Statements by the curator, Karen Smith, and by the artist, Xiao Yu

Subtlety was seen at the Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, in 2008.

1. The exhibition’s curator, Karen Smith says this

Xiao Yu is an artist I have long admired but until this year – 2008 – had not yet had the opportunity to work with. Subtlety provided me a perfect moment. For me, at least, less for Xiao Yu who found himself working against the clock to complete the projects he proposed. We made it especially difficult by insisting that he produce two pieces rather than one. This was not due to my inability to choose between two proposals, rather because, faced with an artist whose thought processes and approach to transforming them into artworks are such a joy to encounter, one piece was not certain to satisfy the appetite I was certain had been aroused by Xiao Yu’s magnificent solo show at Arario [Beijing] in 2007

The first of the works he proposed was Happiness. The fact that the scale of the work is of relatively modest proportions does not mean that its weight is of less than enormous magnitude. The sense of modesty that conveyed did, however, further encourage us to push for a second work – to provide a suitable platform for the artist’s talents, was our subtle rationale. The second piece is Our Tomorrow will be Sweeter than Honey.

Happiness pivots on the artist’s questioning of exactly what the emotion constitutes in today’s world. The idea is not one with which any of us are unfamiliar. In one sense, “What is happiness?” is an elemental question that’s beyond the door – a place of ideal potential to which we are not privy. The subject is provocative, and demands our thought and consideration: through history, it has taken various forms in the asking, as well as in the answers received. However, thousands of years into human existence, it is still a question we are unable to answer with unanimity. We might assert that all people are the same in essence, but it is increasingly clear – as if it could ever have been otherwise – that the cultural contexts and frameworks in which we are nurtured instill us with very hugely divergent standards by which we insist happiness is achieved.

Xiao Yu’s sculptural installation takes the elements he discerns – home, family – and combines them through an assemblage of motifs, both as literal statements and an intuited benchmark for current Chinese aspirations. As an aesthetic tableau, the hard lines of the cold steel door – the gateway to man’s castle-home – and the curvature of the impregnated female body, make for an incongruous coupling. Here, Xiao Yu gives us two familiar forms interrupted, disrupted, and in regard of the stomach portion, one that tampers quite directly with social taboos. Happiness is almost unsubtle in its message and focus. This sensation is compounded by the sound of music – a fine humor in Xiao Yu’s choice of Louis Armstrong’s voice, singing “Wonderful World” – from an invisible source, which suggests life being lived within the space.

Happiness is without doubt one of the most pressing conjectures of our time, since it may never have been higher on the list of desirable possessions, nor [may it ever have been more] on the list of qualities whose absence we lament, and in whose name the human race consumes products and hard cash, stimulants and sedatives, medicines and sinecures, religion and guru guidebooks, and a multitude of relationships.

Great Coat [aka Our Tomorrow will be Sweeter than Honey] proved almost as complex as Happiness to realize, largely because it went through many transformations before reaching a final stage with which Xiao Yu was satisfied. Although entirely unrelated in its concept, the work is not without relation to notions of happiness and [to] the underlying theme of Happiness. For it has a history of “cool” that almost rivals that of Levi’s jeans or Coca-cola. Invented in the 1950s but attaining its most familiar cut in 1960s – Xiao Yu was born in 1965, hence his particular affinity with the icon of his era – the 

Chinese Army great coat was once intended for the privileged members of an elite. With the rise of the Red Guards in the Cultural 

Revolution, it was envied for the allegiance it affirmed, the mark of the true PRC [People’s Republic of China] soldier. Amazingly, in the early 1980s, it was the chosen garment of the new wave of artists. Practical but anonymous – necessary in a world shifting from group  (where everyone was required to look the same) to individual freedoms  (where people elected to dress the same so as not to draw attention to the personal differences they were developing). By the end of [the big popularity of China’s rock star] Cui Jian in the late 1980s, it was the coolest thing to own: no self-respecting avant-garde rebel was without one. This trend continued even after June 4 [1989; the Tiananmen Square massacre is called the June 4 Incident in China], and on through the 1990s – although as the decade unfolded it was increasingly practicality, not “cool,” that drove the choice for the great coat amongst artists and workers alike.

Today, against the surging tide of fashionable attire available to suit every pocket, the great coat has become (for the majority of urbanites) a symbol of a past era: itself practical still, but bulky, an inefficient warmth-provider, which signifies the lower income brackets – mostly jobs that condemn workers to the elements through the long winter months.

