Sheng Project is a joint curatorial project between the Long March Project and Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought in China Academy of Art. Launched in 2015 as a longue durée enquiry into the complexity of its subject, the project takes Zheng Shengtian (Sheng), an eminent pioneer in Chinese contemporary art, his life and art career more than seven decades, as the subject of research. By scrutinizing his encounters in art and life experiences for more than a half century, it attempts to reactivate our sense and perception of Chinese art and society in the Revolution and post-Revolution era.

Sheng Project does not suffice itself with regular curatorial production which tends to summarize the research into a static format of exhibition, instead, the project would inaugurate with “A Proposal for Sheng Project”, which is integral to the project’s oftentimes growing and diversifying curatorial method. In this stage, the unconventional publication assembled the ongoing research––chronology, parallel histories with material or oral evidence, index to his complete paintings, the contextual knowledge in arts and literature of his time––into a multi-layered curatorial proposal, which aims to propose to the Chinese and international stakeholders interested in the different models of international exchange of the arts.

Sheng’s life is as elaborately constructed as history itself. Through him, we can discover the twists and turns, coincidences, encounters and forked paths of the last century of Chinese history, and sense the confluence of surging undercurrents. “I was supposed to go to Mexico.” Sheng said as he recalled his first travel abroad in the 1980s. This plain utterance now holds profound implications forty years later. Time flows eternally, yet history occurs only once. We are guided into the twists and folds of the twentieth century history in search of the abounding historical meanings, possibilities, or potentials that hides within.

Sheng speaks of life as a Zócalo (the main square in central Mexico City), one that bustles with people coming and going. Structured around the image of a Zócalo, the exhibition unfolds along Sheng’s personal life and experiences, maps the multiple historical frameworks of Revolution / Post-Revolution, Cold War / Post-Cold War, Imperialism / Neo-Imperialism, with the support of extraordinarily rich collection of documents and archives. It projects the “two modernisms” in revolution and art of the twentieth century, and interconnects the divided and periodized “Three Thirty Years” in Chinese historical narratives. Furthermore, these rich documents reveal chance encounters, entanglements, struggles and vicissitudes among different generations in the Zócalo of life. A life-river full of contingencies and a Zócalo that unfolds into a century forms into a fascinating labyrinth of destinies under the interaction of various historical forces.

The title of the project originates from the name of an online databank set up by Sheng himself, http://shengproject.com/. Yet this eponymous curatorial project is not a retrospective of an individual person or an exhibition of historical documents. As a long term project that spans various fields such as art making, research, curating, and education, in the past two years the curatorial team has engaged more than fifty art practitioners in and beyond of the disciplinary of contemporary Chinese art to participate in a series of research, introspective, and expository workshops and conferences. The outcomes of these curatorial and editorial meetings will be compiled into what we call a “book in action” that is to be published by the end of 2017. By working together with professionals from different generations, this project endeavours to reconnect fragmented memories and therefore becomes a ground zero for the self-emancipation of Sheng’s contemporaries. In this respect, Sheng Project is a proposal to all within the field of contemporary art.

Through Sheng Project, the curatorial team anticipate inviting other peer practitioners to inspect the subjective realm of history that is Sheng’s personal archive. Our project is about fostering an openness toward historiography by taking personal life experience as a departure point. We believe that only by responding with the whole of our minds and bodies and by immersing ourselves in the sparks caused by the collision between self and event, can the past be illuminated. And only by reconstructing another site can we encounter the history, and only becoming history can we gain a grasp on history.

The Three Stages of My Experience

Sheng Project was first suggested more than ten years ago, but it was until last year when I began to formulate clearer ideas about it. I wanted to create a project instead of a conventional exhibition. For the last two years, numerous scholars have been examining the trajectory of China’s artistic progression since the previous century. New perspectives on this subject that range across various grounds spawned both in China and internationally across the globe. In a distinct circumstance as this, perhaps it would be useful to put forward my personal experience as a case study for research.

