The month of June in Venice this year is romantic, artistic and a bit crazy because of the ongoing 55th Venice Biennale. Besides the national pavilions and central pavilions, dozens of surrounding events also contain some eye-catching content. For the first time, Chinese artists are holding some 10 parallel exhibitions in Venice - a noticeable improvement over only two such exhibitions in 2011.

However, for most Chinese netizens who are not able to travel to the water city, looking at pictures featuring performance art presented by Chinese artists may just seem bizarre. There are people "flying" around with colorful fog as a backdrop, skinny-dipping or standing along the Plazza San Marcoin. And the still artworks seem no more understandable. So what exactly are these artists doing in Venice?

First, some history

Twenty years ago, the appearance of works from 14 Chinese artists including Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Xu Bing and Yu Hong at the 45th Venice Biennale brought international recognition to the artists as well as "Chinese fever" in the global art world. Since then, going to Venice for the world's biggest art fair has become a dream for many Chinese artists.

Fang Zhenning, art critic and curator of last year's Chinese pavilion in the architecture section of Venice Biennale told the Global Times that when the Chinese artists were first able to display their works at Venice in 1993, most of them had no money or experience and did not have a clue about where their works would end up.

"Yu Hong said that one of her paintings disappeared without a trace after the exhibition, and that was for a central pavilion that the Chinese artists were invited to by international curators," said Fang.

Now, the group of artists who participated in the Venice Biennale 20 years ago probably consider the event the same as other well-known international events. The world is also no longer surprised to see Chinese artists in Venice. Nevertheless, the experience of going to the Venice Biennale is still a valuable résumé builder for many Chinese artists, especially for those not based in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou.

"Artists who have their works exhibited at the Venice Biennale were a small percentage before. Many artists wanted to take part in it but found it hard to get a permit even for collateral exhibitions. This year is the first time that suddenly so many applications were approved," said Fang.

Italy is experiencing a protracted economic downturn and hopes the artists will bring tourists as well as fortune to Venice. To help achieve that goal, the period has been expanded from three months to half a year.

Keeping the Chinese pavilion operating that long is expected to cost about 1 million yuan($163,000) for rental fees alone. But unlike 1993, Chinese artists and curators now have ways to secure financing. According to Fang, some investors collect works from the exhibition in return for sponsoring someone.

What did they do?

Voice of the Unseen is one of the biggest Chinese collateral events of the Biennale. It includes contemporary art from about 150 Chinese artists. Luo Yiping, curator of Guangdong Museum, and Italian art critic Gloria Vallese supported the curator of the exhibition Wang Lin to organize the event.

The exhibition room is full of peculiar things. Wang hired a couple of professional "crying actors"(people who cry loudly at funerals) wearing long white robes to weep at a statue of Confucius.

And Fang introduced that there was also a woman writing The Internationale using a pen in her female parts, and another person lying on the floor wearing a worker's outfit pretending he was hurt.

The passion of Chinese artists is not limited to the exhibition rooms, and some artists planned to do things that they could not do in China. However, the process in Venice is also not as free as they imaged. Yuan Gong's work Sky Attack, in which he uses remote-control flying units to create a sense of danger, ended up with his assistant being arrested by the local police.

Photos and news stories about such art from Chinese artists in Venice generated online buzz with many saying the works are not qualified to go abroad for big international art fairs.

'Transplacement'

"Performance art is nothing shameful. What is shameful is the attitude of coming there and doing such things. The attitude of simply putting out a historical Chinese figure such as some emperors in exhibitions is out of date," said Fang.

Fang also criticized the organization of some exhibitions: some are a mess, while others are too simple compared with other pavilions. Although these exhibitions cannot fully represent the art scene in China, they do somewhat reflect the disconnect between Chinese art and that of the developed world.

Art critic Du Xiyun, however, posted a long comment on Sina Weibo to support Yuan Gong's incident. Borrowing Yuan's own words, he wrote, "so many Chinese artists have come to Venice today, reflecting their anxiety - they hope to build a conversation with the world but do not have an ideology to export… I can't expect how much academic value my work contains but provoking (others) and losing control does reflect part of my feelings."

Du encourages artists to face reality and bring their real self in art as he finds that the principle of contemporary art is not about aesthetics but more about a concern and critical thinking of current social problems.

"Contemporary art emphasizes the artist's personal view to experience and represent social issues. The social issue could be related to everybody, but which one is more important follows the audience's personal judgment and choice," Du wrote in an e-mail to Global Times.

Art critic Zhu Qi wrote in an article published in Xinmin Evening News that for those Chinese artists who have no connection with mainstream international art circles, their behavior, aesthetics and thoughts remain at the grass-roots stage in China. All they can do when suddenly given an opportunity to go abroad is to ship everything they did in China to Venice.

"They did not realize that the Venice stage in 2013 has been completely transformed since 1993," Zhu wrote.

Fang pointed out that one can look at the queues outside each pavilion to know where the good art is: there are few queues for those Chinese performance art events.

Curator Li Zhenhua said that to hold an exhibition in Venice, one must take into account the context. Whether it is interesting art is one question, but a more important question is whether it is art that can produce an effect within the context of Venice.

"In this regard, Yuan Gong's work did create communication and it is important," said Li.

Yet, what the (Chinese) artists are doing in Venice is a controversial issue. One thing seems certain: being able to be there to observe and learn is already a great opportunity for the artists.