Hatched in China:

The Significance of Zhang Nian' Egg Series

Liu Ning

I would like to tell a story before I start this article. It was February 5, 1989, the serpent's thirtieth year in Chinese zodiac. After two years of preparation, the Grand Exhibition of Contemporary Art finally opened in the highest temple of Chinese art, the National Museum of Art. In the huge exhibition hall on the second floor, there was a young man sitting on a straw mat in the corner. He wore black-rimmed glasses, and his long hair floated out under his big hat. There were a few dozens of raw egg placed on the mat. The eggs were surrounded by pieces of white paper with words "waiting, waiting, and waiting" written on them. Hanging on the young man's neck was a huge piece of paper plaque stating, "to avoid disturbing the future generation, no debates during hatching." More and more people gathered around the young man, and then came two men wearing staff member ID. They squat down on each side of him trying to talk him out of exhibiting in the show, for he was not on the official exhibitors' list. The young man took it nonchalantly. He argued with the two stuff members in a whispering voice while seriously tended the eggs under his crossed leggs. At 10:30am suddenly two shots of gunfire blasted downstairs. It was the ending of Dialogue, a piece performed by Tang Song and Xiao Lu of Zhe Jiang Academy of Art. Somebody ran up to the young man and said, " They are arresting people downstairs. Hurry up and run for your life." The young man reluctantly got up. He looked around the audience and said, " I am afraid the chicks won't be hatched now. Why don't you all take some eggs home." He put a few eggs in his coat pocket and the audience took the rest. A half an hour later, in a small shabby restaurant across the street from the National Museum of Art a few young artists were sharing a plate of scrambled eggs. They had been living on a shoo string, and they had not eaten anything before they went to the exhibition. Tears welted in their eyes. They all understood that the gunfire was the curtain bow of the new art movement (in Li Xian Ting's words,) for which they offered their naked soul. The Chinese avant-garde art was still in its cradle, but the class period had to end. (Peng Tong)

The young man sat silently hatching was Zhang Nian, who now teaches photography in the School of Art of the Shan Tou University. The two men that came to persuade him to withdraw were members of the organizing committee, Kong Chang An, art critic, and Fan Di An, the current president of Central Academy of Fine Art. Although Zhang Nian's name was not on the official exhibitor's list, he had discussed his project with Li Xian Ting, another important member of the organizing committee and was encouraged by Mr. Li. Mr. Li was put to blame later for Zhang Nian's unofficial appearance at the exhibition.

No one had predicted that the exhibition that was dabbed as "the curtain bow of New Art in China" had become the sodden wine of New Art Post-89. Time has changed. From then on Chinese art dragged its feet moving forward little by little. Contemporary art never enjoyed another exciting moment like that of 1980s.

Thirteen years later in the afternoon of an autumn day, I talked with Zhang Nian about the Grand Exhibition of Contemporary Art - 89. "Without Tang Song's Dialogue, Wang De Ren"s Condom and my Hatching," said Zhang Nian, "the exhibition would have been nothing but reminisces of the New Trend - 85." In his 1999 book China New Art Zhang Nian lamented, "Ten years ago I showed a performce piece in the National Museum of Art. I refused to debate; instead, I hatched. I waited and waited. But what came after a long wait is a kind of logo that each of us have become. The logo that drives on the road, submerges in the sea, transmits in the telephone wire, or flies in the sky."

Indeed, like millions of city dwellers, Zhang Nian is also made into a logo. During the day he is the president of his own company. In the evening at home he is a father and a husband. But different from others Zhang Nian has another set of logo formed with eggs, blood drops, tears, and metal nets. It's a simple but profound logo system, based on which the artist's insightful eye is able to observe the culture that we were born into and grew up with and the myth of the modern life like that in James Joyce's novels, at one time magnificent, another time dull, another time grandiose, and anther time pure struggle for survival. If we are living in an age of logo, Zhang Nian is trying to build his own garden of logo, in which his independence guarantees the dense substance in his work, and through which he tries to question and antagonize an increasingly materialist society.

In 1980s an overly enthusiasm for culture occurred in China. Zhang Nian's early work Hatching appeared to criticize this phenomenon, and at the same time his work also reflected the rebellion of his generation from tradition. As young men, they declared, "to hell with theorists and their theory." After the intense economic and cultural growth, there came an overall jaded feeling in the nation, which lasted an entire decade. Zhang Nian's Egg was an attack on the system. Egg, not only as a tool of the weak mass against corrupted politicians, it is an embryo in its own right, a symbol for the birth of a new generation. But on the other hand, eggs are fragile. Even if it is used as a digger, it is not an effective weapon, for as you throw the eggs at the evil, it is the eggs get crushed. Thus came Zhang Nian's later work, Hatched in Century 21, in which we see eggs hit museum walls, eggs hit self-portraits of the artist, and eggs placed on the statues of the mythical animals in the Ming Tomb, reflections of ancient palace walls flowing in the egg white of the cracked eggs.

