Over the course of the next few posts, we’ll share artist interviews and insights about this year’s ON SIGHT visual arts line-up. You can experience all of TBA:09’s visual arts installations from Sept 4 – 13, every day 12 – 6:30 pm. And join us for a free opening night party September 3, from 8 – 10:30 pm at Washington High School (map).
Ma Qiusha presents her diaristic video From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili, a simple confessional that explores the artist’s conflict with personal, parental, and societal pressures to be successful. Holding a razorblade on her tongue, the artist tells short stories about her life as a young artist. She describes being compelled to strive for perfection and she talks about a search for meaning and understanding. She wonders about her parents’ approval and worries about her value to society as an artist and a daughter. Her speech is muddled and stunted by the cutting blade. The video is both psychological portrait and performance document.
Figure X: Quisha’s From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili video still.
KK: When I saw your work in Shanghai, it was part of a group show called Refresh. The show highlighted the work of a new generation of Chinese artists. Most of the work that I had seen up until that point seemed focused on overtly political commentary related to the Cultural Revolution. In contrast, the work by younger artists in Refresh, seemed to be about identity politics, the state of the self and the search for self. Where does your work lie? What do you think accounts for this shift in thinking?
MQ: Refresh was planned and organized by a young Chinese curator/artist. Compared with other exhibitions, Refresh had an emphasis to showcase very excellent works by young Chinese artists. The curator himself wears many hats–his job was the planner/curator for the exhibit, but he is also an artist. I think this is the reason why the audiences viewed the art of young Chinese at this exhibit from a different angle. As an excerpt from my work From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili, “I was born in Beijing in the 80s…,” most of the artists featured in Refresh were born in the late 70s and the early 80s; the Cultural Revolution era ended before we were born. In fact, our fathers’ generation has more memory of it. For an artist, “self-exploration” is a theme in which we can base our work forever.
KK: (maybe this is the “same question as above” you can decide to answer either or…) How does your work about a personal history relate to a larger cultural history?
MQ: I was born and raised in Beijing, and I witnessed the daily changes in this city, for a period of time, Beijing had a different look everyday. It’s like you are looking at your hometown but you can’t really find in your memory the part of it that once belonged to you. It has bothered me some and made me contemplate. In this ever-changing era, I guess the discovery of “personal history” is a must, being a Chinese, any personal history can be reflected upon the larger cultural history in our country.
KK: In your other videos you also tell a sort of psychological narrative; however, they are less direct and more dreamlike, perhaps divorced from reality. In this piece you look us directly in the eyes, speak right to the viewer. Even if we do not understand your language we can see your pain. What about this work made you turn towards the camera and tell your story?
MQ: From No.4 Pingyusnli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili is a piece filled with love and pain. In China, family relations are very strong, and parents give children their selfless love with a sense of forcefulness. This story is not only my personal story but it is also a story of many people in my generation. Therefore, many Chinese audiences can easily relate to the love and pain after they watched the video. I have designed a very simple and straight-forward backdrop for this video, one that is very similar to the image of an ID photo. My language and my face are two clues/paths in this video. There is one obvious clue that indicates pain, and there is also another clue that indicates the pain hidden in my mouth, both clues have the same destination–pain. One is the psychological pain, the other is the physical pain. For someone who doesn’t understand Chinese, he/she can reach the final destination at the first viewing, he/she can understand the physical pain (because I spoke with a painful expression). After the first viewing, he/she can rewind the video and watch it again with the English subtitles which would act as the vehicle that works as an effective narrative for the pain. For Chinese audiences, they can foresee the outcome by reading the synopsis, (where the psychological pain is more vividly portrayed). At the end of the video, the moment when the razor is taken out of the mouth becomes the entrance to another path: it will then return the story to the beginning of the video.
KK: In the Festival we present work by both visual and performance artists, and some artists like yourself cross these boundaries. Do you think of these genres as being two different worlds? Is it important to have a distinction or should we just invent a new term for how artists interpret the world?
MQ: Isn’t the end result of performing arts also conveyed through visual arts?
About
Ma Qiusha was born in 1982 and currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Her work was recently featured in Personal Space, 24HR Contemporary Art Center, Australia; Landscape Topology, Magee Gallery, Beijing, China; Madrid, Spain; Anything is Possible, CCRN Luxembourg; and REFRESH: Emerging Chinese Artists at the Zendai Moma, Shanghai, China. Group exhibitions include the 35th International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2006); Rumor Décor, ddmwarehouse, Shanghai, China (2005); Beijing Documenta–Producing HIGH, Beijing, China (2005); 920 Kilograms, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2005); Archaeology of the Future: the Second Triennial of Chinese Art, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China (2005); 2004 Automat Contemporary Art Exhibition, Suzhou Art & Design Technology Institute, Suzhou, China (2004); and SCARIFY–China Present Independent Video Exhibition, Beijing, China (2004). Ma Qiusha is represented by Beijing Commune in Beijing, China.
www.beijingcommune.com
