Cui Xiuwen’s Recent WorkSpiritual Realms in the Material World Patricia Karetzky

　　Cui Xiuwen has had a rich career as an artist and in thelast two years her approach to art has changed dramatically.1 Even as an art student at the Central Academy of FineArtsin Beijing her works were controversial, for in her paintingsshe featured naked men, with a highlight emphasizing theirgenitals, in defiance of the preponderance of paintings ofnaked females. The subject of nudes in art school stood incontrast to the appearance of the theme in society, for Chinawas, since ancient times, inhibited about showing the nakedform in accordance with Confucian principles of modesty.

　　After art school, Cui joined with three other women friendsand artists to form a group called the Sirens to exhibit theirwork. As men who expressed little interest in women’s workrun most of the art institutions – museums and galleries, theyhad to show their art in each other’s apartments. The name ofthe group derives from the tale of Ulysses who had himselfbound to the mast of his ship and had his ears stopped up sothat he would not be seduced by the siren’s song as his boatpassed through the straits they inhabited, and as they explain:

　　ThecreationofsirensinGreektalesisatypicalaestheticversion of a patriarchal society where women are always described as the combination of apparent angels and innerdevils.Underthebeliefthatwomenaretheoriginofallcrimes,female wisdom and the artistic value of feminist arts havelong been denied. It’s time for a change. The image of all-powerful man, the pattern in most societies, is bound to beabandoned.Women’s voices will be increasingly heard andtheir natural endowments will benefit people of both sexes.2

　　Cui soon grew tired of painting and after a major crisisexperienced a rejuvenation of her art when she changed itsfocus to photography and video. Among Cui’s videos, twoachieved notoriety. The first entitled Ladies Room (2000)was footage from a hidden video camera recorder in the ladiesroom of a Beijing night club. 3

　　As the women approach the mirror over the wash basinto freshen themselves, adjust their hair or make up, it soonbecomes obvious that these are sex workers who hide theirearnings in their underwear; one even threatens a clientpromising to call his wife if he does not compensate her. Onthe periphery the female bathroom attendant tidies up. Thisis a dark side of the great Chinese commercial explosionheralded in the international press.

　　The other video, Toot (2001), a more lyrical video worklasting a few minutes, involves a self portrait, but this wasnot the original intention. When the model did not show upfor the shoot, Cui played the role herself. A beautiful butsomewhat demure Cui stands before the camera wrappedfrom head to toe in toilet paper, like an Egyptian Mummy.Slowly water is sprayed on her and as the delicate tissuebegins to dissolve, she slowly raises her arms until she standsin a triumphant posture.

　　Soon after, she made a video recreation of theLast Supperby Leonardo in which she replaced the players with the imageof a young school girl dressed in her uniform in Sanjie (TheThree Realms) (2003). Assuming all of the poses of thedisciples—betrayers and saints, the girl looks artificial andnearly comical, but the implications of the substitution arethought provoking. It is a show of bravura to tackle one ofthe most well known works of art and subject it to the processof feminization. The Chinese title Sanjie or the Three Worldsrefers to Heaven, Earth and the underworld, and each actorin the religious drama is consigned to one or the other on thebasis of his actions. Cui remained engaged with the imageof the young schools girl, an alter ego in her work, for nearlya decade. Every few years when she began a new series, Cuiselected a new slightly older model until 2006 when shebegan her work with a pregnant teenager in the series Angel(2006). Cui considered many issues related to adolescencein these works: sexual awakening, gender awareness, andsocial conformity, but with the theme of the pregnant teenagerCui challenged the morals of contemporary society.Hypocritical at best, China now values youth and beauty,but provides little protection for them after their assets arerapidly used up. So in the wake of the sexual revolution thatfollowed the prudish and restrictive society of the CulturalRevolution, girls were avidly desired, the younger the better;their image dominates all manner of media advertising. Buta pregnant teenager has wasted her future, with little tocomfort her as she is no longer accepted by family or society;she is not considered a desirable wife. Applying kabuki likemakeup to the nubile subjects suggests their fragility andvulnerability. Up until then Cui’s works had been producedin color, but in 2009 her mood changed: she becamemeditative and philosophical. In a series of works entitledExistential Emptiness she shot black and white photos ofthe bleak winter landscape of Northern China, where shespent her early years, and with photoshop altered the imagesin two significant ways.4 First she adjusted the contrast so that the compositional elements became stark abstract forms,lacking many of the specifics of the natural landscapeelements. Secondly, she combined the scenes with photos ofher alter ego, a now twenty something, who was accompaniedby a life size and flexible doll that was fabricated in Japan.The doll is a nearly exact replica of the model, who thoughstill dressed as a school girl, is now clearly past that age. Thetwo are engaged in a number of duets – facing each other ina boat casting about in a lonely lake; lying in the snow;separated by a distance with their feet facing each other; thegirl dragging the doll across the snow- filled landscape; orholding the doll before her as they ascend a wintry forest,and more. In some cases the girl is burdened with the doll, inother cases protected by her. The dual persona suggests thedichotomy of body and soul, yin andyang, live and inanimate,real and artificial. The bleakness of the landscape reducesthe figural composition to an iconic statement. What is more,the long horizontal format that Cui favors in these works,along with the monochrome palette, and the monumentalscale of the landscape in contrast to the relatively small sizeof the figures, allude to the great tradition of monochromeChinese ink landscape painting. Her works invest thetraditional scenes with complex and challenging narratives.The series is called Existential Emptiness (2009).

