During the 1980s, people living in China were first introduced to information about Western photography. After decades of living under Communist oppression, Chinese artists were ready to explore.
Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, opening today at the Nasher Museum of Art, is part of this artistic explosion. Featuring over 100 works by 60 artists, the exhibit highlights art created in the past 15 years.
"There are a lot of creative artists and all of a sudden they have access to a flood of new material, media and information from the West they didn't have access to 10 or 15 years ago," said Kimerly Rorschach, Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans director of the Nasher.
Rorschach's involvement with the exhibit stems back to her tenure at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, where she helped organize Between Past and Future. Upon arrival at Duke, she looked to bring a world class exhibit to the Nasher, but was hindered by the museum's relative youth.
"Museums plan their exhibits three to four years in advance, but because this is a new museum we couldn't plan ahead," she said. "This was a great exhibition available to me-I knew about it, I loved it and the tour was ending. Because I was the organizer, the show is extending its tour to travel to the Nasher."
The exhibit is curated by Wu Hung, distinguished service professor of art history at the University of Chicago and consulting curator at the Smart Museum of Art, and Christopher Phillips, curator at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Hung and Phillips combined their expertise in Chinese art and photography, respectively, to create the exhibit, Rorschach said. Over the course of a couple years, the two traveled to China multiple times, made studio visits and compiled lists of interesting artists.
"Since many works focus on similar issues and problems, we can select those most interesting and powerful ones," Hung wrote in an e-mail. "Artistic quality, experimental spirit and social implications are some of the major criteria."
The curators divided the show into four sections, which Hung said emerged naturally as they surveyed the field.
The first section, "History and Memory," deals with the legacy of China's past. Song Dong's "Breathing Part 1," a light box transparency, shows the artist lying on his stomach in Tiananmen Square, with his face close to the ground, coating the pavement with his breath.
In another section, "Performing the Self," the videos and photographs reflect the artist's quest for individual identity during a time when strong traditional institutions are fading. Liu Jian and Zhao Qin's "I Love McDonald's," classified by Hung as "both a documentary and satiric work," is comprised of six chromogenic prints of a group of people eating at McDonald's. In each print, the outfits, clothing, accessories and even gender of the subjects are altered.
What the pieces share is a sense of urgency, experimentation and excitement-a moment in time created by the coalescing of multiple forces. But, has the moment passed?
"That period still continues and photography and video are still important art forms," Hung said. "But now Chinese artists face the problem of commercialization, and need to keep independence from commercial opportunities and pressure."
Though the circumstances in China continue to change, the power of their photography and video remains undeniable.
"There's this sense of 'Wow, this is what's going on right now,'" Rorschach said. "Photography can be made and produced quickly, which gives it a sense of immediacy. There is a hunger to know what's going on in China, and this exhibit makes it accessible, which is why it's so exciting."
Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China will be on display at the Nasher Museum through Feb. 18, 2007. Tonight at 5:30 p.m. there is an Artists Panel Discussion, which is free with admission.?
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