Who Cares

Xiao Yu never quits, does he? Year by year, he keeps coming up with some new angle. Once upon a time, a painter was a painter, a sculptor was a sculptor. Xiao Yu, however, has a finger in every pie. Installations, videos, sculptures, paintings, events and processions, fantasies and scenarios. Less than two years ago, he filled Arario Beijing with a eight-act opera in the form of a museum of ideas. Now he emerges from his studio with his pregnant Statue of Liberty, painting, milk-powder sculptures, and God knows what else. What’s he up to with all this making, making, making things? Who cares? That’s what I’d like to know.

The preponderance of the evidence suggests Xiao Yu cares. But the rascal has never been willing to talk much about his art. His art itself meanwhile addresses everything under the sun. Yet if you ask him about what it signifies, he tips his head to the side, smiles, and cryptically mutters, “More talk means more mistakes.” Is this any way to answer a serious question? Even a sympathetic critic like myself does not have an unlimited fund of patience. He forces me to draw my own conclusions. Okay, here’s how I see it.

Expectation, worries, happiness, uncertainty, fear – all of these are seen in the condition of pregnancy. The society of China is like this pregnant statue. The state of the world is like this pregnant statue. Something new is coming, and we’re eight months down the road to it. This is how I see this sculpture. The statue’s condition is like our own.

There are obvious signs and indications of the change happening in China. Farmers are selling their land, unable to maintain the old ways. Those who get some money are turning into ostentations show-offs. Capitalism has impregnated China, and it’s about to deliver something. China is no longer really Socialist in the old track, nor is it exactly Capitalist in the Western way. The new form of the society has yet to emerge. A baby is coming, but we’ve not yet seen its face.

Contemporary art reflects on the state of contemporary society. “Who cares whose seed it is? It’s my pregnancy.” Society’s change has grown obvious. The condition is our own.

Yours truly,

Hu Kaier