Yue Minjun/Huang Du: Interview

Huang Du (H) : It is said that you once worked on an offshore oil platform? Yue Minjun (Y): Yes. I did.

**H: ** There were two platforms at the Bohai Sea Oil Drilling Field. One was Bohai-3, and the other was Bohai-4, and you worked for Bohai-3? **Y: ** I went to Tianjin Ocean Oil Drilling Field after high school. I couldn’t remember exactly which one I use to work for.

**H: ** It must have been a very dangerous job. Did you ever get concerned about your safety? **Y: ** Bohai-2 was built in 1960s. I might have worked on Bohai-8 or 9, which was imported from America. There is an anecdote here: Bohai-8 was originally designed with both production and living facilities. China intended to save money by skipping the living facilities, so the American sold the customized equipment, but with the original price! I started to work offshore right after the sinking of the Bohai-2, and it was inevitable to be worried about one’s personal safety when living offshore. One had to be prepared for all kinds of emergencies such as fire of oil spill at any minute, and this strong sense of fear has stayed with me throughout my life.

**H: ** What did you do on the job? **Y: ** Deep-sea drilling. We started at a depth of 20-30 meters and down to 2,000-3,000 meters under the seabed.

**H: ** Then how did you start to paint? **Y: ** That was between 1980 to 1982. I did portraits of the sea and of the workers.

**H: ** Did you graduated from college before you work? **Y: ** No. I just finished high school. Later, I was transferred from Tianjin Oil to Huabei Oil, from where I went to the Hebei Normal University. Then I got a job allocation after the graduation.

**H: ** When did you graduate from Hebei Normal University? **Y: ** In 1989.

**H: ** What made you come to Beijing? **Y: ** There were several reasons. My family has been working on oil fields for a long time. When I was 6, we moved from Daqing Oil Field to Jianghan Oil field. When at 10, we moved to Beijing. I went to Tianjin after the high school, and moved to Hebei for work and university. So I have been on the move all the time, never setting down. Another important reason had a great deal with a university teacher. He was at his 40s, and had a daughter who was about to go to college. However, he disappeared suddenly simply because he couldn’t take his life there any longer. We still haven’t found him until today… Freedom is what I have always been longing for, and I tend to break away from control in any form.

**H: ** So you resigned and left? **Y: ** Actually, I got fired after skipping work for one year.

**H: ** When did you arrive in Beijing? Where did you stay? **Y: ** In 1990. I found a place to do my painting at Hongmiao, in Chaoyang District. During the spring festival of 1991, another university teacher of mine was looking after his mother at hospital in Beijing, and he stayed at the Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan). It was when I went to visit him that I found this place.

**H: ** How long did you stay there? **Y: ** Quite short. 1-2 years. I left in 1994.

**H: ** The “nomadic” artist circle at Yuan Ming Yuan dissolved in 1994. I have heard of a story where the police tried to disperse the artists and sent them to the labour camp in Changping, north of Beijing to do dredging work. An artist unaware of the situation came to the police and asked: “what’s happening here?”- and he got dispatched. **Y: ** As a matter of fact, Chinese from all walks of life suffered a lot at that time. Everyone was down and out. Nowadays, you can see there is variety and difference among the young graduates from the art school, but at my times, young artists were all starting from the same level and similar situation.

**H: ** Changes of the society and art development can be witnessed through an individual’s life experience. Now let’s turn to your exhibition. First, the exhibition seems like a déjà-vu for the viewer. For instance, the installation at the entrance reminds people of an exhibition from the period of the Cultural Revolution- it feels like the exhibition at Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian. The monument-like sculpture is holding a gun in his right hand and a cell phone in his left hand, surrounded by the flower baskets resembling in an ellipse. The exhibition title and preface were written in traditional Chinese calligraphy in vertical setting of types. Entering the exhibition hall, the viewer will be surprised by an entirely different setting inside. On the wooden platform, four sculpture figures seated on the paint bucker and red brick blocks seem to be enjoying a happy conversation. The other nine display cases scattered around are either four-legged or five-legged. These legs seem to be modeled after sheep’s legs or human legs, offering a feeling of great uncertainty. All kinds of daily objects are demonstrated inside the display cases. 50 pendant lamps are hanging from the ceiling, offering a pale light that enhances the mysterious atmosphere. So what exactly is this idea about? **Y: ** From the beginning I tried to put into the viewer’s mind-set a familiar yet strange feeling of visiting an old fashioned museum. I think displacing and imitation are effective tools- it is not just copying. The connotation has been changed during the process. The eccentric display cases are something beyond our cognitive experience. As an exhibition of futuristic archaeology, the streamlined forms from prevailing concept of futurism have been intentionally avoided. Instead, a touch of the Chu culture has accentuated the unvarnished and original bizarreness of the show, and tension has been created between the works and the viewer and his expectations.

