》杂志 2012 10月号访谈
  • 出版
    • 艺术家& 策展人简介
    • 《资本 @ 艺术· 国际》 >
      • 数字时代的资本@艺术
      • 从政治批判到精神拥抱
      • 直觉就是现实
      • “托斯”在行动
      • 至少疼痛还是真实的
      • 感受即真实
      • 金钱就是时间
    • 秃头戈女画册 >
      • 作者译者简介
      • 秃头女性艺术宣言
      • 秃头戈女序
      • 李心沫:一个中国批判现实主义艺术的先锋艺术家
      • 重释肖鲁
      • 艺术视觉与真诚 蓝镜
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 中国玻璃眼球 中文版
      • 东西方女权运动的思考
      • 中国女权运动与女性艺术发展历程
  • 联系
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • PROJECTS
    • Bald Girls Iberia Center 2012
    • Bald Girls A Door 2013
    • Made in China 2013
    • Beuys in China 2013
    • Bald Girls Timelag 2013
    • Femme Totale 2014
    • Bald Girls meet Fluxus 2014
    • Bald Girls Pink Solution 2014
    • Bald Girls Nanjing Forum 2014
    • Fluxus Nanjing 2014
    • Li Xinmo Excluded 2015
    • Performance Day 2015
    • Performance Day 2016
    • Performance Day 2017
    • Art Tour Live Tour 3 / Join us to Kassel 2017
    • Feminist Activism in China: In Conversation with Li Maizi 2017
    • Tianjin Live Art Exhibition 2018
    • Denn ich habe schon alles schon gesehen Frankfurt 2018
    • Performance Day Frankfurt 2018
    • Capital @Art. International Frankfurt 2018
    • Feelings as Facts - Memory as Identity Tianjin China 2018-2019
    • Spectacle International Art Exchange Jiangxi China 2019
    • The 7th UP-ON International Live Art Festival 2019
    • 0 Edge Shift Europe A 2020
    • Sharing Crisis 2020
  • ARTICLES
    • Sharing Crisis
    • A Very Serious Game
    • Bald Girls
    • Who is Mary Bauermeister?
    • Iberia Art Center
    • Time Travel to Fluxus
    • Memory as Iidentity
    • We are the Revolution
    • Capital in the Digital Age @ Art
    • Money Is Time
    • Operation Thanatos in Action
    • Memory as Identity
    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • At Least the Pain is Real
  • PRESS
    • New York Times
    • F.A.Z.
    • Global Times
    • ML Art Source
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • Catalogue Bald Girls
    • Introduction
    • Declaration
    • Preface
    • Li Xinmo
    • Xiao Lu
    • Lan Jiny
    • Female Performance Art
    • History of Feminism
    • Feminist Movement and Feminist Art in East and West
  • Catalogue Capital@Art. Int.
    • Artists and curator
    • Preface
    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • Operation Thanatos in Action
    • At Least the Pain is Real
    • Money Is Time
    • Feelings As Facts
  • CONTACT
  • 关于庸现
  • 展览
    • 秃头戈女- 北京伊比利亚
    • 秃头戈女 - 一个门
    • 中国制造
    • 社会雕塑 - 博伊斯在中国
    • 秃头戈女- 时差
    • 红颜女强 –从杨贵妃到“秃头戈女”
    • 油烟才女 - 秃头戈女 遇见激浪
    • 秃头戈女- 桃色策略
    • 秃头戈女- 南京论坛
    • 激浪时间
    • 排斥
    • 2015威斯巴登行为艺术节
    • 2016威斯巴登行为艺术节
    • 2017威斯巴登行为艺术节
    • 第三届现场艺术巡展參展: 谁要同去卡塞尔?
    • 女权行动在中国:与李麦子的对话
    • 2018 天津现场艺术创作邀请展
    • 2018 我都看过了
    • 2018法兰克福行为艺术节
    • 资本@艺术. 国际 2018
    • 感受即真实 -记忆与身份认同 2018-19
    • "景观”国际艺术交流展2019
    • 第7届Up-On 向上国际现场艺术节2019
    • 0界 移位 欧洲篇上
    • 共享的危机 2020
  • 文章
    • 共享的危机
    • 记忆与身份认同
    • 谁是玛丽·包麦斯特 (艺术国际版)
    • 信息资本主义时代的博伊斯
    • 秃头戈女 - 和吴味谈男权视野的局限
    • 访谈包麦斯特
    • 托尼•克拉格
    • 庸现与李勇政、 周斌对话。
    • 关于“西方主义”
    • 从 清洗 谈肖鲁对 颠覆 之 再颠覆_
    • 重要的不是秃头-再次回应吴味
    • 驳徐乔斯
    • 严肃的游戏: 对话李勇政
  • 媒体报道
    • 中国来鸿 纽约时报 狄狄
    • 凤凰艺术 : 策展人篇
    • 与画刊谈《博伊斯在中国》
    • 答复新京报记者李健亚
    • 《山花》杂志 2012 10月号访谈
  • 出版
    • 艺术家& 策展人简介
    • 《资本 @ 艺术· 国际》 >
      • 数字时代的资本@艺术
      • 从政治批判到精神拥抱
      • 直觉就是现实
      • “托斯”在行动
      • 至少疼痛还是真实的
      • 感受即真实
      • 金钱就是时间
    • 秃头戈女画册 >
      • 作者译者简介
      • 秃头女性艺术宣言
      • 秃头戈女序
      • 李心沫:一个中国批判现实主义艺术的先锋艺术家
      • 重释肖鲁
      • 艺术视觉与真诚 蓝镜
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 中国玻璃眼球 中文版
      • 东西方女权运动的思考
      • 中国女权运动与女性艺术发展历程
  • 联系

