The renowned British sculptor Antony Gormley expresses concern about the “uglier sides” of China’s state control, but says artistic engagement with this powerful and historic cultural hub is crucial. The artist, famous for his work Angel of the North Along the road in the northeast of England, he defends art as a force for promoting intersocial understanding and announces that he wants to continue exhibiting his work in China.
“It is absolutely essential, because art is a bridge between hearts and mindsand people who come from totally different ideological and geographical places,” he says. Gormley in a factory-turned-gallery in the British capital’s trendy 798 art district, ahead of the opening of a new exhibition. However, the 74-year-old sculptor expresses dismay at “the uglier sides of state control,” citing the repression of minorities in the northwestern regions of Xinjiang and western Tibet. He also noted the “brutal” Covid-19 lockdown policies and a shift toward a “cult of personality” under the president. Xi Jinping.
The art industry in China has flourished in recent years, welcoming world-renowned figures such as Gormleybut many local artists have faced stricter control by the authorities. In August, Chinese police arrested the artist Gao Zhenknown for his works critical of the Cultural Revolution, while the dissident Ai Weiwei He has lived in exile since 2015.
In a vast warehouse, Resting Place II of Gormley – comprising 132 life-size human figures made from 26 to 30 Chinese-made bricks – is on display alongside five cast iron sculptures and a selection of drawings. Together, these pieces form the sculptor’s latest exhibition, Body Buildings –his fourteenth in a country he has visited regularly since the mid-1990s.
Gormley cited the ancient city of Xi’an, the hutong alleys of Beijing, traditional Chinese medicine and ancient philosophical text Tao Te Ching among his influences for the collection. “I was fascinated by the diversity of Chinese culture and its material sophistication in a very early period,” he said.
Resting Place IIsaid Gormleyis in part a reflection on the individual and the collective, and China’s rapid economic growth has made it “a great experimental ground for this relationship.” At ground level, the stacked bricks look like scattered buildings, but from a height they are revealed as a labyrinth of bodies in various postures.
“It’s much more about the transformation of this country than life in the hutongs to tall, high-density, 24-story (80-story) towers and what that means in terms of social order,” he says. Gormley. Of his first visits to the south of the eastern country, he remembers: “What struck me so strongly… was how much of life was on the street.”
Urban China has since become a more private, atomized, and Gormley wait that Body Buildings allows audiences to reflect on how they exist in their own bodies, in buildings, and in cities. “My work is not activist art that tries to resist or revolutionize the the state in which“, says. “It is simply an attempt to provide a…reflective evocation of our current situation.”
Activist or not, Gormley He is concerned about political trends – and not only in authoritarian systems. “We live in a time when democracy is failing, simply because it can be manipulated by all forms of the media,” says the British artist.
He points out that the media in the West creates echo chambers, and points mainly to Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory as evidence: “The brigade of Fox News “has triumphed by calling all other media ‘fake news’ and creating its own triumphalist fake news.”
Gormley seems more optimistic about China’s future: “(China) seems to manage to live under this, you might say, absolute ceiling of state control, while allowing a wide range of personal creative freedoms.” Among young people and on Chinese campuses, Gormley sees “a broad and extensive interest in other cultures; other ways of being and doing.”
“We should expect China and India become intellectual guides for the future development of humanity,” he says. He is also not fatalistic about artificial intelligence. Although skeptical of AI art, which he said “reeks of artificiality,” if AI replaces humans at work “the opportunity for everyone to become truly creative becomes achievable, that’s exciting.”
In an increasingly polarized world, Gormley sees art as more important than ever. “I absolutely believe that art is a tool of self-determination as well as a tool… for people to think about their condition.” “I would trust artists more than politicians these days.”
Fuente: AFP
(Photos: Jade GAO/AFP; Lee Smith/ REUTERS)