**H: ** You just mentioned the integration of history and tradition into the framework of your artworks. What’s the relationship between the Chu culture and the works? **Y: ** I am quite fascinated by the eeriness of the Chu culture. Its strong sense of ghost culture is very different from our traditional aesthetic concepts, which will easily guide the viewer into anther territory.

**H: ** Whatever displayed at the museum will become the past- something dead. However, your exhibition offers a fantasy about the future. Do you attempt to challenge the function and system of the museum? **Y: ** Things alive usually turn dry and dead after they get into the museum. They become something correct or even “classic” after gaining the authority under a collective opinion or knowledge system, and become exclusive against things that are different. This character can consolidate the tension between the works and the audience, because wrong interpretations of the works contradict the viewer’s expectation- it keeps him or her from seeing something correct. So the viewer adopts a sceptical view of museum as an authority.

**H: ** In other words, the museum has created its own monopoly on discourse right and knowledge, and you challenge its authority by offering an opposite experience through this exhibition. **Y: ** Yes. The whole concept is about provoking people to think: Why is a “pot” named a “pot” but not something else? Who made the decision? Ever since the long evolvement of culture, history and politics, every regime has been manipulating the old knowledge system for its own advantage- this is what this project is about.

**H: ** What’s your opinion on the relationship between power and domination? **Y: ** I didn’t mean to redefine art, but just to disclose the hidden relationship between the power and domination through the warp and mismatch in my works. We have to think about how the cultural heritage developed, and how the power system worked. Usually, what an artwork can relate to is just a small part. However, if we look at the development and evolvement of culture and history in retrospect, we can’t help but ask: Who were the decision-makers in the process? When we read the books on western art history, we should ask, who drew up the list of the important artists? Why are those artists, who we think are important, left out? What is the thought process that led to their conclusion? I think opinions, or voices from the east should be included when people try to write the so-called art history, like what they did during the G20 Summit in London recently. We have to talk about who the judges and decision-makers are before we start to discuss the what and how.

**H: ** What is that group of sculptures about? **Y: ** They mimic life of today, imagined by “the people of the future”. In their imagination, our present life might not be prosperous and happy as we think it to be today. It might be difficult and dark in their eyes.

**H: ** There are some ready-made objects in the exhibition. Is there any criterion behind to make the choice? Do they have anything to do with your personal experience? **Y: ** Most of the exhibits are actually rubbish from my studio, like the worn shoes and the broken basketball. They must be daily necessities that are familiar to the viewer so that the distortion and illusion can be easily sensed when people discover the mismatch.

**H: ** This is your first big-scale art project with the application of ready-made objects. What’s your idea about its social implications, relationship between daily experience and personal experience? The application of the ready-made object could be complicated. The artist’s judgment, selection and filtering are involved during the process. “Inappropriate” usage might harm the expression of the original concept. Dated back to Marcel Duchamp, the application of the ready-made has re-defined art and its boundaries. However, breaking boundaries welcomes more complexity. What’s your consideration? **Y: ** For me, art is more than an idea. Everyone can come up with a new idea at any time, but it needs to be developed further until it achieves some meaning. Most artists who have been utilizing the ready-made object just borrow its original meaning and extend its meaning. Rather than borrowing, I discarded its original meaning completely. For example, the basketball is redefined as “artificially synthesized material used for releasing nitrous oxide, which causes people to laugh after inhalation”. You see, the original definition of the basketball has been completely subverted. As a matter of fact, I could have given it whatever definition I wanted to. I can do it deliberately and discretionarily. It is neither sarcasm, nor misconception. Then let’s take a look at the historical cultural symbols, which control and dominate the hierarchies of language, communication, value and practice, which influence cognitive experience. What kind of principle does it follow? What is the supporting theory? I remain doubtful towards this established cultural system, and try to find out the truth through experimental art projects. Therefore, in terms of linguistics, art demolishes the signifier and the signified, and creates certain “chaos”, which can serve as an incubator for new possibilities in art. It offers a new perspective to think about art, and extends its vision along with more freedom.

**H: ** Interesting. Your concept and practice show your doubts and subversion on conceptual art. The deliberation and discretion actually means freedom and liberation. Whatever object the artist chooses, it carries certain cultural indication or social critics along with its form. **Y: ** Most of the time, art creation is a process of mind emancipation. For me, freedom or liberation is realized through finding a new space conceptually. Art can be in a way of joking, yet it can also be serious thinking.

**H: ** In other words, you attempt to escape the traditional way of art recognition defined by context and empiricism. Are you trying to subvert it? Such as subverting the experience that a cup you see is not a cup by definition. **Y: ** People may not be able to get rid of what is recognized as truth.

