Question: Can art serve a role as a cultural bridge between China and other nations?

Simon Birch

I came to Asia in 1993, from a working-class background with limited education, knowing little beyond a teenage interest in Bruce Lee. Arriving in Hong Kong my first job was as a labourer on the Tsing Ma Bridge, but my weekends spent as a DJ had me regularly crossing the border to the dance floors of Chengdu, Dalian, Beijing and Shanghai. House music was new to China, as were Westerners and I’ve since watched the country develop at an incredibly rapid pace. My relationship with China continued as I transitioned from music to contemporary art, having some success as a painter but becoming increasingly interested in installation and collaboration. I’ve worked with dozens of Chinese artists who emerged in the 90s as a wave of new art exploded in China and then across the world. The scale of work, the vision and lack of pretension was my first impression along with the warm welcome I encountered in the studios of an early 798 district. Open-minded and enthusiastic collaborators, happy to lend their skills, reputation and resources to create work together, led to some of the highlights of my life as an artist. Those relationships continue today. My current project, The 14th Factory, is inspired by those interactions, and its conceptual root is founded on the less than cordial interactions between East and West in the mid-19th century.

My answer is very much based on personal experience, which has been positive in terms of reception, communication, action and delivery. I’ve worked directly with Chinese artists with fantastic results from an ignition perspective of pure creativity and curiosity and it’s been fun! If creativity is the greatest human resource, art is the sharp tip of that sword. As a starting point of cultural connection, empathy and understanding, art, through its capacity to tell a community’s shared story, can inspire reflection, and form connections that transcend differences. Art serves as a universal connector that is dynamic, participatory, social influencing and revelatory. There are no national teams in the art world. It is individual artists, creating work, from different cultures, that cross pollinate ideas – a discourse without limits. Artists have the ability to generate empathy, foster dialogue, induce reflection and charter new relationships and ideas, and they are often the first bridges we have.

Simon Birch is a British born, Armenian blooded, artist, entrepreneur and founder of The 14th Factory, a large scale, touring, collaborative art adventure. Birch is based in Hong Kong and was previously a DJ, factory worker, bouncer, delivery driver, construction worker and cancer survivor. He can be found on Instagram @simonbirchman and @the14thfactory – https://the14thfactory.com/. The William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica, in collaboration with GuY Hector (The Art House Global), presents Simon Birch’s exhibition, IGNITE 14: Recent Paintings, through October 1, 2022. https://www.williamturnergallery.com/simonbirch

Qu Lei Lei 曲磊磊

It seems China is closing its doors at an alarming rate at the moment, and I wonder what this may mean for UK-based Chinese people like myself. This is not just in terms of how people view us now but who we are and what really is our identity. Where does the growing UK-China schism leave us? One essential bridge to mitigate the inevitable gaps in understanding is the large number of Chinese students coming over to the UK to study. As an artist I notice that The Royal College of Art seems to be heaving with them, just to name one institution. I’m not sure if it is more difficult now but it would be great if we could also get more British nationals to go to China to study, as this would provide them with a much better informed and deeper understanding of Chinese thought and culture.

China has a seriously unexplored wealth of culture and I think there is so much that Westerners are ignorant about. For example, I encounter no real understanding of Confucianism, not to mention other schools of thought like Taoist philosophy and Chinese Buddhism. As for Chinese literature, both ancient and contemporary, how little of this is read and appreciated in the West! In fact, there is some really sharp writing coming out of China now if you take the trouble to look for it. A household name like Su Tong 苏童 in my view is a fine example. He is a brilliant writer of this epoch who has little following in the West and deserves as much attention as many “emerging market” writers seem to enjoy. There are many more writers and artists who are changing the landscape and highlighting the fact that not all Chinese people are on the same page as the politicized media would have us believe. In my view, simply sponsoring some really high-quality art and literary events, not just small niche shows, could make a huge difference to improving public perceptions. These shows should be better researched, better quality, and better represented events with participants from both sides. Art could serve a role as a cultural bridge if real cultural exchanges involving artists, writers and critics replaced the current drift towards ignorance and disinformation.