My life can be divided into three stages. I was born in 1938. In 1953, I went to Hangzhou to study at the former East China Branch of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (the China Academy of Art today) where I studied in the Department of Oil Painting for five years. After graduation, I returned to the Department of Oil Painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts for advanced studies. The celebrated art masters of the 20th century were still alive during the highly dynamic period. Ni Yide, Yan Wenliang, Guan Liang, Fang Ganmin, and Dong Xiwen were our instructors. Although Lin Fengmian and Liu Haisu didn’t teach me directly, I had met them and had associated with the older generation of masters. The new generation of Soviet Union Socialist Realist artists who studied abroad entered what was then their golden age, and created enormous influences for us. Meanwhile, there was a modernist movement that did not depreciate. It continued its succession and prospects in various fields accordingly. It was a distinctly active and diverse period. I am very fortunate to have personally experienced this generation, and that I manage to preserve considerably detailed memories about it.

The second period comes after the Cultural Revolution. I was a participant with a first-hand experience in the progression of contemporary art from the “’85 Movement” up until the 1990s. I have many remarkable experiences that even myself considers as being truly extraordinary, among them are my experience in organizing the Roman J. Verostko Modern Art History lecture series and Zhao Wuji’s Painting Workshops.

The third period of my life begins as I went abroad, a time when I engaged in the progression of China’s contemporary art while I was living overseas. I introduced art from China to the world and brought contemporary art from foreign countries to China. In the early 1990s, we organized a number of large-scale exhibitions and academic events outside of China. We partook in the work of establishing galleries and foundations that supported Chinese contemporary art. We supported artists such as Cai Guoqiang and Chen Zhen to exhibit in large-scale international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale. We inaugurated the English language journal Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and introduced issues and phenomena in Chinese contemporary art to the world. The journal is likely to be the only journal on Chinese contemporary art that is subscribed by most major university libraries in the West. We are gratified that the journal can subsist, and is now going into its fourteenth anniversary.

Life is like a Zócalo

I would like to include a few words about “guangchang “(广场), meaning a public square. What I am referring to is not the Tiananmen Square or the Red Square, nor is it the Agora suggested by Jo-Anne. The word I had in mind from the very beginning was a Spanish term: Zócalo. In my text “Notes on Mexican Murals” published in 1984, I wrote:

“Outside the National Palace in Mexico City is an expansive plaza, known as the Zócalo. The new president will take office the day after tomorrow. A festive atmosphere can be felt around the square, and people are running around with tension and expectation. On the left is a magnificent and old Catholic Church. The crowd is gathering in front of it. Colorful tents are being built. I thought they were street vendors until I got closer and saw a sign in English. It reads: ‘Tourists, We protest against the secret arrests of our loved ones and are holding a hunger strike here. Please support us’. I turn to my right to find another crowd of gathered people. It is a recently excavated site of the old town of Montezuma II, currently under construction of becoming an open-air museum. I am surprised to see the many events taking place next to us simultaneously. We grow used to it but one day we will refer to it as history.”

A strong impression came to me when I arrived at the Zócalo, the central square of Mexico City. The sense of history was truly peculiar: I saw the current political affair of a new Mexican President taking office, while I witnessed the protest and demonstration of revolutionaries. There was, what’s more, a group of workers who completely ignored the political incidents happening around them. They were digging out excavated artifacts and were building the Montezuma II site into a museum. Parallel and concurrent activities as such unfolding around us are, in fact, everyday occurrences. That is the reason for my particular fondness for this term: Zócalo.

I was invited to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for a symposium about five years ago. It was organized by the Zócalo Public Square. In our conversations, I asked them the reason behind their name. They told me: “We wanted to invite a myriad of people of different professions from worldwide: politicians, scholars, artists, scientists. We believe it resembles a Zócalo. ” Every month, individuals are invited to participate in their talks. The videos of each discussion are later uploaded online. It is very captivating to see all the different speeches given by the variety of speakers. Gu Wenda, Melissa Chiu (Director of Asia Society Museum), Qingyun Ma (Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California) and I were invited for the talk. The four of us had a conversation on Chinese contemporary art around the topic of “Focusing on the New China”.

The term Zócalo remained in my mind with such intensity that an image of it naturally emerged when I began working on this exhibition. It is an image that once again takes us back to Mexico, to the Zócalo in the heart of Mexico City.

