Zheng Bo’s ‘A Wall’, ‘Micro-Micro Revolution’ and Socially Engaged Art
Digital artist Zheng Bo and commissioners THE SPACE have launched A Wall,a showcase of socially engaged art from China. Featured projects include Wu Mali’s A Breakfast At Plum Tree Creek, which will also be presented as part of CFCCA’s summer exhibition Micro-Micro Revolution, alongside two other socially engaged art projects from Taiwan; Huang Po-chih’s 500 Lemon Trees and Hsu Su chen and Liu Chien ming’s Plant Matter Neeeded, Micro Micro Revolution is curated by Lu Peiyi and will open at CFCCA on 2nd July.
From THE SPACE website:
“This work and other work I’ve been doing for the past two years is just the starting point of merging two things: media art and socially engaged art. A few years ago, no-one was thinking about these two things. In a way, I’m still experimenting. I can’t make a physical wall in China where I ask people to post things. That would be suicidal. But I can do it online. I can do it as a piece of digital art.” – Zheng Bo.
A Wall is a curated selection of artworks from some of China’s leading contemporary artists, curated by artist Zheng Bo and co-commissioned by The Space, in collaboration with British Council China and Cass Sculpture Foundation.
Text, photos, videos and other archival material combine to form a digital wall that tells the story of socially engaged art in China over the past 20 years.
In concept and style, A Wall is a reimagining of China’s Democracy Wall for the digital age. The Democracy Wall was a brick wall established in Beijing in 1978, which became a key platform for creative and cultural expression. Artists and activists recorded ideas, news and commentary on the Democracy Wall following the collapse of the Cultural Revolution.
In the same spirit, viewers will be able to contribute their thoughts on the artworks and themes posted on Zheng’s wall.
Artworks featured in A Wall include:
- Keepers of the Waters, organised by Betsy Damon, participated in by Yin Xiuzhen, Dai Guangyu and others, Sichuan and Tibet, 1995-96
- Moving Rainbow, Xiong Wenyun, Sichuan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet Highways, 1998-2001
- Everyone’s East Lake, Li Juchuan, Li Yu and others, Wuhan, 2010
- Breakfast at the Plum Tree Creek, Wu Mali, Taiwan, 2010-11
- Style of the Northeastern New Territories, Tai Ngai Lung and others, Hong Kong, since 2009
- Two Square Metres, Xu Tan, Guangzhou, 2014
The issues explored in A Wall are diverse. Each project is an individual investigation into one aspect of China’s social fabric, from Li Juchuan’s consideration of the rise of the individual and decline of the collective subconscious, to Xiong Wenyun, Wu Mali and Tai Ngai Lung’s investigations into the impact of globalisation, over-development and urbanisation