Interviewer: Bai Yilan ( Freelance Writer ）
Interviewee: Xu Juan (German curator for “Bald Girls”)
By Magazine Mountain Flower
Bai: Could you please tell us why this exhibition is called “Bald Girls”? What message would you like to convey?
Xu: When I came back two or three years ago, I found a dating game show on TV was very popular in China. The remark “I’d rather weep in a BMW than smile on a bicycle” made a hit after it appeared in the TV program. To me it was as shockingly absurd as 1984. It reminded me of The Bald Prima Donna, a famous play in the 1930s by Eugène Ionesco, a French playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd. The play, as we know, has nothing to do with “bald” or “prima donna” but with the absurdity of society and life. In China, on one hand, a growing number of well-educated and economically independent women are getting more and more freedom and opportunities to express themselves as artists, entrepreneurs, etc.,; on the other, more and more women are returning to their traditional role as a passive and dominated dependent. The co-existence of social varieties plunges women into an awkward and complex condition that is as absurd and chaotic as in The Bald Prima Donna.
As a title, The Bald Girls, homonymic to Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna in the 1930s. It is metaphoric of the current multiple Chinese reality, along with the complex and awkward life reality of women. We had planned to call it “Bald Women of the Nation”, but J suggested that “women with dagger-axe” be a better title. To replace “song” with “dagger-axe”, we aim to imply that in the present Chinese context where feminist art is still something new, artists have to turn to arms instead of entertainment. Female artists, when called “women with dagger-axe”, are intended to evoke a sense of self-cultivation.
Bai: Then why do you choose Xiao Lu, Li Xinmo and Lan Jiny for this exhibition?
Xu: Xiao Lu took the lead in feminist art with her “Dialogue”, “Sperms” and “Wedding”. She might be called a pioneer of “Queer” feminist art. She went further than explaining “suffering” in detail, and she made her voice as an independent “being”. So I think she must be included. Interestingly, she told me she had not been aware of the strong feminist tone when she was doing these works. As to Li Xinmo, there is a kind of beauty in her works, tragic but by no means sorrowful, in other words, instead of being killed by sufferings, she did not give herself up as hopeless but filled the sadness with strength, love and hope. Her “Scar Narration”and “Vagina’s Memory” are well-known, remarkable feminist art. Lan Jiny, staying most of the time in Europe, shows a strong note of postmodernist “feminism of pleasure”. Her “Chinese Apple” , “Dust”, etc., emphasize enjoying physical well-being, keeping the balance between family and career, as well as getting engaged socially to challenge the gender inequality and other conventions. The three artists, of different age groups and from different backgrounds, stand for different feminist ideas and possibilities and make a perfect combination of the past, the present and the future.
Bai: “The Bald Girls” differs a lot from other feminist art exhibitions, as it explicitly put forward “feminist” rights. Many people believe that the feminist movement has never taken place in China. What’s your idea?
Xu: Yes. The feminist rights proposed by “The Bald Girls” are quite different from the “female art” in China. Even overseas exhibitions held for Chinese female artists have never done what are doing here. They have never talked about or considered women’s rights as part of human rights. The Exhibition “Women Can Hold Up Half the Sky” at Frauen Museum in Bonn in 1998 has done nothing more than focus on women’s sentiments rather than revealing the feminist issues from a political and cultural perspective, therefore showing a lack of straightforward sense of women as independent being.
As economy booms and society goes pluralistic in China, the worldwide feminist movement that used to dominate Europe has gone out of the limelight after catfight in the 1960s and 1970s. Given the global context, it is hard for feminism in China to gain momentum from the world trend. Meanwhile, in the Confucian tradition, “kindness and beauty” has long taken root in China as a requisite for women to gain social recognition. Contemporary art in China therefore finds it hard to highlight feminism.
China has never seen a feminist movement as radical as that in Europe, I believe. “The May Fourth” and “New Culture Movement” could be one if there is. Due to its “grand unification”, women’s emancipation in modern China, from the outset, has excluded the individual as concept, and there was no room for opposite ideas. In this sense, women’s emancipation in (modern) China does not mean getting liberated from men but from oppression from other nations . Unlike feminist movement in the West, it is not the result of the sense of revolt against gender-based oppression. Rather it is eclipsed by something “higher” called “national” that calls for the connection of the individual’s interest with that of the nation so as to plunge into a thorough movement to liberate themselves.
