Interview & Writing | YIFANG
Image | Courtesy of UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Source | Interface art
Where is Diriyah? When we try to draw a line to the left with a pen on a tiled map of the world, starting from Shanghai, keeping the tiny arc of the wrist to extend the ink line to more than 7,000 kilometers away, from eastern China to the west, across India, Pakistan, Iran and the Persian Gulf, you will come to the ancient capital of Diriyah, northwest of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The inaugural Saudi Arabia Diriyer Biennale of Contemporary Art is being held here, where the works of 12 Chinese artists are gathered, including Xu Bing, Huang Rui, Zhang Peili and other familiar names for Chinese art lovers.
Xu Bing, Background story - Streams and Mountains Without End, 2014, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
Saudi Arabia's first biennial, the Dirier Biennale of Contemporary Art, bringing together works by 64 artists from around the world, is one of the largest and most important international exhibitions of contemporary art in Saudi Arabia to date, with the theme of a slogan that prevailed in China in the 1980s: "Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones", and the exhibition is divided into six units: "Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones", "Inheritance as an Experiment", "Thinking on the Edge", "Towards the Public", "Brave New World" and "On the Spirit of Art". Presented in a newly renovated warehouse space in the JAX Art District. Born between the 1930s and 1990s, the participating artists create media ranging from painting, sculpture, video, installation and performance. The modules explore key issues such as cultural memory, alternative modernism, social practice, and the Anthropocene. Every aspect of the exhibition fosters a dialogue between Saudi Arabia's rapidly evolving artistic context and the wider world.
At-Turaif Diriyah Gate Development Authority
With the help of the Internet and the gaze cast at other places, we have been able to condense time in the global art scene into experience, juxtaposing what is happening and what has happened in the past, and seeing how history has been changed by some "butterfly flapping wings" factor. The exhibition presentation says that recent years of global art development have inspired new ways of thinking, and across the art world, collections and institutions are undergoing a reshaping to encompass multiple narratives and previously overlooked perspectives. This exhibition not only has a special significance for Art lovers in Saudi Arabia, but also makes us further think about how art can cross regional and cultural backgrounds and play an active role in connecting people in this special period.
Philip Tinari, director and CEO of UCCA's Center for Contemporary Art, was curated by Philip Tinari, director and CEO of UCCA's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, and the curatorial team also included UCCA's Luan Shixuan and Zhang Nanzhao, as well as Wejdan Reda, founder of Sahaba Art Consultancy from Saudi Arabia. This time, Interface Art invited curator Feiyu Tian to talk about his vision of Saudi contemporary art and the new experience and enlightenment brought by the team's "going to sea".
Curator of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Philip Tinari, Director and Chief Executive of UCCA
Interface Art: You mentioned that you started your first understanding of Saudi Arabian contemporary art in 2011 and held the Contemporary Art Biennale in Saudi Arabia this year, how have you observed the local art ecology changed in the past 10 years?
Tian Feiyu: At that time, Saudi contemporary art was in a relatively primitive state, and the international interest in it may be biased towards the political aspect or the so-called "exoticism", which will regard Saudi art as a very special existence, but in the past decade, there have actually been many changes, Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is a big plan, under this general plan, there is a Ministry of Culture, encouraging artists to hold exhibitions and other activities, this biennale is one of the more vivid examples.
In the process, the group of artists moved from a relatively underground existence to the surface, and the social space of art became larger. Whereas in the past art may have been small and aimed at elites and collectors, more art institutions are emerging to organize their work for the public.
Diriyah, a place resembling the saudi royal family,is some distance from the capital, Riyadh, but Riyadh has expanded much to the north. Like Songjiang in Shanghai, Dilier has basically become part of Riyadh, and Saudi Arabia has developed Riyadh as a new district that combines culture, tourism and innovation, so there will be this biennale project. In some other places in Saudi Arabia, such as the ancient city of Euler, the archaeological site of the desert stone valley, there are many art projects around the World Heritage Site. Saudi Arabia's other major cities also see art as a very central proposition in the process of development.
