This thesis examines the fluid and multi-layered criticism in the works of the Paris-based Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping (黄永砯, b. 1954). Huang began his artistic career shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, as China embark... This thesis examines the fluid and multi-layered criticism in the works of the Paris-based Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping (黄永砯, b. 1954). Huang began his artistic career shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, as China embarked on its tumultuous era of economic reform. He was the leader of the "Xiamen Dada" group, which was one of the most subversive collectives within the '85 New Wave, the first avant-garde movement in China. He experimented with various anti-art projects and exhibitions that actively criticized artistic institutions, with the goal of subverting concepts of creative subjectivity. For years, Huang developed a postmodernist critical mind, incorporating ideas from Western post-structuralism, anti-art movements (e.g., Dada and Fluxus), and Chinese traditional philosophy (e.g., I Ching [The Book of Changes], Chan Buddhism, and Taoism). In 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, Huang left for France in search of artistic freedom, at which point his critiques took on a more international dimension. Beginning in the 1990s, with the rise and spread of multi-culturalism, he participated in many international exhibitions. He has since created an array of diverse works that dissect the Orientalism embedded in the rhetoric of cultural diversity, and criticize the linear and Western-centric modern value system. Focusing on Huang Yong Ping's work after his move to France, this thesis discusses how his works have criticized cultural institutions, the history of imperialism, and the anthropocentrism that dominates modern civilization. Throughout the 1990s, Huang presented a number of site-specific installations that sought to deconstruct the authoritarianism of art history, museums, and the exhibition system. For example, he utilized the so-called "book washing" method he developed during the period in China to creatively nullify the Western-centric system of knowledge, as well as the sanctity and hierarchy of the museum. Also, by satirically incorporating "Eastern" motifs, he questioned issues of national identity and criticized the implicit Orientalism of multiculturalist exhibitions. While living as a stranger in a Western society, Huang also presented various theatrical installations that examined how problems related to migration and racism have worsened since the nineteenth century, tying those phenomena to the history of imperialism and colonialism. Shedding new light on historical incidents related to the colonization of China, several of these projects may be seen as revisions of the modern history of China and the West, emphasizing the reciprocal and relational nature of history. Furthermore, Huang has directly questioned the Humanist values underlying modern culture and society, particularly the belief in scientific rationalism and the fallacy that people can control the world through sheer will, showing how such ideas inevitably lead to exclusion, violence, and totalitarianism. Eliciting mythical animal imagery, Taoist philosophies, the I Ching, and divination, he has attempted to present a divergent world characterized by the coexistence of rationality and irrationality, humanity and nature, history and myth. As they have expanded to encompass cultural, historical, and humanist critiques, Huang's works have become a self-examination of the universalism and exclusivity that is inherent to modernity. Contemplating the formation of culture and civilization through power relations, his works are part of the larger ongoing effort to restore the histories of alienated others. Through his personal experience of migration from China to the West, Huang Yong Ping has maintained his commitment to fluid, multi-layered criticism. Notably, Huang's critique is fundamentally different from the critique of modernity that is inherent to Western postmodernism, and it also diverges from the discourse of cultural identity that emerged in the 1990s with the spread of multi-culturalism. In his works, thoughts from all times and places are interwoven to examine issues of inequality and the conflicts that inevitably arise between all cultures, histories, and societies. In undermining provincialist notions, such as Sinocentrism or Western-centrism, he has embraced cultural relativism and difference. Moreover, by erasing the boundaries between tradition, modernity, and postmodernity, he has proposed an open arena where formerly incompatible ideas and things can somehow coexist. This research into the alternative critical views of Huang Yong Ping has particular relevance for us today, amidst the ongoing reexamination of the continuity and outlook of modernity.
본 논문은 재외 중국작가 황용핑(黄永砯, Huang Yong Ping, 1954~ )의 작품에서 나타난 유동적이며 다층적인 비판의식을 살펴본 연구이다. 중국 하문(廈門, Xiamen)에서 태어난 황용핑은 문화... |
