Sei sulla pagina 1di 2

Submission 007

Muted howling

When I was young

I yelled, howled to get heeds

Now I am old

Voice and sinew failed me

And I find no need to howl

Even it still there

Muted

--Sheng Qi

Chin-nuzzled, black velvet coat unbuttoned, Sheng Qi materialized amid gaudy


beach tables arranged formlessly in the crimpy lobby of Overseas Experts Building,
China Academy of Fine Arts. The 39-year-old, Demi-Moore-cut (in Hollywood vintage
movie Ghost), cherubic-faced performance artist impressed you not with an I-am-
your-apocalypse-aloofness, which often rippled on China artists’ faces. He nodded
me hello when I was still rhapsodize to myself the scene, which happened in 1987,
when he first bandaged himself and his art “guerillas” with the antiseptic-smelled
gauze and splashed pigments on each other, howling, rabble-likely. The epoch-
making performance was dubbed “Vision 21”, he became China’s avant-garde of
performance artist, and, the vocabulary of bandage & gauze appeared in “Vision 21”
can still found its riffs in his 90s, sometimes, 21st century art practices.

Sheng mumbled, when the grayish sky churning outside and the sullen-faced
swirl-wind teasing with the dead leaves, about the mindset he experienced as a 40-
something (In China, a saying goes “when one gets 40 years old, no puzzles
persist.”). “ I am now more enthralled by the idea of incorporating social mores
in my art works, albeit banal may it seems to others,” he said.

In 2002, among his skimped attempts to communicate with his audience with
performance art in public places, Sheng orchestrated Rendezvous With Past by
ensconcing a traditional wooden framework of building on the top of Cherokee and
cruised it along the ring road of Beijing. “The traditional building is flowable
and subject to man-imposed infuence,” said Sheng. “but rarely on its own accord.”

Upon his arrival from British St. Martin Art Institute, by which Sheng
referred to as a “refreshing” and “soothing” experience, to mainland China, he
made his another performance art --My Bird Is Not Free-- a wings-flapping bird
tethered to a man’s genital, bandaged by gauze, and the man stands akimbo in a
police-uniform but brooched with an “A” logo of World AIDS Foundation. Moribund,
as it may looks, this performance art has many connotations, as ever: the police-
uniform stands for the ubiquitous power one could easily sense in China when you
walk through the doorway of government building and be snapped by the nostril-up,
almond-eyed, uniform-wearing guards; the “A” emblem embodies the ideology-free
philanthropic icon; the bandaged penis and the tethered bird exemplify freedom
being muffled.

All these behaviors, given their audacity and bizarreness, occur to Sheng now,
whom seated demurely on a plastic chair, in the lobby quavered by deafening whiny
pop music, as a sheer madness. “People back from overseas told me I am famous in
United States, pictures of mine show up everywhere, and, I said ‘good’,” said he.
“Now I’m just lost interest to do a whiff of mad thing.” In 2004, Sheng unveiled a
photo-show entitled as “Madness Appropriation” in late October, of which
constitutes by photos with a recurring image of four-fingered hand holding a time-
eroding picture. Analogous with the ear-cutting behavior of Van Gogh, but due to
different reasons, Sheng Qi chopped off his little finger in 1988 and buried in a
flowerpot which later had it delivered to his girlfriend. Gazing the montage of
different dull-faced visages arranged under an image of four-fingered palm, you
can smell the association and it can be concretized as apprentice marches in
procession. Sheng sympathized this observation, deeming that this photo-show does
have a ceremonial meaning, verged on funeral ritual, to him, as a “finale” to his
tumultuous age.

“I am captivated by the notion of experiencing my soul ballooning up and have


a command of bird-eye view of myself,” he said. “even the distance was 100 meters
up in the air.” To Sheng Qi now, the most valuable thing is sentiment, he will
spend the years to come to re-vamp news pictures carried on mass media which
termed by him as “time-worthy” and “meaningful”. The methods of collage,
relocation, parody and anachronism -- all things involved in the re-shooting of
news pictures can provide him new vocabularies and nostalgia feelings he madly
want, especially for a man who has a lot of stories waiting to be sorted out.

Potrebbero piacerti anche