Beijing: Made in China Part 1
Beijing's vibrant arts scene has gone from underground to big-time. As the city rushes to transform itself, Nell Freudenberger tags along with a few of the Chinese art world's brightest stars.
Not long ago, at the Asia Society on Park Avenue in Manhattan, I saw a photograph I couldn't stop thinking about. It showed a young Chinese man, naked from the waist up, sitting in profile against a raw concrete wall. His arms and one knee (the only parts of his body not in shadow) glistened as if they'd been oiled; around his eyes, his ears, and all up and down his arms were clusters of black flies. What was most striking about this picture was the concentrated expression on the young man's face, as if he were looking at something spectacular and inaccessible, just outside the frame.
The photograph was taken by Rong Rong, one of a group of artists who lived in the early nineties in a village a little beyond Beijing's Third Ring Road—what was then the outskirts of the city. The artists renamed their new home Dong Cun (East Village), and the daring work produced there soon attracted the attention of critics and foreign journalists. In a letter to his sister, dated June 3, 1994, Rong Rong described how his friend Zhang Huan had covered his body in fish sauce and honey and sat in one of the East Village's public toilets in 100-degree heat for an entire hour: "The worst was watching flies trying to get into his ears. Still Zhang Huan didn't flinch a bit, sitting as still as a statue. Holding my camera, I felt that I couldn't breathe, it felt like the end of life."
Not long ago, at the Asia Society on Park Avenue in Manhattan, I saw a photograph I couldn't stop thinking about. It showed a young Chinese man, naked from the waist up, sitting in profile against a raw concrete wall. His arms and one knee (the only parts of his body not in shadow) glistened as if they'd been oiled; around his eyes, his ears, and all up and down his arms were clusters of black flies. What was most striking about this picture was the concentrated expression on the young man's face, as if he were looking at something spectacular and inaccessible, just outside the frame.
The photograph was taken by Rong Rong, one of a group of artists who lived in the early nineties in a village a little beyond Beijing's Third Ring Road—what was then the outskirts of the city. The artists renamed their new home Dong Cun (East Village), and the daring work produced there soon attracted the attention of critics and foreign journalists. In a letter to his sister, dated June 3, 1994, Rong Rong described how his friend Zhang Huan had covered his body in fish sauce and honey and sat in one of the East Village's public toilets in 100-degree heat for an entire hour: "The worst was watching flies trying to get into his ears. Still Zhang Huan didn't flinch a bit, sitting as still as a statue. Holding my camera, I felt that I couldn't breathe, it felt like the end of life."