Each of these works is perfectly illustrative of Xiao Yu’s approach to art, and of his attitude towards life as experienced within his socio-political and cultural framework. The first [i.e., Happiness] will continue to be a pressing preoccupation to millions of Chinese people looking to the future from early adult life, and which is increasingly at odds with that of the older generations and their absolute opinions. The second  [i.e., Our Tomorrow will be Sweeter than Honey] is an icon of modern China that, through the last thirty years, has also touched the lives of millions of people in such a subtle way and, objectively speaking, for not dissimilar reasons.

2. The artist Xiao Yu says this

[Regarding Happiness]

People don’t often talk about happiness, but in reality everyone has some kind of vague goal in mind in everything they do. It’s the feeling that what I do now has everything to do with what I will have in the future. It’s in the way we talk about things. For example, no matter what type of person you are, you have a certain idea of what constitutes happiness. For ordinary people, to have a house, and get married and have a child, are the absolute basic aspirations. Why is this only now an individual aspiration [in Chinese society]? Because, following the period of revolution in the 1950s, we began to sacrifice our own interests for the sake of a bigger ideal. This was Socialism, Communism. Everyone devoted all their efforts to realizing these goals. All family belongings became public property, as the people remodeled themselves as part of the masses. As I was growing up, I absolutely believed that I was part of a new society. Our teachers, and the whole of society, taught us that we should be a useful screw in the societal machine. My whole life revolved around this idea. For us at this time, this equated with happiness. It didn’t matter if it was an ideal that someone else told you to have, or if you thought it was your own, it was tacitly understood that this was the goal of your life. Our society didn’t want you to have any private aspects to your life. Myself, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this. Gradually, you begin to really devote yourself to this. When made our pledge to the Party, we promised to devote our youth to the Party and to the nation, didn’t we? Nobody had a concept of “self.” But now it’s totally different.

Today, the emphasis is on  “self.” It’s now okay to express yourself. People were very quick to develop individual voices, and it seemed we’d soon be hearing all kinds of individual ideas. But through that process, we still haven’t had time to consider what real happiness might be. Maybe people feel that they don’t need to give it much thought. Before the Liberation [1949], happiness was having children, a wife, a respectable household. Now the same idea is back. Not that anyone is saying that this is how it should be. But I think that slowly everyone is falling back on that old standard. Perhaps in comparison with forty or fifty years ago, it seems like a new thing; but in fact it’s a reversion to an old standard.

[Regarding Our Tomorrow will be Sweeter than Honey]

What interests me most about the Army great coat is the relationship to identity [shen fen]. From 1966, when the ’64 style of Army coat became known, it had special characteristics that are not found in the standard army-issue uniform of any other nation. It’s not a conventional piece of army clothing. There was no variation in style for different ranks, only an insignia on the collar. So no matter if you were an officer or a soldier, the coat was the same. This gave it great political significance, because China’s military laid great stress on equality of uniform. Army people learned that this uniformity had its advantages. If you were captured, no one would know if you were an officer or not!  (That’s of course a joke.) So of course, there were functional advantages to the coat. But perhaps the disadvantages outweighed the advantages, so ultimately it would be adapted and changed.

Now it feels like any other generic army coat. But in the moment it first appeared, it had a style all its own. Each of the developmental stages the great coat underwent is interesting, too. If it wasn’t green, you might easily think it was a normal cotton-padded jacket. It didn’t have much personality of its own. In the ‘60s, especially in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, everyone wore it, the leaders, Party members, even the Gang of Four. Everyone felt they identified most closely with the People’s Liberation Army [PLA]. So of course during the winter, they wore this coat. Ordinary citizens couldn’t just wear the coat, though. It was a thing of rank, seen on those occasions in the Cultural Revolution when the leaders came out to launch campaigns, to meet the masses, give speeches. It was a symbol of power, of special power. So at the time of my youth, the Cultural Revolution was almost over Still, the only people who could wear the coats were members of the PLA, kids of PLA families, and those that could steal them. Ordinary people wore blue cotton-padded jackets. Although these blue jackets had some similarities, the Army coats had that distinctive green color, and those gum-tree buttons. Young people saw them as a fashion item. Slowly, the coat would become a symbol of the masses. But for us kids, with ideas about being in vogue, the Army coat was the thing to have, we’d fight for it. Many people started wearing the Army coat all the time. Of course, not in the summer, just in winter

