Hou Hanru, ' Entrophy; Chines Artists, Western Art Institutions, A New Internationalism'
In: Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts. Edited by Jean Fisher. London: Kala Press in association with the Institute of international Visual Arts, 1994, pp. 79-88.
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To consider identity as a process of cultural evolution in a living context does not imply that artists abandon their own cultural heritage. They always keep a critical eye on the tradition itself. It is in the process of international dialogue that they become aware that among the most important questions they are facing are not only the possibility of realising dialogue but also, the question of discursive power, or, in other words, the political problem in international cultural-artistic exchanges. Until now, the mainstream of international culture and art has been West-centric. This situation should change in view of current global cultural developments. It is why 'construction' of a 'New Internationalism', which should take the place of all the previous forms of West-centric 'Internationalism' or 'Universalism', becomes urgent and absolutely necessary. It is also accepted by the Chinese artists as a new starting point to develop their work at the international level. Huang Yongping is one of the most representative among them. In his work he often introduces the ancient Chinese divination system, the Yi Ching (The Book of Changes), which has been an important resource for traditional Chines philosophy. It not only suggests a process of constant change in the universe, the duality and interconnectedness of necessity and chance, of the rational and irrational, culture and anti-culture, but also a strategy to launch 'attacks' on the legitimacy of the West-centric monopoly in intellectual and everyday life. In his comments on his work 'Should We Construct Another Cathedral?' which aims to question the political power enjoyed by art world 'super stars' like Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Enzo Cucchi and Anselm Kiefer, he explains:
... however, Yi Ching has provided me with the reason of creation in order not to fall into the difficulty of personal choice. Divination plays a decisive role here. It lets me be guided by itself instead of being guided by the taste or ideas of myself and those of the others... In fact, today, 'freedom of art' is no longer possible. One has to identify with certain criteria. Then, how to continue to work? We have to face the choice of others and ourselves. The process that I resort to Yi Ching in terms of thinking about how to make 'choice' has brought Yi Ching to the contemporary problems... In the contemporary time, Yi Ching provides us with an alternative information which is beyond the 'reality' created by contemporary mass media and the factual 'reality'. It is another 'reality'.[5]
By introducing an 'alternative reality', Huang Yongping provides a resistance and alterity to the existing concept of 'reality' founded on a West-centric ideology. In his more recent work, he raises questions of artistic-linguistic and political power to confront international political repression in social life. He systematically questions the established concepts of knowledge and politics, institutions and violence, freedom and repression. For example, in his installation at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, he 'reconstructed' an airport passport control point in order to question the meaning of national-cultural borders. At the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, he installed a tent in which viewers witnessed a battle between different insects as a challenge to the colonialist preoccupation with Asian people. In the Wexner Arts Centre, Columbus, Ohio, he exposed the reality of 'Chinese Boat People', an event unfolding on the American West Coast at the same time as he was preparing his exhibition.
Equally, Chen Zhen, Gu Wenda, Yang Jiechang and Wu Shan Zhuan, among others, have, directly or indirectly, challenged the global-scale oppressive influences of western consumerism and other ideologies by resorting to their own cultural heritage and proposing possible alternatives to West-centrism. Their work is often provocative and even subversive. They open themselves up to a kind of chaotic vision of the world, or more exactly, the world based on the order of western rationalism. Such a common strategy, rooted in the dialectics of Chinese philosophical ideas of the world, is also directed towards the development of international communications and, finally, towards revealing the truth that the future world order will be born out of a certain entropic rule; that a new internationalism will replace the existing West-centric domination.