Following on from my last post on Sheng Qi’s exhibition in London, the Hayward Gallery currently presents Chinese art from the past three decades. Including 40 artists, what is particularly interesting is the focus on performance art, which has only been intergrated into ‘official art’ in China since 2000, although it remains rarely included in exhibitions there even now.
Performance art is unique and captivating in many ways, not least how it reflects an impermanence, a transience, a nowness…

Without wishing to labour the point, or to undermine the validity of Chinese art away from its political undertones, performance art, and its hitherto undergroundness in China, seems to have a particular significance here, against the backdrop of a regime that attempts to utterly control the reality of its people.

CQ