One day in the winter of 1999 Zhang Nian produced another performance piece. The event took place in the National Museum of Design. In the center of the exhibition hall there was a piece of wood board covered with white cloth, on which it was written "Zhang Nian, 1999." When the show opened Zhang Nian politely invited the audience and fellow artists to throw eggs at the board. Peng! Peng! Peng! "In each crack a dream is broken, a life vanished." Wrote Wen Po Lin, an avant-garde artist who was on location recording the performance. "I suddenly realized all the dreams, the ideal, the romantic enthusiasm of the 1980s truly came to an end."

In the late 1990s we saw more and more of blood and gore in the works of contemporary artists. Although blood is apparent in Zhang Nian's work, Drops/Blood, to him the blood is a symbol representing the bloodline of a race and culture and not the violence. We see the artist's gentle nature in this work, gentler than the eggs that got crushed. In the Drops/Blood series we see blood dripping on the wall of the Forbidden City, on the Great Wall, on Roman Coliseum, on the Acropolis of Athens, on the edge of the Yellow River, and on the ruins of the imperial garden of Yuan Ming Yuan. Viewing such images one is awakened to realize the magnificence of the earth and human civilizations. It is glorious, heroic, and inextinguishable, and yet never lacked evil. The older and more glorious a civilization, the more blood it had shed.

Followed Drops/Blood came out the series of Drops/Tears. In this series we see tears on the face of men, women, young, old, Chinese, and foreigners; they are in the sun, in the rain, sad or happy. This is not the play of surrealistic artists; this is a record of the pain and the joy of Chinese life going through the difficulty in the nation's transforming period in the beginning of the 21st century.

And then came the Nets series. In this series, Zhang Nian illustrated the important concept on the splitting and divorcing of our beings in contemporary life. When viewing the images of Nets I experienced an overwhelming suffocation. The cold steel head is supported and yet separated by the bloodless and fleshless body that is tied by the entangled steel net. A man is stripped naked and wrapped in the metal net and yet still sits in the company president's chair. The element of incongruousness, detachment and divorce in the Net series reminded me of works of Kafka, Powis, and Eve Cline. It is valuable that the avant-garde artists have expressed the divorce of ideal and reality and the split of our being in the contemporary life.

In his letter to art critic Wang Lin, Zhang Nian concluded, "When I look at my work for the past ten year, I realized that each period is a reflection of my life at the time. In a sense, I have done only one project, and that is myself. I was born in Hatching, bled in Drops/Blood, cried in Drops/Tears, and destined to walk into the net of society in Net."

 

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Zhang Nian.

Liu Ning (as Liu in the following): Can you please talk about your artistic journey to enlightenment?

Zhang Nian (as Zhang in the following): I grew up in a small town. During Cultural Revolution intellectuals and artists were sent to my hometown to work in factories as re-education. There were many talents among them. There was even a man who graduated from Cambridge. When I was twelve I received art instructions from a gentle old man who graduated from Xi Nan Art Academy, the former Si Chuan Academy of Fine Art. The old man spent two hours every Saturday afternoon to teach me and another student. We started with sketching. The factory's small workshop was our classroom. Sometimes he took us out on the street to observe passers by. He told us to pay attention to people's eyes. He said everyone's eyes were different. I looked closely and found out what he said was true. It made me having such admiration to my teacher. After I finished middle school, my teacher encouraged me to apply for the preparatory high school of the Si Chuan Academy of Fine Art. My parents are ordinary people. To them it was not worth it to leave home at such a young age just to learn painting and drawing. But I took my teacher's suggestion and applied for the prep school. Fortunately I was accepted. But unfortunately, when I went to see my old teacher on my first vacation home, I found out that he already passed away.

Si Chuan Academy of Fine Art was filled with talents at the time; among them were Cheng Cong Lin, He Dou Ling, the leaders of Scar Art. It was the capital of art in the southwest. Along with Stars Art Association, it represents the contemporary art in China in the early 1980s. After four years of study in the prep school, I learned solid techniques. Classes were not particularly challenging or interesting for me at the Central Academy of Arts and Design. It was the lectures and exhibits of foreign artists and designers hosted by the academy made me feel worthwhile. From some exhibition I realized the importance of design in contemporary art.

 

Liu: After you graduated from college, you lived through periods of "academics disorientation," "Yuan Ming Yuan art colony," and "peasants' courtyard." Which period do you miss the most?