Later, as reform and opening got underway, young people started to decorate the coats with special collars, and they wore aviator glasses. They would cycle around dressed like that, carrying radios and cassette players. All these things were considered the height of cool, the very standard for fashion. When you saw them, you knew that the kid wearing them was from some big city with a special background. A very cool kid. From then on, the use and identity of the Army coat changed again. In the 1980s, as everyone began to do their own thing, now it was possible for people to pursue their dreams, like Zhang Yimou being able to make films. He would wear an Army great coat on set. Obviously it kept him warm, but it was a useful disguise. This kind of mentality was not limited to people in the film industry. It’s just that they were watched closely.

At the beginning of the  ‘80s, we all wanted to wear that coat. But once we started wearing it, it became a way of maintaining a sense of conformity, so that no one could tell what you were really up to, or what occupation you had. It meant that you wouldn’t easily stand out or draw attention to yourself. The general mentality was that it was best to conceal ourselves. The coat was both a status symbol and a way of blending in. Previously, our identities all seemed the same. Now we were all becoming aware of the question of individual identity. Before, it simply wasn’t an issue. Before, if your identity was too obvious, or too clear, it could get you into trouble. Those were extreme times. It was better if nobody knew what you were up to. Now, we could all do the things that pushed the envelope just a little. And when other people looked at us, they saw only an ordinary kid.

The Army coat was a great help in resolving these issues. But then it gradually went out of style, which meant it was no longer useful. People wore jeans, grew long hair and sideburns, and adopted their own style completely. The Army great coat reverted back to its original purpose: something to keep people warm. That meant that the people seen wearing them were different too. For example, people who worked night shifts or outdoors might need to wear it. It continued to be worn by people in the film industry to keep warm, because it was convenient and easy to wear, and inexpensive to buy, which also made it a hit among homeless people, and criminals. In times of natural disasters, large quantities of the coats would be transported to the stricken area along with other aid. It works for all kinds of people, and is easily mass produced. So that is what has become of that great coat today. 

IN THE “DOCUMENTARY” SECTION OF THE DVD . . 

3. The curator, Karen Smith, explains the idea behind Subtlety, saying this: 

The reason for doing this exhibition began, I think, earlier this year, looking at the way that Chinese art was being discussed abroad – really talking about a certain perception of Chinese art, which obviously included a lot of iconography and motifs that look Chinese. I think when you really look at Chinese art, a lot of the most famous painters perhaps use some of this iconography. But in broader terms, I think that there’s really a lot of very subtle motifs that have been [newly] invented or created by Chinese artists, that very oftentimes don’t get noticed by people outside [of China], because perhaps it is too subtle.

4. The artist Xiao Yu also says this:

In terms of a discussion of changing trends, the ’64 style of the Chinese army coat is extremely famous. But at that time, through to the end of the Cultural Revolution  [1976], only people in power could wear that coat. After the Cultural Revolution ended, it became fashionable among young people, just like any fashion fad today. When it started, only certain people could wear it, those of a special status in life. Then young people started to wear it. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, ironically, if someone didn’t want to stand out, they would wear the coat. So, it went from being a symbol of rank or power, to a fashion fad, to a protector of anonymity. But this time its identity was increasingly blurred, until it became simply something that kept you warm. By the end of the ‘90s, as the new millennium began, it became merely functional. For filmmakers filming outside at night, it keeps them warm. Same for guards on construction sites, and the workers, who need to keep warm. Including  [also] criminals. So from being an army coat to a simple winter warmer, this coat has gone through an incredible process of transformation.

People don’t often talk about happiness, but in reality everyone has some kind of vague goal in mind in everything they do. It’s the feeling that what I do now has everything to do with what I will have in the future. So many things in life can be preplanned. Only when something becomes a problem, does it become obvious to people. That’s exactly the state in which I believe society finds itself today. This problem is consuming people, and I think it’s only going to get bigger. Unless the structure of society changes significantly, then it’s not going to get any better. We’re all growing up, and in the process of growing up the problem only gets worse. This so-called breakthrough leaves us endlessly seeking for more. When it becomes obvious it will already be too late to escape it. 

[Texts transcribed from videotaped interviews – as seen on a limited-edition DVD produced in connection with the exhibition Subtlety (2008).]

from: http://www.othershore-arts.net/xiaoyuESSAYS2.html