The Third Guangzhou Triennial 2008 was taking place under the tagline “Farewell to Post-colonialism”. Here a short quote of the general concept: “The Triennial attempts to open new frontiers for creativity with a critical review of the role cultural discourses of Post-colonialism and Multi-culturalism has played in contemporary art. While affirming Post-colonialism’s achievements in exposing hidden ideological agenda in society and inspiring new art, this Triennial also critically examines its limitations for creativity, and calls for a fresh start.” My won’t review each single artwork, but one impression stays with me – it was a good exhibition. And that’s for a couple of reasons.
What I enjoyed about this exhibition was the fact that for me, it belonged into the category of “treasure hunt” exhibitions. And what do I mean by that? “Treasure hunt”, because the quantity of work is big (that’s the same for each exhibition of this size) and the selection of works is broad enough so that every visitor can find something that s/he would like. It means going through some less interesting stuff too, but this cannot be evaded, as everyone want to get his share of fun, and we all have different tastes. I succeeded in discovering more than a few good works, and that made me feel satisfied.
Secondly, there was a loose connection between most of the exhibited works, which really reflected the given topic. It wasn’t a forced connection, on the contrary, sometimes it was just barely visible. But I believe it’s best like that anyway. There was both enough freedom and enough thought put into the whole outline, that visitors could feel comfortable walking around and ‘discovering’.
Part of the refreshing feeling came from the fact that as one would expect from the topic, there were quite a lot of artists from all kind of ‘post-colonial’ countries of the African, South-American or Asian continent. Chinese artists were given a fair share, but did not stand out, which was a good thing.
There were many artworks that caught my attention in this exhibition, so I don’t want to be unjust, but I’d like to mention one which impressed me, for unknown reasons, I must admit. It was the work by Qiu Shiming and Luo Haiming. It was both expressing a personal feeling and a general truth. Showing the relationships between time passing and our memories which are fading but recurring at the same time.
There were many other works with stuck in my mind, like the fictional African moon-rocket project by Kilianji Kia Henda, the poetic video work of Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba or Tozer Pak’s half-folded library. But I could continue for a long time. There was a good selection of high-quality artwork present.
One idea I appreciated as well was the presence of four intertwining sections: Projects in progress, Thinking Room, Free Radicals and Independent Projects. I could not really distinguish this categories spatially when walking through the museum, but I believe the existence of these categories helped a lot on a conceptual level of the exhibition, as it helped to balance out the presence of presentation styles corresponding to different artistic approaches. In the physical space, the categories were overlapping and mixing, yet the curatorial idea was still floating in the air, creating a “logically structured” atmosphere which was leading the visitor thought the exhibition without being to graphic or educative.
On the contrary to my general experience of art in China, I was surprised by the breadth and depth of represented thoughts. The much too frequent reflections of Chinese capitalism and global commercial culture did not stand out as it often happens in China. The selected Chinese artists’ works were chosen because they had something to say and not because of superficial visual similarity. The above-mentioned topics could not be evaded of course, specially with the relationship to given topic, but they were approached from many cultural backgrounds representing the multitude of countries where the participating artists came from.
My time in Guangzhou was quite limited, but I got the impression that the art scene there is less commercial and more ‘intellectual’ compared to the north of China. There is much less attention on Guangzhou than on Shanghai or Beijing, and the art scene is smaller in Guangzhou. Maybe it is the lack of attention which actually makes the scene flourish more in the sense of ideas. If this is the case, then this year’s triennial was definitely a representation of this fact/trend and we can look forward to future events in this area of China.
Overall, the impression I got was that this was a well thought-through concept executed in a sensitive manner. Of course there were some rather questionable selections, but they were in minority and could not override the overall positive image. The flyer with the exhibition map often did not correspond to the actual layout of the exhibition in some cases, but this rather points to the fact that the curators were working up to the last moment, and it could be easily improved if necessary. On the contrary this slight disorientation in physical space combined with an invisible yet present conceptual structure was creating a state of mental awareness without resulting in overwhelming confusion. Just the right state of mind to enjoy the “treasure hunt”.
Video artwork list:
1. Marry Evans
2. Conrad Botes
3. Neo Rauch
4. Qiu Zhijie
5. Zhu Yu
6. Lu Jie
7. Xiao Xiong
8. Qiu Shiming
9. Luo Haiming
10. Carlos Garaicoa Manso
11. Michelle Heon
12. Jitish Kallat
13. Xu Zhen
14. Kilianji Kia Henda
15. Christian Jankowski
16. Zhang Hui
17. Zhou Yi
18. Leung Chi-Wo
19. Tomoko Konoike
20. Zheng Guogu