The Master Confucius said, "I have never encountered anyone who cared more about virtue than about female beauty" (IX:18)
"Chinese men are not beautiful," my wife said when she came to see me after 7 months in the metropolis of Chongqing. Lucky me, I gangat long, straight, black hair of women to love, in the Netherlands I never found that beautiful. Upon my arrival at the office of my residency, Huahua mockingly asked me, "Do you think Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) is a beautiful woman?" I didn't even have to answer that question because she was aware of the title of my research project and had been surprised in advance by my interest in this evil and ugly woman. "She is a 'Hitla,'" Huahua said decidedly.
I made my first drawing of Huahua because I do know who is beautiful. I had bought a Chinese smartphone and wanted to take a picture of her which made her shy and she sat down in a pose that inspired me. The next day I immediately bought thin, calligraphic, rice paper, on which I carefully started working with pen and ink and her name I wrote in Chinese. Memorably, I presented this drawing, framed in a series, to her as a gift at my farewell dinner, a farewell hot pot. It was with pain in my heart that I had to conclude that the censorship of my exhibition had cooled down my friendship with her. In my speech I did not show any signs of this, but rather tried to make everyone happy. With a large group of collaborators, interpreters and artists, we sat in a circle around tables pushed together on the street in sultry Chongqing, stared at by passers-by and restaurant staff, who apparently could understand my Chinese, pronounced with difficulty. The biographical fact that I was in China 37 years ago will be something everyone will long remember, especially since director Zeng Tu had highlighted it in his text accompanying my exhibition. Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) no longer appeared in that text, but the unfamiliar name 'Shumeng' that she carried as a child did. The office of my residency eventually turned out to know very well how to censor my exhibition. How this came about and that I was admitted to the residency with my politically sensitive subject by Zeng Tu, I will explain here.
A major role was given to Tudor Bratu, who had been working for a year and a half to set up a large-scale residency by international standards. Tudor and Zeng Tu shared a common background at the Rijksakademie. "They were sworn comrades," Rumiko Hagiwara told me recently. She sought me out last minute in my work studio as a consultant to talk to me about my "forbidden" drawings.
Hagiwara also lamented the departure of artistic director Bratu and every new artist with her who arrived in Chongqing after his departure, such as Teresa Eng and Vera Visser. There were not many more because soon the loss was obvious. Tudor was the driving force behind applying for visas, applying for funds, making exhibitions and arranging visits from advisors. Tudor Bratu had arranged for me to work with my 'dangerous' Madame Mao in China and for that I am grateful to him.
In retrospect, Zeng Tu says he was unaware of my subject. During a meeting with him and Huahua we talked about their motives for censoring the main half of my exhibition. Why did Zeng Tu back down now, when from the first day I could talk to him entertainingly about Lan Ping, the name of the actress who was Madame Mao in the 1930s in Shanghai. If I had any questions I could always join Tu on his couch in his office, he helped me with crucial things, such as setting up my Chinese blog, extending my visa from 5 to 8 months, finding the film clips and relevant documentaries on the Chinese internet, right down to the voice of Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) singing a traditional Chinese song, which led to my performance. Two days before the opening, Tu came to me after midnight to purify my Chinese lyrics. Then the purification continued until the moment of the opening. The fifth verse was deleted entirely, and the audience was handed a cut-off A-4. In the third part of my musical suite, it was allowed to sing revrev-rev-revolution, but the Chinese word was missing from the final version on paper. The crowds of young audiences in the fantastic and crowded opening were great, but why were young people not allowed to be reminded of the Cultural Revolution?
At the meeting with Huahua and Zeng Tu was also joined by 24-year-old Jishen Lee, a photographer in training at the local art school where Tu teaches. He has been working in the office for six months and he shot the footage for my videos, including the recruiting video on my Voordekunst page. After the first rehearsal with the slender and tall Yanzi Hu (who studies modern dance and performance), the sturdy Jishen had put on the uniform, sunglasses, and put on a caricatured act of a tough army officer. Pretty much the opposite of how Yanzi acted in the uniform. I had asked her to exude vulnerability of a woman who did not fit into the uniform, as The woman of fate which became the title of my performance and exhibition. When I expressed my displeasure to Tu about Jishen's act, he said that Jishen behaved in the uniform as she should. To my question about the Cultural Revolution, Tu replied that the younger generation is also aware of the painful wound, a scar has formed in the emotional life of many generations. That is why he had also asked Jishen at this meeting come to sit because for him too, depicting the private life of Mao Zedong is disservice.
Downright brutal was the behavior of the even younger Xie Ye who had come to my studio with a crying Huahua three days before the opening. "My husband (Tu) is going to jail," Huahua wailed, and Xie Ye proceeded to explain to me how incompatible it was to draw a detail of the battlefield map of the Red Army's fame and glory in the bedroom of Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing. What they didn't see was that I had taped a piece of signified paper over Mao's pants to close them so that his red underpants were no longer visible, hoping to simply show the drawing at my exhibition. But for Huahua, the loose buttons on the woman's uniform were already inadmissible. Well, the woman was spitting, I had zoomed in on Chinese customs just like in my previous large drawings, first the dancing in the open air, then the hot pot and now the spitting or gurgling, you see it happening all around you on the street.
Why had I made this drawing? Tu understood that I wanted to portray the theme of "sex and power. Indeed I wanted my drawings to tell about Madame Mao's private life as it happens in a novel. Even more explicit is The Peargarden On which Mao Zedong dances with a naked lady. My model for Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) dances with a foreigner in this drawing. I had in Ross Terrill's book Madame Mao, the white-boned demon read that Mao and his wife left each other free with whom they wanted to dance. Mao often chose young nurses from training in Yan'an and got them into his bed too. I didn't draw a real garden, but bare trees as set pieces on an opera stage and Yangge dancers in the background.
Tu believes that the DAC occupies a middle position between the underground and official bodies like museums. When you rise above the middle position in the cultural field you have to sing the government's song, according to Tu. Only in the underground can you experiment and improvise. With my 'forbidden' work I chose the following strategy: in the exhibition space I drew the outlines of the 'forbidden' work with the title of the work in the middle. During the opening, we led large groups of artists and friends, whom we could trust, to my studio where they could view my 'banned' works. Meanwhile, Huahua appeared to be singing the government's song at the many official visits of groups of officials to the DAC. After my opening, however, things remained remarkably quiet, the DAC did not dare to pay an official visit, even my exhibition was ignored because of my drawing of a young Mao arm-in-arm with my model for Jiang Qing. This romantic drawing could not pass muster either, because Mao is standing there with a strange woman! To this day, the presentation of my exhibition on the DAC&Chongqingair website is sadly poor and completely devoid of text.
Later I had a conversation with the director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOCA) in Chengdu for a second opinion. He said that Zeng Tu and Huahua are right about my "banned" drawings, they cannot be publicly displayed anywhere in China. China is a "country of leadership" with "No rule of law". The "red line" is shifting and it is mysterious in what direction. The DAC is inspired by President Xi Jinping's new policies and wants to build something with the government. The question arises: what does a new cultural policy mean without freedom and openness?
blog.sina.com.cn/pedrobaker
www.voordekunst.nl/projecten/3245-madamemao
www.pedrobakker.com
(photos: John Stoel)
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