For the eighth performance of Looking back , we have moved our focus to Guizhou. In fact, as early as 1987, there was performance art in Guizhou, which is basically the earliest group in mainland China. Since then, although there have been artists who have created works off and on, they have basically faded into obscurity. Due to the long period of time, the early group of artists are old, many of them have stopped creating, the documents are mostly lost, and the historical facts need to be cross-questioned by many parties before they can be gradually found out, all of these have brought considerable difficulties to the collection and organization of the documents. Therefore, we are especially grateful to the artist, Dong Jie, who spent great efforts to contact the artist and patiently communicated with her before the facts of each piece of artwork and activity gradually came out. The fact that the collection and sorting work could be completed within the scheduled time is undoubtedly thanks to the understanding and support of many people! Artists such as Chen Qiqi, He Libin, Hou Zailun, Liu Haibin, Shi Yonghua, Tao Feng, Xu Song, and other artists provided a large number of historical documents on Guizhou performance art and patiently participated in verifying and sorting out the information.
The Flag of One Eye, August 1987, Guizhou, Liu Haibin, Tao Feng, Ou Zhiwei
Lost Souls, 1991, Guizhou, Chen Qiji, Cao Li, Zhang Zhihua, etc.
On July 14th, 2022, at 8:00pm, “Warm Up” Session 8: “Guizhou Performance Art Archive” was held at the Archives, hosted by artist Dong Jie. We would like to thank Jie Dong for her hard work over the past three months in searching for and contacting artists, and collecting and sorting out information on performance art events and works that have almost been forgotten. It is hard to believe that as early as 1987, performance art creations began to take place locally in Guizhou, with artists Liu Haibin, Ou Zhiwei, and Tao Feng creating Flag of One Eye, and in 1988, Chen Qiqi, Cao Li, and Zhang Zhihua united with a number of people to create a series of works such as “Sermon”, “Forbidden Fruit”, “Past Lives and Present Lives”, “Dual Lives”, and “Cactus”, which are all part of the mainland China happenings. These works were among the earliest works of performance art that took place in mainland China, and they were hardly known and valued by the art world. 30 years have passed, and although performance art in Guizhou was once like a gas, it has never been interrupted. Older artists such as Tao Feng, Liu Haibin and Jiang Jing continue to create new works. Some Guizhou artists who have been living abroad for a long time, such as Yang Qing and Yang Deqing and Katayama Hollow, also return to Guizhou intermittently to create works, which enriches the landscape of Guizhou’s performance art.After 2016, artists such as Shi Yonghua and Dong Jie initiated and organized a large number of performance art activities in Guizhou, inviting domestic and foreign artists to Guizhou to start the creation of and exchanges in the field of performance art, all of these efforts have made the ecology of performance art in Guizhou These efforts have made Guizhou’s performance art ecology more open and active.
Since the fifth session of the program, we have strengthened the on-site exchange session. Since the audience all signed up to participate on their own initiative, they were all effective listeners interested in performance art. There were many excellent researchers from various disciplines, and the quality of the questions asked was very high and sincere enough. The atmosphere of the exchange was warm, enthusiastic and professional. The sharing session was followed by free exchanges that lasted until late at night.