　　All the more surprising then is the recent video SpiritualRealm (2011). The young beauty is gone, replaced by actorsfrom everyday life. Instead of exquisite scenery there is anempty studio stage and a brilliant spot light takes the placeof the diffuse outdoor mystical light. With no props and noclothes, each individual assumes center stage and enacts his/her own drama.Asked to express their feelings of the spiritualrealm, one by one these characters from the urban scene takethe stage and move in synch with some internal vision ofcelestial peace and serenity. Watching them is certainlyuncomfortable, the viewer is ever aware of their starknakedness, their aloneness and vulnerability. Theirmovements are mechanical and repetitive, surprisinglysimilar to each other’s, often their actions echo martial arttai chi exercises. Their gestures are limited consisting mostlyof slowly raising their arms up over their head and lookingskywards. Few explore the space around them; rather,standing erect, they shift their weight from one foot to theother, sometimes making shallow circles in the surroundingspace. There is no suggestion of sexuality in their movements.But this is not the story - there were 100 applicants whowere interviewed. Willingly they auditioned for the camera with an unlimited amount of time to explore through physicalmovement the feeling of being in the spiritual realm. Thoughmost performed for 2-3 minutes, one participant lasted overhalf-an-hour. Shot in black and white, because color woulddistract the eye and add an element of entertainment and amore modern sense of time, the videos are single actionpieces. At the Today Museum in Beijing, Cui projected theimages on the walls, a group of four on one wall, a group ofseven on the other, alternating male/female images. In amore recent exploration of the theme, Cui arranged twogroups, one completely male, and the other female. These groups are obviously composed using computer programming and the results demonstrate great artistry increating compact compositions of naked figures that elicitcomparison with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel done in 1536-1541, especially the group ofthe “Saved” on the right of Christ, or Rodin’s nineteenthcentury semi-clad Burgers of Calais. In the complexcomposition the figures move in counterpoint to each other,the dense grouping forms a sculptural bas relief. From the100 contestants, 24 were selected whose ages range from19-57 for the women, and 16-80 for the men. Cui used whatin China is called a Street Model Agency, in contrast to aprofessional one whose models are too well known andversed in performance. This agency which has recentlybecome popular with artists needing subjects for their workhas models from all walks of life; Cui engaged a wide rangeof people: students, extras for movies, a poet and a writer aswell as street workers.Although it seems voyeuristic to view these subjects, and one feels the obtrusive but unseen presenceof the director of the exercise, the performance of the actorsis solemn, sincere and intense. In the end it is a rather touchingenactment of spirituality that infuses all of our imaginingsof a world beyond our pain. The participants’ response tothe performance is also surprising, many felt transformedby it, and reluctant to return to their everyday activities. LikeAndy Warhol’s dictum of the future when everyone will havefifteen minutes of fame, these subjects are suddenly cast inthe spotlight and asked to express what is purest in theirhearts. For them, the experience was transformative, theyunderstood the rarity of this moment in their life, when theywere at center stage and yet part of a larger project. Invited tothe museum opening, it is interesting to note, they declined to attend,embarrassedperhapsbythepublicspectacleoftheevent.Cui says most people at first reflexively respond to the work assexual, due no doubt to the nudity, but this soon passes into afascination with this very personal form of trance like movement.Theirpostures,like choreog raphy,conveyaspecial state of mind.

　　In conclusion these figures, naked to view, and shot in abrilliant light that exposes all of their unique physicalcharacteristics, individually express their own ideas. Yet asa group they share the commonality of the challenge ofphysically expressing themselves in the nude, of beingvulnerable, of being on view. Seen as a group, there is agreat similarity in their physical responses. Moreover, viewedas an assembly of people of the same gender, their bodiesshare generically similar anatomical parts but are at the same time unique.What is more the assembly is an artificial constructfor these participants did not exist as a group and therefore didnot interact with each other. In sum the work is a meditationon human existence: we live within the limits of the humancondition and the confines of society, as individuals who comeinto the world naked and exposed, and in daily life we areforced to exist in any number of groups. Within the strictureof such groups our actions are guided by the inner rhythms ofour psyche. Hope drives us through despair. Cui’s recent workscontinue to explore the themes of human behavior, sexualidentity, and the issue of the self and its relation to others andnow the spiritual realm as well.

　　PatriciaKaretzkyisO.MunsterbergChair ofAsianArtat Bard College

　　Notes

　　1. The Beijing-based artist has had major group exhibitions includingthe Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; International Centerof Photography andAsia Society and Victoria & Albert Museum, London;and the MoMA PS1. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum ofContemporary Art, Bordeaux; Forence Museum; and the Today ArtMuseum in Beijing. See http://www. artzinechina.com/display.php?a=168

　　2. The Sirens, a pamphlet printed in Beijing, 1998.

　　3. Ladies Room, video, 2000 (6 min 12 sec). see http://teachartwiki.wikispaces.com/Ladies+Room+—+Cui+Xiuwen

　　4.http://www.jingdaily.com/en/culture/cui-xiuwen-at-eli-klein-fine-art-new-york-jan-19-feb-27/

　　Cui Xuiwen Images from Spiritual Realm (2011) video installation. All photos, courtesy of artist