Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou
This article gives a critical introduction to art works included in the exhibition New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou, which was curated by the authors and staged at the Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom in 2015. New China/New Art showed a diverse range of videos produced during the last decade by artists with a working relationship to Shanghai and Hangzhou. Included were works by eleven artists/art groups mostly under the age of forty: Birdhead (Song Tao b.1979 and Ji Weiyu b.1980), Chen Hangfeng (b.1974), Chen Tianzhou (b.1985), Double Fly, Gao Mingyan (b.1983), Liu Chenzhen (b.1976), Mujin (b.1982), Peng Yun (b.1982), Tan Lijie (b.1991), Tang Chao (b.1990) and Zhang Qing (b. 1977). Most of these artists were trained in Hangzhou and/or Shanghai, and/or have established their careers in or between the two cities, while the remainder, including Chen Tianzhou, exhibit and sell their work in Shanghai. All contribute to a regional concentration of video art production and exhibition whose critical mass is almost certainly unsurpassed elsewhere in China. The first part of this article discusses the historical development of video art in Shanghai and Hangzhou. The second gives a critical reading of some of the works presented in New China/New Art.
The Historical Development of Video Art in Shanghai and Hangzhou
Since the late 1980s, neighbouring metropolises Shanghai and Hangzhou, on China’s east coast, have become major centres for the development of video art. Both cities have historically cosmopolitan cultures within which thriving contemporary art communities make innovative use of electronic media in the production of music as well as still and moving images.
China’s first known video artwork, 30x30 was produced in Hangzhou in... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Yang Fudong, No Snow on the Broken Bridge, 2006. Still. Multi-screen video installation. Courtesy ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai.
Peng Yun, Jieyu’s Debutante, 2013. Still. Single-channel video. Courtesy Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai.
