This exhibition may be the first time that Chinese contemporary art connects the South, bringing together more than 90 young artists and art organizations from eight provinces and one city: Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Hainan.
We try to cut into the cultural situation of the South through portals of various knowledge systems. For example, “Rivers” exemplify the geographical and natural perspective of the South historically; “tunnels” are contemporary metaphors for urbanization and modernity; “Dampness” captures an individual’s physical sense, mood, and temperament; and “Constellations” embodies our aspiration for the future, a romantic imagination of reconnecting the dots in the South.
We connect these seldom-mentioned regions to break the habit of dotting between the “advanced regions”. By bringing together Guangzhou and Shenzhen (urban hubs) to another part of the Pearl River Delta, such as Chaozhou, Shantou, and Fujian (maritime culture), we search in their vicinity for possibly overlooked rapports, seeking fluidity in Yunnan and Guangxi, Hunan and Jiangxi, Chongqing and Guizhou. Although the South may be de-centralized, we hope to undo the regional narrative in contemporary Chinese art, discovering new possibilities of disconnects and linkage. We chose Hunan between Hunan and Hubei, we picked Chongqing over Sichuan Province, and gave up Shanghai and the area within its radius, such as Zhejiang and Anhui Provinces, and regrettably excluded the art organizations in Chengdu and Wuhan. However, give and take is always the first step towards doing something.
We invited five local curators as observant to learn about the works in respective areas. Moreover, we tried to learn about local art workers with the awareness of neither bringing the gaze and measures from the contemporary art system and hubs nor any bias from our deeply-rooted contemptuous prejudice and stereotypical confrontation between “the prosperous and the backward”, “the center and the peripheral”, “the canonical and the self-organized”. With unpacking the dichotomous modus operandi as one of the aims of this exhibition, we search for the inherent connection within the Southern region between Guangzhou and Haikou, Chongqing and Guiyang, Changsha and Nanchang. The glimmer of regrouping these regions does not require a transition through an art hub, and it may also illuminate the crisis of art today.
Their regrouping assesses the significance of art in various regions and people. In a more diversified and alternative way, each region adopts the position of the “other” to re-conceptualize the possibilities in contemporary art in China concerning many essential questions, to plan for the future, and to construct a shared dream of art.
During the visit, we encountered some unique artistic practices. These artists have different paces of life, timetables, paths to make art, and textures of life. Compared with the mediocrity of those “professional artists”, the environment in which they practice art allows them to be more passionate, committed, and dramatic, making “art” seem mad. Their uniqueness has nothing to do with priority, failure, or success. Their art and dreams are on an equal footing with those living in Beijing and Shanghai, and perhaps because they are alienated from the art system, their determination, radically, and avant-garde spirit are more valuable. As long as they keep at it, they will be changing the cultural situation of art, and in turn, art will transform them and their respective local areas. On these less traveled paths, they offer other possibilities to emancipate “thought and value”, bypassing those short-sighted and involutionary things to contemplate the prospect of art and life.
Going South, to the sites and places where art happens differently than the city, listening and talking to local art practitioners was a work approach we adopted in encountering, learning, and understanding from these regions. Only this way, could we undo the “bias”when looking at the materials each artist provided us, and escape from those effective, standardized, single-perspective mechanisms. During the month-long tour of field-studies, we traveled to more than ten cities and interviewed nearly one hundred Southern artists, curators, and practitioners. We moved from mountains to mountains, through tunnels, over rivers, across cities, and to artists’ studios. Based on these visits, we tried to develop a direction for this exhibition; among vast choices of vocabulary such as “mobility”, “site-specificity”, “nomad” and “transitory”, the notion of the “nomad” emerged. It is at once a philosophical concept derived from Deleuze and the idea of postcolonial constellation presented by Okwui Enwezor and a characteristic of Northern ethnic groups, which are now reversed against the backdrop of globalization. Hence, “Nomads in the South” is not about us but the artists’ state of being in various regions and the possible future they would create.
“Nomads in the South” consists of four parts: a featured film, “Southern Youth”, in collaboration with director Ju Anqi, which will be screened in different regions. A large-scale art exhibition at the Pingshan Art Museum, featuring six units including “Southern Constellations”, “Shenzhen Time”, “South of 30 Degrees North Latitude: Nature, Climate and Growth”, “Confronting the Same Dilemma of Urbanization and Internationalization”, “Southern Cinema”, “More Important than Region”. Extended talks and roundtables, inviting practitioners from various regions to make cross-regional connections. A series of books generated a new archive of these scenes, including the five observants’ essays, interviews with artists, and images collected throughout the process.
Curated by: Cui Cancan