Qu Lei Lei was one of the founding members of the Stars Group (1979), the very first movement that fought for artistic freedom and launched the beginning of Contemporary Chinese Art. Since then, he has continued to create ground-breaking artworks, revealing his ability to master both Eastern and Western traditions. Globally recognised, his work has been collected by some of the most prestigious museums including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Japan Modern Art Museum, The China National Art Museum, and more recently by The British Museum. https://quleilei.co.uk/

Meg Maggio

At the end of the Cultural Revolution, despite the near shut-down of China to the West, China succeeded in exporting the largest exhibition to date, of “Archaeological Finds from the People’s Republic China”. The exhibition of over 300 objects enjoyed record visitor numbers at major museums in the USA, Canada, France, UK, Austria, and Sweden. Soon after, France (1978) and the USA (1981) separately brought the first of many art exhibitions to China. Art exchanges were included in the list of cooperation items agreed in the protocol for the reestablishment of relations between the US and China in 1979. Despite political differences, cultural exchanges would continue as quiet symbols of China’s gradual opening, national pride, and engagement with the world. Once started, in fact, cultural exchanges rarely slowed down. The list is long and extends to the present day. Recently, the largest exhibition of Warhol works in China, from Pittsburgh’s Warhol Museum, opened in the “Covid summer” of 2021, at Beijing’s Ullens Center of Contemporary Art, followed by UCCA Edge in Shanghai. The shows broke visitor records despite opening one day after the July 1st 100th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the CCP. Andy Warhol would revel in his placement, next to the CCP’s milestone anniversary, and nearly 40 years after his one and only China visit, of 1982.

Today, cultural groups compete to book space at China’s many public and private venues, where exhibit loan fees and stipends are often generously offered to overseas exhibitors. Everything from street art and graffiti to Magnum photography, and new media and video installations have been on view across China’s many newly constructed museum-style venues. The rapid proliferation of cultural exchanges shows no signs of abating. Now firmly established as line items in bilateral agreements, this “soft power” tool is favoured by both sides in improving people-to-people understanding. In China, where school courses in art and calligraphy are no longer mandatory, exhibitions provide a welcome extra-curricular resource for supplementing young people’s learning as well as providing new leisure venues. Outside China, the only means of “experiencing China” for many will be exhibitions and cultural exchanges. Such exchanges of creativity can provide new and memorable experiences, a better grasp of each other’s cultures, and even an enhanced understanding of one’s own perceived identity.

Meg Maggio is Director of Pékin Fine Arts in Beijing and Hong Kong. She is a member of the Board of Directors, serving as International Liaison, for the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association. She is also a consultant for international auctioneers Bonhams; the Dale Chihuly Studio in Seattle, and the non-profit “Art in Giving” in Boston.

Yves Sena Alavo

In 2005, the “Africa Remix” art exhibition, curated by Simon Njami, took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It was the first Contemporary African art exhibition of its kind in Europe, bringing together some of the finest African artists working on and off the continent. As a Beninese citizen raised in Europe, Africa Remix deeply influenced my interest in African art. It gave me a sense of pride but more so, a unique insight into the diversity, sophistication, quirkiness, sometimes naivety, as well as the complexity of Africa’s cultural and colonial heritage. Yinka Shonibare’s installations, Samuel Fosso’s or El Anastui’s bodies of work, to name a few, laid the foundation of my lifelong interest. Years later in 2017, I organized Hong Kong’s first African Contemporary art event with 6 shows over two weeks covering various disciplines. More than 20 artists from 14 countries were represented and it highlighted to me that art is a form of “soft power” that can inform, educate and offer audiences a novel perspective through the lens of culture, beyond a colonial or geopolitical prism.

Having lived in the late 1980s in Beijing and since 2009, Hong Kong, I’ve witnessed growing interest in African art in this part of the world. The perception of African art in Asia is formed by influences very different to those pertaining to a former colonial power like France, notably the rapid growth of China-Africa economic relations. Interest in African art is in its infancy, but I believe, as was the case in France, that art provides a platform through which cultural heritage, identity and shared values can be experienced and interpreted. Over the years I’ve learned as a collector to look beyond the aesthetic value of a work of art and attach more value to the message, and the experience that the art conveys. Our experiences with art are often personal ones. Having spent almost 2 decades in Asia, I believe that art, as well as the nomadic nature of our lifestyles, shape the way we view the world. Exposure to art is a powerful tool to deliver a new vision that transcends cultures. In the case of African art, it invites the viewer to consider and experience the plurality of African cultures and defies cultural stereotypes or classification.

Yves Sena Alavo is an entrepreneur and investor who works with early and mid-stage companies with a focus on his healthcare venture, Futurecast. A multicultural, Afro Optimist, he was raised and educated in Benin and France and is now based in Hong Kong. He runs a boutique foundation called Leap Initiative Philanthropies (LIP) whose mission is to “Make Opportunity Contagious”. LIP operates in Asia, Africa and Europe and is involved in a number of activities including Malaria prevention in West Africa, as well as the promotion of African art and culture on and off the continent. https://www.lip.foundation/

Loy Luo 羅一

Before the advent of writing, there were differences but no deep chasms between cultures, and as prehistoric art shows, they shared a high degree of physical similarity. The formation of cultural gaps is closely related to the emergence of writing and the development of abstract rational thinking. In addition to frequently mentioned factors such as geography and climate, differences in hieroglyphs or syllables may be an important reason for the formation of cultural differences between China and the West. Hieroglyphics make it difficult for Chinese culture to get rid of the intertwining between rationality and sensibility, and the natural abstraction of syllabic characters also reveals gaps between rational logic and perceptual intuition in later Western culture. However, art does help bridge the cultural divide. For example, the visual arts corresponding to hieroglyphs facilitate image thinking and fuzzy thinking (模糊思维) and can alleviate the division and opposition based on logical linearity. The Renaissance shading method and the Impressionist direct painting method can be regarded as metaphors for Western culture’s acceptance of fuzzy thinking.

