STUDIO VISIT : THE GAO BROTHERS
By ELLEN PEARLMAN in Beijing
Goa Brothers Miss Mao #2 2006
cibachrome print, 69 x 90-2/3 inches
edition of 10
798 or the Dashanzi Art District, a thriving art zone in Beijing, was once an East German arms factory built during the 1950s. Trendy nationals mix with foreign visitors by the scores, while military policemen from the countryside wear ill fitting coats and look on suspicious and bemused. This is where the Gao Brothers and Beijing New Art Projects are located. Zhen and Qiang Gao have worked together since the 1980s, producing performance art, installations, sculpture, and books, including the pithily titled “The State of the Chinese Avant Garde.” In 1989, their work “Mass Midnight” along with photographs of their installation “Inflationism” were exhibited in the seminal and ground breaking exhibition of China’s avant-garde artists at the National Fine Art Museum in Beijing. The brothers were blacklisted because they had signed a petition asking the Chinese government to release the political prisoner Wei Jingsheng. As a result they were not allowed to leave the country for the past 14 years.
In 2001 they were invited to the 49th Venice Biennale to create a mass hug-in known as “Hug on the Human Plateau.” Again, they were not allowed out of the country. Instead they performed the piece in Jinan with others from around the world via the Internet. They did not leave China until 2004, when they went to “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China” at the International Center of Photography and Asia Society in New York.
During my visit to the Beijing New Art Projects the Gao brothers walked out from behind their glass office and lackadaisically circulated among the visitors. Zhen is tall with long, wavy hair and Qiang wears a hat and is shorter. I mention I have published reviews of contemporary Chinese art and we discover we have mutual acquaintances. He shows me a book from a New York gallery filled with fluorescent Porky Pig-like characters and escorts me inside his office to see these pieces in person. They are called “Miss Mao.” The artists are forbidden to show this work publicly inside their country.
The newest sculpture in the series is a big red fiberglass pregnant Mao on its knees, covering its face in shame. A hermaphrodite, it has a Pinocchio nose, pendulous breasts, a swollen belly and a penis and testicles.
“What does this mean?” I ask.
“It symbolizes Chinese people who were influenced by Mao. When I was a child, the first thing I heard was the epithet “Long Live Chairman Mao.” He had evil powers and made people think he was an idol. It disgusted me. My father, a factory worker and writer was killed in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution when Zhen was eleven and I was five.”
Qiang crosses his arms across his chest. “They said he committed suicide but we don’t believe that.”
“So in someway, Mao was responsible for the death of your father because he was responsible for the Cultural Revolution?”
“More than one million people were killed, just like my father. The government is more powerful than us. We are the number one target that the government likes to go after. I never heard of another artist that was forbidden to go abroad for more than 10 years.”
“So they really want to show both of you who is in control.”
“But we are not politicians,” he exclaims. “We just want to make art.”
“Do you feel part of the global dialectic in the art world now?” I ask.
“Our art influences our life. The world does not affect it.”
“So it’s just your own experience in China.”
“Yes,” Zheng replies.
“But this newest sculpture of hermaphroditic Mao what is this about?”
“It is the person who tells a lie. This one is unfinished, but when we finish we will make an installation and put it in a big glass box with a running shower.”
“Do you think that it will be more difficult for China to control information now that the Olympics are coming?” I ask.
Zheng answers, “Many people will come here to 798. Maybe the Olympics won’t be such a big influence. Somebody just came here a few days ago and told us to make sure we are doing things the right way.”
“So they still pick on you.”
“Yeah.”
“Well you are showing in New York,” I say, “You will show in Europe. I think it has to change.”
“The standard of the government is different towards the Chinese artists and the Western artists,” Qiang remarks. “The government allows the foreign artists more freedom but they won’t allow the Chinese artists to do the same thing.”
“What are they afraid of?”
“The foreign artists express their emotion about their country’s culture, but Chinese artists who live in China and know a lot about the revolution are not allowed to do that.”
The Gao Brothers are at the pinnacle of the contemporary art scene in China andare not typical. Most Chinese artists are careful to veil their intentions and do not confront the government as blatantly as they do. The Chinese art scene is in the midst of an important transitional period where artists are abandoning the remnants of social realism and plunging into postmodernism at dizzying speeds.