“The May Fourth” awakened women to the realization of being exploited as a “slave”, which led to their first self-enlightenment as women. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China, the awareness of self-enlightenment that had been raised during the Republic of China was soon damped down by what the new government stressed as difference and struggle based on class. Prior to the opening-up policy, in women’s emancipation that has been always mixed with national liberation and class struggle, women never stopped to question “who I am”, an essential question for human beings, and failed to build an awareness of independence and struggle against patriarchy. Western feminism did not reach China until the 1980s. The alternative voice, however, as consumerism penetrated, died down and the newly fostered self confidence in women disappeared. The fact that there had been no feminist movements does not mean that we cannot borrow something from feminist art in the world to form our own feminist art that could in turn facilitate revolutions in ideology and feminist movement.
Bai: In China, we say “female art” instead of “feminist art”. In what way are they different?
Xu: They are two different concepts. In English, “Female Art” means women’s art, while “Feminist Art” refers to art intended for the struggle for women’s independence. The former is gender based while the latter can also include male artists.
Bai: Since you have stayed in Germany for many years, I would like to know something about women’s life in Germany and the development of feminism there.
Xu: In Germany women have achieved considerably in politics as well as in scholarship after the peak of feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Apart from the female German Prime Minister, women account for half of the present cabinet and have taken charge of most of the museums that used to be directed by male directors. Now we have gone beyond gender difference and are entering “the third wave of feminist movement” advocating that women should be “a kind mother, a sexually attractive partner and a capable carrier leader”.
Bai: What do you think of Chinese women?
Xu: Generally speaking, China is still a patriarchal society where men have the final say on politics, economy and culture. In large cities, there is a growing sense of independence among the well educated women, but in the vast rural area women are still trapped in the “village culture”, so feminist enlightenment and cultivation are still more than necessary. Also, women need self-reflection. Some women in cities still cling to feudalistic ideas, reluctant to abandon traditional thinking.
Bai: The exhibition has stirred up some controversy. There was even an article, I remember, called “Feminism Doesn’t Mean Hatred”. How do you face such kind of questioning?
Xu: Controversy is not bad because it touches a nerve of our society. Agreement and disagreement are both acceptable. It would fill us with suspicion if there is all flattering or criticism. The article is well-meant because feminism does not involve hatred or resentment. However, it does not mean tolerance of injustice. Art is special for its ability to magnify the seemingly reasonable but actually unreasonable so as to call forth reflection through visual stimulation. In such a society as ours where the golden means dominates, we are reluctant to unveil ourselves, and we are so face-conscious as to be reluctant to accept criticism, even if it is constructive. Such kind of peace is false. Only consensus and peace reached after debate deserve the name of lasting harmony. In the West, parities would argue a lot about a law in the parliament, but when the law is enforced after the majority prevails, all the parties obey it willingly.
Bai: Some people say that feminist and women’s right mean different things. We’d better not confuse them. It would be the same with “The Bald Girls”. What do you think?
Xu: As a matter of fact they mean the same thing, both derived from the English word “Feminism”. “Feminism” sounds more radical.
Bai: Some people criticize the exhibition for its tagging. As its curator, what do you think?
Xu: There is tagging in this exhibition, but we had no other choice. It’s impossible to advocate feminism on one hand and flatter the mainstream aesthetics on the other. It’s impossible to get both, so we chose the tagging, the marginal, in the end.
Bai: Could you share your plan with us?
Xu: “The Bald Girls” is going to have its website, a platform for Chinese literature, film and feminist plastic visual art. Also there will be an international seminar on “The Bald Girls” in Beijing on March 3 every year. Each year we will invite a feminist artist or feminist to China to exchange ideas. The exhibition will also go abroad to communicate with artists in the world. Next October it will shift to Bogota Art Center Columbia to hold a dialogue with three artists from South America.
Feb.2012 Beijing