PREFACE

BY JUAN XU

As  a title, The  The Bald Guerrilla Girls, homonymic to The Bald Prima Donna, a famous play written in the 1930s by Eugène Ionesco, a French playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd, is metaphoric of  the current multiple Chinese reality, along with the complex and awkward life reality of  women due to the absurd and chaotic new social structure.  To replace "song" with "dagger-axe", we aim to imply that in the present Chinese context where Feminist  femaleA artrt is still something new, artists have to turn to arms instead of entertainment. Under the disguise of absurdity, artists are entrusted with the historical responsibility to bravely take the lead.

The exhibition includes three representative contemporary modern domestic or overseas female artists of different age groups. With their unique art language, they unconventionally challenge the long and established social identity for Chinese women and the concept of gender sex in China. They reject the common practice in feminist art that usually equates the female body with the subject of "me”, reveal the limits of women's experience of pain and joy in patriarchal society, and review and interpret women's external and internal role in the prospective of cultural sociology and psychology. As feminist ale artists, they not only express their peculiar cultural perplexity in the consumer society and globalization but also take the advantage of the great social transformation in which they are able to find their independent and equal voice as women. 

In terms of their distinctive feature of art, the three feminist artists can be categorized respectively as liberal realistic feminism, critical feminism and jovial feminism.

Li Xinmo, a most controversial and rebellious feminist artist in the contemporary art scene in China, who bases her art on her painful experience, refers mainly to  body performance and  examines the relationship between performance and film, between performance and painting. Therefore, her works, mostly associated with trauma, memory and death, usually create a tragic and ritual atmosphere. These works reveal the rebellion against the mainstream aesthetics by ripping open the reality as an individual female so as to reinforce various cruel and brutal visual images.  Fully aware of women's disadvantaged position in the contemporary art  scene in China, she has made great contribution to the development of feminist art in China by taking her responsibility as an independent critic as well, to spread her art criticism and to bravely voice her criticism in a field dominated by men. What she advocates as "liberal women's rights" includes human rights into women's rights and encourages pursuit of freedom and equality. Freedom of expression, reaction against the established rules and conventions, independence of women as an individual and freedom from any bonds of the mind are all necessary for liberal women.