Installation view, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2021, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
Interface Art: What was the biggest challenge for the first Biennale of Contemporary Art projects?
Tian Feiyu: I went to Saudi Arabia three times at the end of 2019, and in 2020, because of the epidemic, a lot of work needs to be organized remotely, and it is difficult for us to meet with the organizational side. During this time, the whole world is adapting to this new reality, which is no small challenge for everyone. If it is under the normal work arrangement, we will definitely stay there for a long time, will do more in-depth research on the local cultural ecology, this time because of objective reasons do not allow, so we put our energy on communication with artists, for example, this time we provide budget for more than twenty young Saudi artists to create new projects.
The theme of this exhibition is called "crossing the river by feeling the stones", in fact, I think this sentence can also be used as a metaphor for the entire preparatory process, Saudi Arabia has not done such a large-scale contemporary art project before, they have set up a biennale foundation for this purpose, the establishment of the organization, the transformation of the exhibition space to the planning of the exhibition are actually carried out at the same time, which leads to a lot of uncertainty, such as when planning, we actually did not get the space plan, so when communicating with the artist, We don't know what the final space will be like, but we are mentally prepared for such a working state.
For some curators from Europe and the United States, it is a big challenge to do exhibitions in unfinished art museums. But this is not the first time we have encountered this situation, for example, the first exhibition in UCCA Dunes was like this, and the construction of the pavilion and the curation work were carried out at the same time. Over the years we have developed some of our ability to adapt to special situations.
Simon Denny, Real Mass Entrepreneurship, 2017, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
Interface Art: Why did Saudi Arabia choose to collaborate with The Chinese Curatorial Team?
Feiyu Tian: One of the things I'm more insistent on is that I don't really want to do this in my personal capacity, and I hope that this project can be included in the work arrangement of UCCA, so that I can do it with a few curators who are more familiar and respected, and at the same time, I can also bring some technical and media resources to better complete this matter. Saudi Arabia's infrastructure conditions are not particularly perfect, and UCCA, as an institution that has existed for 15 years, has a lot of experience to learn from.
Interface Art: The theme of the Biennale is inspired by the phrase "crossing the river by feeling the stones", why did you use it as a title?
Feiyu Tian: I've always liked this sentence. When talking about contemporary Chinese history, such afterwords are often mentioned, and such a phrase as "No matter whether the black cat is a white cat, the one who can catch a mouse is a good cat" and so on, which are very appropriate metaphors.
"Crossing the river by feeling the stones" is very representative of the current situation in Saudi Arabia, where there are huge social changes, and everyone is very excited and happy on the one hand, but at the same time full of confusion. Generational gaps have begun to emerge now, with young people in their twenties very accustomed to this new environment, while those in their thirties are still relatively conservative in their thinking. We are also trying to look at such changes from an artistic point of view, exploring through works.
I have done a lot of academic research in the field of Chinese contemporary art before, and its entire development context is related to a series of policies in the 1980s, and now it has developed to another stage, more institutionalized and market-oriented, while Saudi contemporary art is still in a stage full of possibilities.
Interface Art: There are works by 27 Saudi artists in the exhibition, as well as works by 12 Chinese artists, such as Xu Bing's "Behind the Story Series of Endless Maps of Xishan Mountains", what are the reasons for this choice?
Tian Feiyu: The works on display this time are very diverse, such as Lei Lei and Chai Mi's works in the form of documentaries, some of Huang Rui's paintings from the late 1970s, and some very contemporary works like Nabuqi or Bird's Head. Having worked and practiced in China for many years, I am more familiar with the state and creation of Chinese artists, so it is natural to think of the artists around me in the process of planning. Of course, there are also some works like Xu Bing's "Endless Map of The Creek and Mountain behind the Story Series", which is like an ancient painting in the front and miscellaneous objects in the back, with Chinese characteristics and Chinese symbols, which has also aroused the interest of some audiences.
