Collective Identities in the People's Republic of China
Lead Research Organisation:
Birmingham City University
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the People's Republic to the thousands of people gathered under Tiananmen: 'Chinese people have finally stood up!' The appearance of Mao, the Chinese communist leader, must have added a new political dimension to the former imperial building, and reinterpreted the hidden ruling power to finally symbolise the beginning of a new era. However, this research is not going to focus on Mao conventionally, but turn its lens to the masses themselves. Since, 1949, mass assemblies have become familiar and prominent phenomenon during numerous political movements, whilst the notion of 'collectiveness' has far outweighed its literal meaning, and been interpreted productively and variously in China.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was defined as 'a great revolution that touches people to their very souls'. The baptism of the Cultural Revolution became the climax of reshaping the collective identity of Chineseness, I argue, with a pair of entirely different, or alomost opposite approaches. Photojournalists during the revolutionary era, such as Wang Shilong and Xiao Zhuang, were the witnesses and visually documented the images of collectiveness. In the Post-Cultural Revolution era, many Chinese artists have envisaged, either consciously or unconsciously, the conflicts between individual and collective, private and public, family and society, and representing the hybrid collective identity through various media. Artists including Zhang Xiaogang, Zhuang Hui, Shao Yinong and Mu Chen, on the one hand, focus on the social and family groups devoid of any personal character, and uniform in appearance, as a significant visual presentation of the era. On the other hand, paradoxically, the collective identity, reflected in the works of Liu Dahong and Yue Minjun, presents a liveliness and boisterousness consistent with Chinese traditional celebrations, or in other words, a carnival atmosphere with the nationalistic excitement liberated or transformed from the conformity, but at the same time within the conformity. Here, people experienced themselves as grander that at ordinary times; they thought they were transformed into a new world and took responsibility to liberate others from the old; they felt, and at the moment really were, assembling for Mao, and living a collective life that transports individuals beyond themselves.
This research aims to re-examine and articulate these two contradictory but simultaneous imageries of the people's collectiveness in the post-1949 China, conformable or carnivalesque, which are either documentarily recorded by the photojournalists, or visually reflected in art; and to reassess the significance of the impact from the Cultural Revolution in Chinese contemporary art, in particular, those reflecting on the collective identity of 'the people'.
The fieldwork of the research in China is considered essential to not only obtain the first-hand information, including visual archives and artists' orginal reflections on collective identity; but also to explore further relevant works to provide a more comprehensive view and the curation and contribute to the understanding of this phenonmenon. Interviews will be conducted as a major method of this qualitive research. Interviewees will include revolutionary photojournalists, propagandists, contemporary artists, art critics and scholars.
The major outcome of the project will be a touring exhibition including 12 to 15 artists, firstly at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester from January to April 2007 and secondly at Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery from June to July 2007; and a single-edited book/catalogue, which will be published by the Chinese University Press Hong Kong in 2007.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was defined as 'a great revolution that touches people to their very souls'. The baptism of the Cultural Revolution became the climax of reshaping the collective identity of Chineseness, I argue, with a pair of entirely different, or alomost opposite approaches. Photojournalists during the revolutionary era, such as Wang Shilong and Xiao Zhuang, were the witnesses and visually documented the images of collectiveness. In the Post-Cultural Revolution era, many Chinese artists have envisaged, either consciously or unconsciously, the conflicts between individual and collective, private and public, family and society, and representing the hybrid collective identity through various media. Artists including Zhang Xiaogang, Zhuang Hui, Shao Yinong and Mu Chen, on the one hand, focus on the social and family groups devoid of any personal character, and uniform in appearance, as a significant visual presentation of the era. On the other hand, paradoxically, the collective identity, reflected in the works of Liu Dahong and Yue Minjun, presents a liveliness and boisterousness consistent with Chinese traditional celebrations, or in other words, a carnival atmosphere with the nationalistic excitement liberated or transformed from the conformity, but at the same time within the conformity. Here, people experienced themselves as grander that at ordinary times; they thought they were transformed into a new world and took responsibility to liberate others from the old; they felt, and at the moment really were, assembling for Mao, and living a collective life that transports individuals beyond themselves.
This research aims to re-examine and articulate these two contradictory but simultaneous imageries of the people's collectiveness in the post-1949 China, conformable or carnivalesque, which are either documentarily recorded by the photojournalists, or visually reflected in art; and to reassess the significance of the impact from the Cultural Revolution in Chinese contemporary art, in particular, those reflecting on the collective identity of 'the people'.
The fieldwork of the research in China is considered essential to not only obtain the first-hand information, including visual archives and artists' orginal reflections on collective identity; but also to explore further relevant works to provide a more comprehensive view and the curation and contribute to the understanding of this phenonmenon. Interviews will be conducted as a major method of this qualitive research. Interviewees will include revolutionary photojournalists, propagandists, contemporary artists, art critics and scholars.
The major outcome of the project will be a touring exhibition including 12 to 15 artists, firstly at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester from January to April 2007 and secondly at Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery from June to July 2007; and a single-edited book/catalogue, which will be published by the Chinese University Press Hong Kong in 2007.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Jiehong Jiang (Principal Investigator) |