From its outset, contemporary feminist art in China was connected with a feministale artist — Xiao Lu, who shot at her own diploma work Dialogue displayed at the national art exhibition in National Art Museum of China in 1989. This event made her name. Dialogue, as witness of the historical image, marked the beginning of contemporary art and contemporary feminist art in China. The publication of her autobiographical novel in 2010, dialogue, means a process for her own authorship as well as a conscious of her feminist consciousness. Her recent body performance, Sperms and Wedding, for example, directly challenge the social morals and imagination of the audience and question such issues in social ethics as affection and child, affection and marriage.  Due to her works, she is referred to as a critical feminist, which quality is obvious in her new work What is Feminism. While reexamining the possibilities and forms of feminism in China, it reflects on the relationship between women and social codes in contemporary art.
 
Before moving to Germany, Lan Jiny was strongly influenced by the '89 modern art movement and had got the same experiences as Li Xinmo and Xiao Lu had. After settling down overseas, she was exposed to Western art at a young age, therefore getting different life and aesthetic experience. In the 1960s, Feminism in Europe was not as strong as it used to be in the 90s.  Living in a relatively developed social context, Lan Jiny does not seem to be as anxious as the other two artists to upset the status quo. To some extent, she benefits from the Feminist Movement in the West. Her body performance Chinese Apple, multi-media work Nine and a Half Weeks, and oil painting series Alienation make use of different art media to interpret her new feminism of pleasure of "enjoying the physical well-being, maintaining the balance between career and the family, and assimilating the essence of both the East and the West.

The radical women's liberation movement in late 19th century and the national ideology that "women can hold up half the sky" provided women a favorable social background that helped them to make their first step on their way to independence in personality and economy. Such top down "liberation", however, fails to bring about substantial changes in women's inner world due to its lack of self reflection and self examination on the part of women themselves. Sixty years has passed, Chinese women still have a lot to do on a deeper level before they finally form their own aesthetics about their value and build their awareness of gender on an equal footing with that of men. From the spontaneous ideological awakening in the 1980s to the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, feminism got its meaning expanded and localized under the influence of globalization, which led to the Chinese version of "gender writing". Unfortunately, in this "reform and opening up" period,  the emerging "women's movement" is being captivated and manipulated by the overwhelming consumerism, which puts to test their not so strong consciousness of feminism.

In the free and open atmosphere of the market economy, we have to admit, there  is a growing group of urban  middle class female intelligentsia, including entrepreneurs, writers, journalists. and artists, who, confident, highly educated and economically independent, have found the free space and opportunities to develop and express themselves. In terms of ideology, however, the cultural structure, which is based on male superiority, is still intact, is getting consolidated in a certain sense. Social behavior derived from this ideology, finds its expression in the tacit agreement on the part of women to return to their traditional role of being a passive and dominated dependent. Different pay for equal work and unequal possibilities still persists in some way. Women's liberation is the natural yardstick for social liberation, and therefore if women's rights keep improving in a society, so do human rights. With this exhibition we wish to express the humanistic concern in a broader sense in the form of concern for women. 

In the global village in an information era, Chinese feminists are not as lonely as their predecessors a hundred years ago.  The Bald Guerrilla Girls has found great support from the global community of feminists. Herta Müller, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2009,  has written a short story for this exhibition, Chinese Eyes of  Glass Ball, expresses her concern for feminist art in China with her unique and vivid contemporary literary language.

More than an exhibition, The Bald Guerrilla Girls represents an art concept: to fight against sexism, to exposit the essence of social gender, to advocate rebellious spirit in "the Bald" and unconquerable will in "the Guerrilla Girls", and move into a new age of cross-gender.


Jan. 02, 2012