DSL Magazine: Issue 6

Both Yan and Miao work in continuity with the works of France-based Chen Zhen (1955-2000) and Huang Yongping (b.1954) who, from the beginning, were focussing on breaking down the concept of “Chineseness” to open the audience’s mind to an art without borders. One of the earliest and significant gesture by Huang Yongping was indeed to mix three tons of paper which had passed through three washing machines laundering out a Chinese and a Western book of art history. The two books turned out to be perfectly compatible and well mixed: they formed an undefined paper paste that could be used for any new creation, based equally on both of them. With the installation Un Immigrant sans papiers , set in the Netherlands, Huang stages with humour a buffalo, long associated with Chinese Lao-Tseu, in the isolated countryside to address the question of immigration in Europe, and beyond the issue of identity: a powerful metaphor for the renewal of the fusions of different cultures, which Chen Zhen might refer to as creative “synergy”.