**H: ** Usually solo exhibition are retrospectives, but you didn’t follow suit. You’ve integrated sculpture, installation, ready-mades and painting into on art piece, and there is only one painting in it. What’s the purpose? **Y: ** I don’t want people to watch or expect a normal exhibition, which cannot inspire the audience to think. So I play it a bit differently.

**H: ** You mentioned breaking boundaries for freedom. Sometimes artists find it hard to express the freedom when they can’t shake off confinements from an internal or external perspective. In my opinion, these confinements are composed by three aspects: experiences from people’s expectations towards the artist, experiences accumulated for a long time from inside the artist, and materials and approaches that artists think they must use or follow. One always needs to pay for freedom, which is accompanied by adventure related to experiment, and that may lead to something new. Some artists are haunted by these problems. What is your solution? **Y: ** In order to acquire freedom, artists should hold the attitude of denying the past in some way. Recognizing the past as truth or false cannot bring you freedom. It can only be acquired through total denial of the past and to recognize it in a completely new way. Adventure will not bring you the negative. On the contrary, it explores more space for freedom, which is a much happier thing to enjoy.

**H: ** What is the theme that you follow in the future? **Y: ** There might be a theme or not, but it will get clearer in the future. What we have done is just part of the exploration, after which a broader and clearer field will be disclosed. Many specific criticism and denial are further developed into something valuable in the end. The superficial and specific things are quite common, such as some sarcastic works originated from life experiences of artists at a certain period of time, thus they approach them in a straightforward manner. However, artists will manage to reach deeper down into culture as they go further with their visual expression.

**H: ** That is to say, you has transformed from realistic critics to today’s cultural critics, from a macro- to a micro-perspective? **Y: ** I originally started from a micro-perspective. As a matter of fact, what I have been doing is not a painter’s, or an artist’s task, but it’s for the purpose of an integrative art structure. When art creation relates more and more to the fundamentals of culture, and when you’ve denied all existing cultural phenomena, you need to look for something new that you start to recognize as culture or art.

**H: ** This change requires art itself to evolve, and social development to accelerate. China has changed enormously during the past decade. The relationship between the conservative ideology and unofficial vanguard art has become less tense. Artists are enjoying more freedom under market economy and gaining broader personal experience and vision. **Y: ** When we look back, we will find that the art phenomena were so specific in a denunciatory and irreconcilable manner. However, I don’t think this can solve the whole social problem, since they only caused more chaos on the surface level. The cultural mechanisms and development models are the fundamental problems within the social structure and knowledge system that our culture used to rely on. The superficial contradictions and conflicts may disappear only when these problems are solved, and art can play an important role in it.

**H: ** Chinese contemporary art is undergoing a diversification phase. When confronting the global financial crisis, many artists realize that art is supposed to come back to the serious academic issue. Did you consider the relationship between art development and the China context during your creation process? **Y: ** Of course I did. We can see that issues like eastern vs. western culture, globalization and politics are superficial and on the surface of the society. They are the topics and formats that most of the artists today are trying to address. However, when we explore deeper, and ask why they choose this way of art creation, we will find out that the results stem from the problems of our cultural roots. However, the problems may not need to be solved in a serious way. As a matter of fact, art with a serious mask might not be necessarily exploring the real problem, yet the seemingly nonsensical art can do it well. Unfortunately, most of the artists are pursuing something superficial in the form. Even though there are good works, many do not even address the problem. Many artists argue that we cannot rely on an art piece to solve any problem. I don’t agree with it. Although one piece of art can do little about the conflicts on the surface level, it does own the power to rethink and solve the problem at a cognitive level.

**H: ** You are making an interesting point here. Contemporary art can offer enlightening and soothing effects for people’s psychic trauma. For example, when people see the mismatches in the exhibition, their judgment of values will be aroused. I think this might also relate to the art cognition issue. **Y: ** So we can see that most of the artworks are serving as placebos for people’s psychic trauma. Chinese contemporary art is actually a placebo. Many people responded to my previous paintings because they touched a tender spot. If this generation died, these paintings will become nothing. They are not something constructive and cannot create a new platform and a new start for the evolvement of art. If we take a look at the development of contemporary art in the past decades, both in the east and the west, we will discover that neither has found such a platform or starting point. Contemporary art from China and the west is essentially at the same level. It remains a superficial phenomenon of identity issue or so. Most of the art is merely talking about these issues, but no one can manage to create a brand-new platform like the beginning of Modern art. I am not saying there’s not going to be new art emerging in the future, but at the moment, it is not happening yet. Maybe a thorough change and transformation of the whole structure of the world is required to generate the new. It might also require the artists to deny and take a new perspective on our traditions and western knowledge. I think this might be the way we have to go.