Zhang: I miss the period of Yuan Ming Yuan art colony the most. It was from the winter of 1988 to the fall of 1989. I was one of the first groups of artists living there. Among my neighbors were Zhang Da Li, Kang Mu, Wang De Ren, Muo Shu, Fang Li Jun, and poet Hei Da Chun. I will always miss that period, although short, it was the best time of my life! We were young, had none of self-censorship. The moment a creative idea popped up we put it into action. Back then the water in Lake Fu was clear and deep. We often went swimming naked at midnight. The night was so quiet and serene. In April millions of tiny white flowers from the old locust tree bloomed. You could smell the fragrance from far away. I can't forget it to this day. Foreign collectors often came treasure hunting. They paid for our work with "foreign exchange currency." We could live a year on the sale of one painting. Some foreign consulates, like the French and the Mexican, hosted small scale exhibitions of our work. In a sense we felt we had found the destination of our ideal and faith. Looking back it was like another era. Now the artists from the colony have scattered everywhere in the world, and some have already left art. Fang Li Jun is perhaps the only one received official recognition.

 

Liu: Now you live in Wang Jing Garden, an area concentrated with artists like the Left Bank of Paris in the 1920s and Greenwich Village in New York in the 1970s. How do you like living in such an area, and does it help you in your artistic productivity?

Zhang: To live in such an environment undoubtedly benefits the "pure" artists whose only means to make a living is to make art. Art is fragile. Artists need the support from one and another. Information and inspiration are important. But there aren't many conceptual artists living in Wang Jing Garden, plus we are so scattered anyway. For me the major source for artistic information is the Internet. But I think in this information-saturated age, it is better not to pay attention to too much outside information. I am very careful with what's out there. There are certain things I am trying to avoid. Perhaps art is in essence an abstract expression. Perhaps we can only reach enlightenment by going through our personal experience, it is an important process.

 

Liu: What do you think about the "action art" today?

Zhang: Action Art is a mistranslation of Performance Art known in the West. The name was coined by a group of theorists in the 1980s. I have talked to many professionals on this subject. Actually to consider art as action is a denial of art. It also provided the base later on for those who wanted to eradicate performance art altogether. The early performance art in our country was more like installation. A few years ago it was in fashion to wrap and tie things up. The action of unwrapping and untying was considered a performance. There were good works. In fact some of the criticism to performance art today is centered on none artistic issues. True performance art is only a medium for artists to express their concept when they feel the form of painting and photography is inadequate. But now there are artists and curators who are detached from reality and real life experience only pursue media effect that will bring them fame and fortune. There is such saying in the art community, "to be successful in performance art you only need to have one good picture," for a good picture will sell, as Wen Pu Lin said, "This kind of inartistic judgment will make performance art only valuable for news and notoriety." As far as I am concerned there should be a measurement for displaying "public art" in public place. Good artists are not those who ignore the criterion of the measurement but those whose work sensibly expresses the criterion of the measurement.

 

Liu: What's your opinion on the relationship of Chinese avant-garde art and its market system?

Zhang: It's something not even near what can be called as "market system." It is just people trying to establish connections with one and another with a peasant mentality. The curator is like the production manager of a company. He needs to complete a few projects, and the artists become his projects. Such kind of play will make those who love art and need art stay away. This "reality" is misleading. It makes people believe that this is the one and only way of making contemporary art, to the extend that not long ago a "regulation" was issued by certain establishment, thus completely blocked the path of some art forms. Although I despise the fact that art is regulated by bureaucracy, I must admit that there was a reason for why things had gone this far.

Contemporary art is merely a baby comparing with an ancient civilization that has lasted for five thousand years. To establish a system is like taking care of a child. It needs an effort from all of us. We should have a system that cultivates the growth of contemporary art, which includes museums, galleries, art education, publishing, critic, and art market, otherwise it would not be able to change its current state, as Wo Guan Zhong described, "We have now more art illiterates than literally illiterate people. We need artists, critics and curators who have acute social-conscience, wisdom and sense of responsibility to recognize the conflicts and crisis in our society and who also have artistic ability and high spirit in the humanities. Few people of such kind can be found in China today.

Zhang Nian was born in Jin Yang, Si Chuan in 1964. In 1988 he graduated from the former Central Academy of Arts and Design, now the School of Art of Qing Hua University. From 1988 to 1990 he taught photography in the School of Art of Shan Tao University. From 1990 he has worked as a free-lance artist. Zhang Nian lives and works in Beijing. His works were done in a variety of art forms including canvas, conceptual art, performance art, installation, photography, digital video, and design. He had his first solo show in 1986 in Beijing Concert Hall. In 1989 he participated in the Grand Exhibition of Contemporary Art of China. His works have been chosen to participate in the exhibition of Exchange: Chinese Contemporary Art, Germany, 1990; ADC Visual Art Exhibition, New York, 1998; Dialogue: Chinese Art Exhibition, Italy, 2002; Rome Bianali of Photography, Rome, 2003; The Sky Has No Defense, 2003; Water: 0.03%; and Together, hosted by UNICEF, 2003. Zhang Nian has published a number of books including China New Art: the Works of 23 Avant-Garde Artists (World Language Publishing: 1999) and Art and Existing Objects (Hu Nan Art Publishing: 2003)