Xing Danwen

Upon their release, Zhu and Ma were taken to the train station and escorted to their provincial hometowns. Official announcements declared that a “ring of pornographers” had been broken up through deft government intervention. A month later, both artists were back in Beijing. (Zhu went on to tour internationally, often performing while encased, on land and sea, in a large plastic bubble. Ma blithely walked naked on the Great Wall and conducted a long series of nude performances in China and abroad. Zhang, after many more nude events around the world, today oversees a workshop complex in Shanghai, where some 90 assistants turn out his paintings, prints, woodcarvings and sculptures.) So the cat-and-mouse game continues, to this day, in the People’s Republic.

After the East Village arrests, Xing created a remarkably sensitive photo series depicting partially nude Chinese women of various ages (“I Am a Woman,” 1994-96). The images have never been exhibited, except for a suite of three black-and-white shots labeled “Born with the Cultural Revolution” (1995), which University of Chicago scholar-curator Wu Hung included in two exhibitions outside China.5 Those works show a pregnant young woman standing and lying in a room, apparently an everyday living space, dominated by a Chinese flag and multiple pictures of Chairman Mao.

In 1998, shortly before she left for her studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Xing was called on her mobile and asked to meet with Chinese security agents. She went to the agreed-upon hotel lobby and was immediately escorted to an upper-story room, where she was interrogated for four hours. “I dressed well, I made my own money, I hung out with crazy artists and foreigners,” she recalls. “The cops were sure I was a spy or a prostitute—maybe both.” Questioning eventually centered on her contact with a German journalist working for Der Spiegel in Beijing. “I know him, of course,” she told her quartet of inquisitors, “but not well. He never gave me any freelance work.” The agents reminded her of Chinese judicial policy: the more readily you admit your guilt, the less severe your punishment. But she had no guilt, and no more to reveal.

Before letting Xing go, the security men asked if they could take her picture. “No,” she said reflexively, then had a flash of inspiration: “I’ve just been profiled in the journal Woman’s Friend. The issue, with lots of pictures, is on the newsstands now. If you want to remember me, buy the magazine.” 

Currently On View Solo shows by Xing Danwen at Ooi Botos, Hong Kong [through Feb. 27]; Modern Chinese Art Foundation, Ghent [through Feb. 18]; and Haines Gallery, San Francisco [Feb. 18-Mar. 27].

Works by Xing Danwen will appear in the group shows “Chinese Modernism and U.S. Vernacular,” Architecture Center Houston [Mar. 12-Apr. 25];
“Seeing Utopia, Past and Future,” Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University [Mar. 31-May TK]; and “Reshaping History,” Arario Gallery, Beijing [Apr. 23-May 18]. Her solo “A Personal Diary” goes on view at the Wall Museum, Beijing [September 2010], and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo [spring 2011].

1 All direct quotes from the artist are from conversations with the author: Beijing, Aug. 16, 2009; New York-Beijing, via telephone, Dec. 14, 2009. 

2 Madeline Eschenburg, “Xing Danwen: Revealing the Masquerade of Modernity,” Yishu, July/August 2009, pp. 51-66. 

3 See especially his deluxe portfolio of over 40 black-and-white photographs with accompanying text by Wu Hung: Rong Rong’s East Village, 1993-1998, Chicago, Art Media Resources, 2003. 

4 Thomas J. Berghuis, Performance Art in China, Hong Kong, Timezone 8, 2006, pp. 106-08. 

5 “Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century” (1999) and, with curator Christopher Phillips of New York’s International Center of Photography, “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China” (2004). Both shows had extensive tours.