Last month, the Bangkok Art Biennale (BAB 2018) announced the first 15 of 70 artists participating in the event slated for late next year. As reported earlier, the list includes some of the art world's biggest names such as Marina Abramovic, Huang Yong Ping, Yoshitomo Nara, Elmgreen and Dragset, and Choi Jeong Hwa, as well as Thai and Southeast Asian artists.
Naturally, we can expect site-specific interventions and collaborations of several artists at BAB 2018, which will sprawl through central Bangkok and engage with older cultural sites like Wat Arun, Wat Prayoon and Wat Pho as locations. The announcement of the line-up in Bangkok also included a presentation by Huang Yong Ping, who was in Bangkok on his first site visit.
Huang Yong Ping, widely considered a godfather of contemporary art in China, was born in Xiamen in Fujian province in 1954. Huang was the founder of the group Xiamen Dada in the 1980s, an avant-garde artist group that explored the intersections between Dadaism and Buddhism. In 1989, he participated in the exhibition "Les Magicians De La Terre" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The Tiananmen Square Massacre happened while Huang was still in Paris and he to remain there.
In 1999, Huang represented France at the Venice Biennale having gained French citizenship 11 years after leaving China. He returned to Xiamen in 2000 and today regularly goes back and forth between the two countries. The history of China, its current affairs and its politics forms major themes in his work, especially the vis-à-vis with the west.
Huang Yong Ping. photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale 2018
Influenced by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Bueys and John Cage, politics and art converge in his work and object trouve necessitates a re-examination of what we consider art. In some of his work, he compares the likeness of the animal kingdom to that of our own human kingdom; despite being at the very top of the food chain perhaps in our actions we are not different from the sharks, tigers and serpents of the real and mythical animal kingdom.
The use of found objects in his work is prevalent, the most monumental is the aeroplane. It was the US spy plane that crashed in China in 2001, "Bat Project I-III" (2001-2003) comprised of replicas of the United States EP-3 spy plane, which is colloquially referred to as the "bat". This type of aircraft collided with a Chinese fighter plane on April 1, 2001, before making an emergency landing on Hainan Island.
Huang's work is monumental and from this discrete artist with the gentlest demeanour comes epic work. What comes to mind is the installation in France at Saint-Brevin-les-Pin titled Serpent d'Ocean, the giant aluminium skeleton of a serpent slithers through the water, his head resting on the shore half under the water at times fighting the crashing waves, at other times peacefully resting on the shore.
His works are sensitive to nature, aware perhaps of our impact on Earth, what we leave behind and thus questioning where we are going. As far as work of a monumental scale is concerned it is the colossal serpent at the Grand Palais in Paris as part of Monumenta in 2016 titled Empires that would define that. A 400-tonne sculpture of aluminium, mostly manufactured in China was pieced together in the Grand Palais, it sits within a circle of shipping containers piled up on top of each other, container after container and then there is a sculpture of Napolean's cap. These shipping containers -- a symbol of commerce -- makes one wonder how this ginormous sculpture travelled from China to Paris to begin with and the international dialogue that started way back with Napoleon's ambition to make France the greatest Empire.
Huang's hometown, when he returned after his long sejour in France had become an industrial shipping port. Smoke envelopes buildings the way a serpent wraps around the containers. His installation, Theatre Of The World at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, that is on view though February has attracted much attention for the use of animals, drawing protests from animal rights groups.
Huang will be very much present at the Bangkok Biennale and it is a wonder what he will create, especially given Thailand's history and relationship with China. The theme of BAB 2018 is "Beyond Bliss" (the curatorial effort is led by Apinan Poshyananda), and it is worth noting that there is no direct translation of "beyond bliss" neither in Chinese nor French, and thus Huang's interpretation will have to transcend the realm of language.
Creating a space and forum for artists to be introduced and explain their work leading up to the biennale is a way to engage the community, those already interested and potentially those that could be. A biennale cannot exist in a vacuum and the position in which a privately funded biennale with curators and directors is to offer a platform, an opportunity to engage, whether directly or indirectly. As the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, one of BAB's advisers said in his video at the beginning of last week's presentation, "there are a lot of internal politics here, this is a chance to open up and share our differences and to start a dialogue".