Xu Bing, Background story - Streams and Mountains Without End, 2014, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
Interface Art: Artist Zhang Peili's Simultaneous Broadcast showcases a television news program that aired on December 31, 1999 in multiple countries around the world at the same local time, including programs from the Middle East. What is the significance of this work looking back on the Eve of the Millennium in Saudi Arabia?
Feiyu Tian: In the first section, I selected works by several older Saudi artists who were completed in the 1990s or after 2000s. This unit also testifies to the historical accumulation of Saudi art. At the same time, we want to discuss that the world now looks at Saudi contemporary art from a global context, and globalization itself has a history of several decades. Zhang Peili's "Simultaneous Broadcast" is very representative of the end of the 1990s, which was a special moment for mankind to usher in the new millennium, and in a sense, it was also the moment when everyone's optimistic attitude towards globalization reached its climax. In the technical environment at that time, the network did not reach the point where he could watch radio programs around the world, so he sent invitations to friends, colleagues, and colleagues in the art world to record broadcasts in VCRs in their respective countries and send them to him. This way of creating is now very primitive and very contemporary. Many of these dimensions are worth exploring.
Interface Art: We note that Lei Lei and Chai Mi's work "1993-1994" in the exhibition shows the video record of Chai Mi's father, a Chinese worker who has lived in the Middle East for seven years.
Tian Feiyu: Some viewers will feel very kind, the worker in the video is Chai Mi's father, he was not in Saudi Arabia at that time, but in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, at that time there was no Belt and Road, China was not in such a high position in the world. This exhibition emphasizes a kind of prehistory, many of the phenomena we see now, which have been accumulated and compared in history a long time ago, and this work also slightly highlights this point, that is, China's relationship with the Middle East did not start in recent years, and there are actually a lot of stories behind it.
Lei Lei & Chai Mi, 1993-1994, 2021, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
I sent an image of this work to a princess in Sharjah who is the president of the Sharjah Art Foundation and a curator. There are a lot of shots of Sharjah in the image, and now look at Sharjah in 1993 and 1994, and the changes in these 30 years are similar to the changes in a big city in China, and may even be greater. In the video record of the Chinese driver, we can actually feel that the recorder's own country has changed a lot, and the country in his image has also undergone tremendous changes.
Interface Art: Speaking of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries' investment in the development of art and culture, the Arab Museum of Modern Art near Doha, Qatar, has hosted a solo exhibition by Tsai Guo-qiang exploring the possibility of direct dialogue between the two cultures. Do you think it is possible to reach a direct dialogue?
Feiyu Tian: The third unit of this exhibition is also about this issue, cultural exchange does not necessarily need to go through a so-called center to generate dialogue, and the tendency to direct dialogue is also a characteristic of our times.
The artist we invited this time, Han Mengyun, whose work is placed next to the Saudi artist Lulwah Al-Homoud, is a very interesting dialogue between the two of them, both on a work level and on a personal level. From the cases of these exchanges, we can see that there will be many possibilities in the future, but someone still needs to do this work. Face to face with each other, there can be further development.
Han Mengyun, The Pavilion of Three Mirrors, 2021, Diriyah Biennale, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Courtesy Han Mengyun
Lulwah Al-Homoud, The Language of Existence, 2021, courtesy Canvas and Diriyah Biennale Foundation
Interface Art: Through this exhibition, what new trends and developments do you see in the field of contemporary art in Saudi Arabia?
Tian Feiyu: Now there are many art projects in Saudi Arabia, there are biennials, large-scale events and various art projects, etc., and there will be many art galleries and museums in the next step, so this generation of artists between the ages of 30 and 50, they have caught up with a very good time, but at the same time they are also very tired, many projects are large in scale, short cycles, the overlap of people recruited by the project is very high, and the artists often feedback to me that they hope to have the opportunity to slow down. Of course, Saudi Arabia also recently has institutions doing village-based projects, which can give artists a chance to rest and think about the direction of creation.
Now the Saudi art field wants to encourage young people to imagine their future in the direction of creativity and art, so I think the next 20 years will be interesting.