LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS
WENDA GU
(B.1955 Shanghai)
Installation by Wenda Gu showing curtains of hair
Background
Wenda Gu was educated in the traditional disciplines, studied landscape
painting under a master in Hangzhou where he was originally employed top
teach the ink painting. Although no longer practising in China, text remains
central to his work. This technical training has provided the meaning for
his most controversial works in which the ideological use of language challenges
political and social traditions.
Wenda Gu now lives and works in New York. One of the reasons he moved was
the political climate and restrictions placed upon artists in China. Wenda
Gu had difficulty showing his work in Beijing during the 1980’s; one
was cancelled, another was closed 4 hours after opening and a third restricted
to a professional artist audience. Because his work consists of large scale
installations in gallery spaces incorporating found materials and performances.
In 1987, when he left Beijing he said he would conquer the world and in
1999 alone exhibited in USA, Mexico, Germany Canada, Chile, China and Taiwan.
Artworks
One of these is Pseudo Characters Contemplation of the World (1984-6),
a series of ink paintings in which he uses traditional calligraphic styles
and techniques but subverts them with reversed, upside down or incorrect
letters. The Pseudo Characters series; consist of 3 ink on paper
scrolls in which the artists has controversially combined calligraphy and
landscape, disrupting the conventions of both, powerfully distorting artistic
tradition of China. To attack the written word (especially in the forms
of writing which had already been ‘revolutionised’) by glorifying
the spirit of the absurd was unacceptable. (Chang, quoted by Chui p80)
Wenda Gu’s most significant artworks have been a series entitled United
Nations Project, an ambitious project conceived in 1992. The main material
for this installation is human hair swept from the floors of hairdressers
from all over the world and the hair serves as connection to all people.
In these installation artworks, Wenda Gu confronts two taboos, that of language
and the human body. Gu has completed 15 United Nation installations throughout
the world, each is a grand statement, conceptually planned to related to
the location’s historical, political, social and cultural situation.
United Nations Australia monument (2001) was installed in the National Gallery
of Australia in Canberra in 2001. It consisted of screens tied together
with twine, forming a canopy of internationally collected hair. The hair
was fashioned into nonsensical scripts combining Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit
and Roman alphabets.
The artwork Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang
Poetry (2001) consists of 15 meticulously carved slate tablets; each
weighs 1.5 tonnes and is carved with a mixture of simplified Chinese script
and Times New Roman font. The poetry would normally have inspired reverence
and contemplation, except Gu has phonetically translated the English versions
back into Chinese and the resulting text is bizarre and surreal in meaning
.Conceptual Practice
Wenda Gu’s work is distinguished by two themes which intersect. The
first relates to language and the way that it is a signifier for the cultural
conventions. The second is the use of hair, human hair that is used as a
real material and a symbol for significant human endeavour. Hair is a human
blueprint, containing all DNA information, common to all yet fundamentally
individual.
Artists Quotations
For Gu, Hair is a signifier and metaphor extremely rich in history, civilisation
science, ethnicity, timing and economics...this human body outgrowth or
“waste” throughout the ‘united nations’ projects
becomes the great human “hair-tage”. it becomes a geo/national/cultural
identity “Melting pot”
Bessire, M Wenda Gu Art from the Middle kingdom to Biological Millenium
MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, p.38
In one of his performance pieces, Cultural Wedding (1999), the
artist and a co-performer wrote script in English and Gu adding a few strokes
to the letters transforming each into a pseudo-character. The brush and
ink were huge, the floor the canvas, the audience involved. This was performed
at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
Wenda Gu uses and reworks traditional Chinese media, calligraphy, ink painting
and carving and reinvents a new hybrid life from these forms. In the piece,
Silk Road # 3 (1999-2001) an installation of functional liquid
ink and ink sticks is made entirely form powered human hair. Placed beside
each elegant package of ink, tiny monitors showed the remarkable process
of ink production.
Wenda Gu United Nations Series Temple of Heaven- China Monument
(1998)
Installation with screens of human hair
(24x 30x 27 ft)
Wenda GU
References
Bessire, M. Wenda Gu Art from the middle kingdom to biological millenium
MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 2003.
Chui, M. The Use of Text in Contemporary Chinese Art, Art Asia
Pacific Issue 29 2001 p79
Eastburn, M. Wenda Gu Two exhibitions in Australia, Art Asia Pacific Issue34
2002 p27
Erickson. B. Silent Selves and Pseudo-Characters, Art Asia Pacific
Issue 26, 2000 p78-83
Martin, L A. heck of a hairdo…and how it hits at the heart of
a nation Sydney Morning Herald Friday October 5 2001, p5
www.wendagu.com
The artist’s home page which shows extensive range of images, installations,
drawings, and moving images of performances as well as biographical details
and references.
www.nga.gov.au
Image of Wenda Gu’s United Nations Project Australia Monument ( 2001)
screens of human hair installation and video . Purchased by the National
Gallery of Australia in 2003.
www.bates.edu
Review of performance piece by Wenda Gu called Wedding Life #6 performed
under and around screens from the United Nations piece.
www.echinaart.com
This site details the artist’s biography and an interview with the
artist and provides insights into his motivations and intentions.
www.asiaarts.ucla.edu