Curating as a Work Method

Since the beginning of the 21st century, I have set my mind to curate a series of in-depth exhibitions. My curatorial projects can be categorized into three parts:

The first was to curate an exhibition that aimed to study dialogues between Chinese art and Western modernism in the 1930s. As a result, I spent over two years and co-curated Shanghai Modern. In 2004 the show was exhibited at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany. The exhibition comprehensively introduced the arts and literary scene of the Shanghai 1930s, as well as dialogues that happened between China and the West. Some of the categories covered in the exhibition included visual arts, design, film, fashion, architecture, and popular art. Although it was not a huge exhibition, it still had a broad coverage of diverse subjects. This interchange was crucial to China in the beginning stage of China in the 20th century.

The second was to curate an exhibition that focused on China in the 1950s and 1960s. The exhibition, titled Art and China’s Revolution, was presented at the Asia Society Museum in New York in 2008. The exhibition used the Cultural Revolution as a foundation to discuss how Revolutionary Realism, which was introduced from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, has influenced China as well as illustrated how Chinese contemporary art has developed on top of Socialist Realism groundwork.

The third exhibition is one that I have been preparing for two years, and will be put on public view in 2017, at the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Los Angeles. The subject of the exhibition will be on artistic exchanges between China and the Latin America. The artistic exchanges between China, Mexico, and other Latin America countries since the 1950s was overlooked for a considerable length of time in art history studies. The subject, although unfamiliar to the majority, in fact, has incredibly abundant documented records. Why do I see this exhibition to be one of my most important curatorial works? The two first-mentioned exhibitions were addressing to what we know as the Fine Art, whereas a majority of the exchange between China and Latin America were, in fact, dealing with the Popular Art. Art forms for the public, like murals, cartoons, and posters, are significant components and influences to the progression of Chinese art in the 20th century.

Envisioning the Sheng Project

The histories I have partaken in my three periods of life could irrefutably provide reference materials from an individual’s perspective in examining the progression of Chinese contemporary art. I take an interest in collecting materials. My personal notes, correspondence with artists, photographs, I try to keep everything I could. A while ago, I rediscovered my collection of catalogues of international exhibitions held in China after the 1950s, including exhibitions and artists from Denmark, Sweden, and India in the early 1950s. Books and reference materials can assist us in revisiting the decade. People generally deemed the 1950s to be a reclusive period, but that was not the case.  Foreign exhibitions in China at the time were not rare. Reference materials such as these could be valuable when they are provided to scholars for reference in their investigation of Chinese contemporary art. Hence, this concludes my intention of going forth with this project.

As for the formal presentation of the exhibition, I do not want to produce a retrospective show, or an exhibition of artworks. Instead, I want to approach it as a project. People call me Sheng outside of China, That is why when I created my personal website, I named the domain shengproject.com. My initial idea was to build this exhibition into a website. I hoped that these materials and information could be shared with the public. I have always been enthusiastic in “self-media”. When I was in college, I enjoyed running a newspaper. I ran a contemporary art program at a radio station, published books and digital iBooks. I was passionate about these works. That is why I thought: by displaying my ideas and materials on a website, I hoped people who seek to learn about the progression of Chinese contemporary art could go there to find the information they need. Of course, the amount of materials that have been published on the website is not yet enough. I have only built a preliminary basis of the site in a way that is similar to mapping out a drawing. For the next step, I will complete it as quickly as possible with the help of friends.

I envision the Sheng Project to be a research process. It goes beyond being an exhibition. Instead, it gives us an opportunity to take the subject as a point of departure and utilize these materials and documents to discuss our shared interest in issues about Chinese contemporary art.

(Text edited from Sheng Project Workshop)

Sheng Project encompasses a series of curatorial workshops. The first curatorial workshop took place at China Academy of Art on December 30^th, 2015, and was chaired by Gao Shiming, the curator of Sheng Project. The curatorial team pitched the thematic of “One Century, Two Internationales” and the impression of Sheng’s life “as a Zócalo, bustled with people coming and going”, in hopes to advance research and further thought processes. The second curatorial workshop was held at China Academy of Art on March 30, 2016, co-chaired by the curator Gao Shiming and Lu Jie, the founder of Long March project. The curatorial team introduced their research approaches and problem consciousness. Zheng Shengtian shared his rich experiences and reflections on art and life during the two workshops personally. Chinese and international academics, artists, and curators attended the workshop to exchange experiences in history, discuss research directions, and advance curatorial ideas.