Auditory arts that correspond to syllabic words help to enhance the sense of rhythm and structure. Perhaps the simultaneous rise of modern music and modern technology in China is a good example. The audio-visual senses are not only the starting point of artistic creation, but also the endpoint of aesthetic appreciation. However, because of the constructive nature of artistic creation, art is not limited to sensory sensibility. The process of artistic creation is both an in-depth exploration of individuality and unique perception, as well as a process in which the creative subject attempts to cross different cultural backgrounds and reduce communication barriers. Therefore, art is a product of the linkage of perception and rationality, a language that people from different cultures can understand. The emotion caused by art with the help of the senses is not the wilful and divergent emotion in daily life, because the artist still puts rationality behind her subconscious while actively resisting rational control. The aim is for the artwork to be appreciated by universal humanity across human psychology in different cultural contexts. Therefore, the process of artistic creation is not empowered by any political jurisdiction but is essentially a process of bridging cultural gaps and reducing communication barriers.

Loy Luo is a Chinese artist/writer based in New York. Her works have been exhibited or collected in China, Italy, America, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Australian, France, etc. Her recent solo exhibitions include: “Homeless” (Undercurrent Gallery, New York); “The Other I” (WhiteBox Harlem, New York). Group shows include: The Beijing Flash Biennale (Beijing, China) and The Logical Lines of Painting-Invitation Exhibition (Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, China). https://www.loyluo.art/

Paul Serfaty

Art has long served as a cultural bridge between China and Asian and Western nations. China’s historical economic dominance meant art exchanges often reflected trade and economic relations, not merely a natural mutual curiosity. Whether expressed via linguistic links with Japan, the export of porcelain shipped via Malacca to Eurasia or the centuries-long transfer of Buddhist images along the Silk Road, art has bound countries’ histories together. The current focus on political and economic ways of expressing nationhood – war, sanctions, ‘dual circulation’ does not diminish art’s value. Soft power remains vital. Post-Mao, China again embraced ‘Western’ art forms in painting, movies and consumer culture. This two-way flow once saw Western art absorbing Chinese ways of seeing and thinking. From the 1700s, English landscape design adapted visual forms from the Kangxi emperor’s Summer Palace. Poet Ezra Pound’s fascination in the 1910s with calligraphic imagery helped launch Imagism and Anglo-Saxon literary modernism, while European and American 20th century artists innovated by investigating the Dao: musical composer-artists like John Cage, or painter-performers such as Yves Klein and abstract painters like Mark Tobey, Georges Mathieu and Sam Francis acknowledged deep debts to Chinese (and Japanese) thinking and practice.

Today, public and popular culture in China and other nations share common memes (heroes, evil corporations…) and social media transfer mechanisms; but can be politically weaponized. The bridge value of culture – natural to art – is undermined by the cross-border expression of a tendency in the USA, India, China, the UK and many other nations – to see culture as part of a general war between concepts of progress (perhaps implying disorder, creative destabilisation, disruption of the status quo) and desire for order and tradition, security and control. Fears that historically focused on subversive art-qualities in domestic culture wars are now projected outwards. It is now more difficult to ensure that a perhaps ‘high culture’ focus on aesthetics is set apart from nationalistic posturing, as popular fields of art – cinema, animation, street art – feel pressure to support institutionalised national narratives. Yet as Frieze Seoul opens in Korea and arguments rage around Kassel’s Documenta Fifteen about Indonesian film collective ruangrupa, Israel and Palestine, and despite Covid-19, global art-interconnection is at an all-time high. How China wishes to use the resulting opportunities remains to be seen.

Paul Serfaty is a barrister with MA and LLM degrees from Cambridge, active in Asian financial markets since 1983 and a permanent resident of HKSAR. He fenced for Hong Kong in the 1990 world championships and has published on Hong Kong’s political structure and on cultural aspects of credit risk. As well as writing and collecting contemporary art, mostly Chinese calligraphy, oils and ink but also Modern British, he has also curated a number of shows, and continues to write for magazines, galleries and artists about their works and ideas.

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