**H: ** What stresses you the most during the present financial crisis? **Y: ** It doesn’t really matter to me. If you are living in the west, life is even easier due to the sound social security and insurance system. The world is working according to the free market logic of capitalism. With its different system, what will happen if the market has reached maturity in China? I think the west is also facing the same problem. Their market can expand no more, but shrink after the booming from counties like China, India and Brazil. The impact of the financial and economic contraction has already shown in people’s life. So from the broad perspective of human development and according to its own developmental logic, capitalism has come near to its end. Human beings need to find out new social modes for their development, rather than sticking with the current free market system, which is definitely doomed. Yet the socialist planned economy is not the next to come, which has been denied long time ago. This might be the message from the financial crisis that we should pay attention to.

**H: ** In other words, the theme of your exhibition, Archaeological Discovery in A.D. 3009, is a presumption you made after you escaped the strange circle based on global capitalist system and confinement of Chinese culture itself. **Y: ** Yes. If we look at the slave society, we can’t help asking “why”. The reason was the economic structure at that time. So is the current situation. If we want to change something, we have to re-study the inherited system.

**H: ** The ready-made objects in the exhibition reflect your judgment of value- things looked advanced in the past but may be outdated at present. Are you suggesting skepticism towards social Darwinism? **Y: ** Sure. The charm of art is that it encourages any individual to express his or her imagination, so it is not usually approached in a linear logic. Probably, what we regard as advanced is not reliable in the future, but why do human beings go in this direction? It is nature’s cycle. Human beings won’t come to reason until things come to collapse, and the crisis conscience sounds ridiculous to them before that moment comes.

**H: ** I noticed that your focus is beyond art. You also pay a lot of attention to issues like economic system and political regimes. Are they great driving force in your creation of art? **Y: ** As you can see, the most valuable, inspiring and instructive art is not art based on the traditional esthetics of elegance and beauty, but the result of revolutionary and creative thinking, through which more aesthetic and artful feelings are inspired, such as those works with a soothing effect on people. Rather than aesthetics, profound thoughts or thinking are more valuable for art.

**H: ** Media has repeatedly mentioned the relationship between artists like you and the art market. Some even describe you artists as conspirators of today’s art market. What is your response? **Y: ** I haven’t read much art critics and reviews from the western media, but I don’t think such allegation is from western liberalists or liberal agencies. It might probably come from the domestic critics. I think the reason is that they still stuck in the own way of thinking in a planned economy. Therefore, some people still think that any price determined by a certain power, rather than by the invisible hands of market economy. Deep-rooted ways of thinking with regards to a planned economy are not easy to be changed. However, the fact is that the prices of art works are more and more characterized by the free market economy. Once they become commodities in the free capitalist environment, they turn out to be price monsters, which are not easily controlled.

**H: ** Is this exhibition a response to the above-mentioned allegation? **Y: ** The show contains all the cognitive ways people have formed. No matter in what way and how, it doubts it all.

**H: ** What is your next plan? **Y: ** I will explore the subject deeper based on this show. You throw out doubts and clarify them. Then you should come up with something new. So such artworks can only be made once or twice. Next in line would be, to be more constructive on a deeper level.

**H: ** What puzzles you most? **Y: ** Art issues.

**H: ** The process of creation must be really hard. **Y: ** Of course. You should understand the whole concept of creation yourself. Techniques used to be my major focus, but it no longer bothers me. I want to come up with solution for new problems lying at a deeper level.

**H: ** This exhibition is regarded as the turning point or watershed of your career. The ambivalence between people’s expectations and your exhibition mirrors the mismatch of your materials. Your new change is not abandoning original ways but more comprehensively and subtly embracing the past through details or a broader framework, which re-construct the whole concept and form. In my opinion, this turning point is probably related to your personality and disposition. You do not follow a routine but subvert ordinary experiences. **Y: ** Sticking with my old ways in a more subtle way might be the easier thing to do, but how could I waste the artistic freedom that we enjoy now? Pursuing art was so difficult in the past. Artists should create according to their free will to take the advantage of the best time and place. There are many misconceptions in society directing you according to their beliefs, in order to cater to one’s own interests. However, what I am not satisfied with is why I should be the same as these people. If you have the similar background and the same way of thinking like others, why bother? I want to find my own self-fulfillment.

**H: ** Experiment and adventure can easily lead to denial and refusal, but your attitude reflects the disposition of a true artist- an independent intellectual with firm stance on being skeptical about society and our culture, who can steer away from the confinements of commerce, ideological control, and remain unharmed from media influence, in order to construct his or her own art and visual language.