UNCERTAIN PLEASURE: ACTS OF SENSATION

In the mid-1990s Chinese artists began to participate in international biennials and other shows accompanying the rise of global contemporary art. Many works of this period deal with various artistic ideas making their way into China and present theoretical critiques of China’s place in a newly global world. Ai Weiwei, who returned to Beijing in 1993 after a decade in New York, spearheaded a series of journals as a forum for Chinese conceptual artists to exchange ideas and to place their work in a wider, international conversation. He advised, “Always distrust authority, be suspicious  of centralist theories, doubt your alleged cultural influences.” Many  of the artists in this show appeared on the pages of these Black, White, and Grey Cover Books.

One of the key practices that took hold was performance art. In 1994, a makeshift community of outliers and drifters gathered in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Beijing that they dubbed the “East Village.” There, in the shadows of high-rise construction, artists used their bodies in feats of extreme physical and psychic endurance to realize a matter-of-fact connection to real life.