Description
Book SynopsisThis book addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition. Focusing on performative, body-oriented video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist’s residency, homeland or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style or practice. Acknowledging historical definitions of Chineseness, including the orientalist assumptions of the past and the cultural-mixing of the present, the book’s case studies address the paradoxes and contradictions of representation. An analysis of the historical matrix of global expositions
reveals the structural connections among art, culture, capital and nation.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: staging art and Chineseness
1 Chineseness as a theoretical, historical and political problem in global art and exhibition
2 Patty Chang and the transnational cinematic subject of Chineseness
3 Environment, labor, and video: (eco) feminist interpellations of Chineseness in the work of Yuk King Tan, Cao Fei, Wu Mali
4 The dialectical image of empire
5 The archive of Chineseness: the global exposition and the museum
Index