Curatorial Workshop I

Organized by: Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thoughts (CAA) & Long March Project

Date: December 30^th, 2015 (Wednesday)

Location: Gombrich – Cahill Memorial Library (1A305, CAA)

Chair: Gao Shiming (Curator, Vice President of China Academy of Arts)

Attendees:

Zheng Shengtian (The subject of the exhibition, Artist, Curator, Art media professional, Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art of Vancouver Art Gallery)

Tang Xiaolin (Curatorial Group member, PhD from China Academy of Art)

Lu Xinghua (Philosopher, Vice President of the Academy of European Cultures of Tongji University)

Zhao Chuan (Theatre, Theory and Art Critic, Founder and Director of Grass Stage Theatre Group)

Liu Dahong (Artist, Professor at Shanghai Normal University)

Geng Jianyi (Artist, Professor at China Academy of Art)

David Tung (Former Director of Long March Space, Former Deputy Director of Yuz Museum Shanghai)

Dong Bingfeng (Academic Director at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Beijing, Head of the Research and Publications Department)

Zhang Chuntian (Junior Fellow at Si-Mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at East China Normal University, PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Cai Tao (Art Historian, Associate Research Fellow at Guangzhou Fine Art Academy)

Mou Sen (Theatre Director, Director and Professor at the Media Scenography Department, School of Inter-Media Art, China Academy of Art)

Sun Shanchun (Associate Professor at Advanced School of Art and Humanities in China Academy of Art, PhD in Philosophy from Zhejiang University)

Kong Lingwei (Art Historian, Deputy Dean and Professor of the Advanced School of Art and Humanities in China Academy of Art)

Yu Xuhong (Artist, Deputy Director of Museum of Contemporary Art of CAAM)

Liu Tian (Curator, PhD candidate at China Academy of Art)

Gao Chu (Scholar of Chinese photographic history, Director of the Social Archive of Chinese Photography at China Academy of Art)

Shi Ke (Theatre researcher, PhD from University of Bristol, Associate Professor at China Academy of Art)

Zhou Shiyan (Media Theoretician, Art Critic, Associate Professor of the Advanced School of Art and Humanities in China Academy of Art)

Xu Xiaodong (Artist, Instructor at the School of Media and Animation, China Academy of Art)

Curatorial Workshop II

Organized by: Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thoughts (CAA) & Long March Project

Date: March 30, 2016 (Wednesday)

Location: Gombrich – Cahill Memorial Library (1A305, CAA)

Chairs: Gao Shiming (Vice President of China Academy of Arts) and Lu Jie (Founder of Long March Project)

Attendees:

Zheng Shengtian (The subject of the exhibition, Artist, Curator, Art media professional, Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art of Vancouver Art Gallery)

Tang Xiaolin (Co-curator, PhD from China Academy of Art)

Zhang Yang (Co-curator, PhD candidate at China Academy of Art)

Chang Tsong-zung (Curator, Visiting Professor at China Academy of Art)

Wang Jianwei (Artist)

Qiu Zhijie (Artist)

Yang Xiaoyan (Deputy Dean of the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat-Sen University)

Zhang Hong (Cultural Critic, Professor at School of Humanities)

Yang Zhenyu (Deputy Dean and Professor of the Advanced School of Art and Humanities in China Academy of Art)

Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (Director of the Frye Art Museum, Former Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery)

David Joselit (Distinguished Professor at the Ph.D. Program in Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York)

Diana Freundl (Curator of Asian Art, Institute of Asian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery)

Carol Lu (Curator)

Anthony Yung (Senior Researcher at Asian Art Archive)

Zheng Ji (PhD in History of Chinese Modern Literature, working for the Cultural Studies Institute, Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences)

Zhang Bing (School of Chinese Studies, Junior Scholar at Zhejiang International Studies University)

Shi Shihao (PhD in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature from Tsinghua University)

Jiang Yazhu (PhD in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature from Tsinghua University)

Liu Tian (Curator, PhD candidate at China Academy of Art, member of the curatorial collegiate of Shanghai Biennale 2016)

Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Member of Indian artist/curator group Raqs Media Collective, Chief Curator of Shanghai Biennale 2016)