At first glance the photographs look like random tourist snapshots.
The subject
matter is Dutch, but they are so unexceptional that they could
have been taken anywhere.
Some show views of runways and landing strips at a Schiphol airport
at twilight,
where the aircraft throw long shadows onto the ground due to the
low-lying
sun. Other photographs show the huge tower block of the Nationale
Nederlanden
insurance company in Rotterdam, its plate glass façade
standing out against a bright
blue sky. Container ships have been caught on film, likewise a
canal with a tree, the
train station at Eindhoven, a football stadium and a nondescript
looking industrial
terrain with lorries and parked cars. Not spectacular subject
matter by any means,
more everyday subjects captured on camera - bleak, matter-of-fact,
industrialised
landscapes that do not conform in any way to the romantic expectations
you cherish
from tourist snapshots. Nevertheless, the crystal-clear, large-scale
colour and blackand-
white photographs are intriguing because of the sense of alienation
they convey
- it is like looking at the everyday environment with new eyes.
The subject matter
makes a rough, washed-out impression and suffers from a kind of
strange weightlessness.
The bird's-eye view perspective from which they have been mainly
taken
evokes questions about the almost impossible camera angles; people
and horizons
are usually missing, while the proportions of the visible buildings
and vegetation
are oddly distorted in relation to each other. Closer inspection
of the photographs
reveals they are not real Dutch landscapes, but a Netherlands
constructed in miniature
form at the Madurodam theme park, a tourist attraction in The
Hague. The
images are made by Ni Haifeng (1964), the Chinese-born artist
who has lived and
worked in the Netherlands since 1994. No matter how unemphatic
the subject matter
is, the photographs create unease because they reveal just how
terrifyingly close
Madurodam's artificial world and our everyday reality are to each
other. They reflect
the sense of alienation from our surroundings and reveal how much
the artificial is
contained in, and has taken possession of, our everyday reality.
The contamination
of our gaze, the loss of perspective and the distortion of what
is close by and far
away, of what is real and unreal, are inevitable consequences
of this, Ni appears
to be saying. In his No-Man's-Land - as this 1999-2001 photo series
is called - of
plywood, plastic and bonsai trees there is even no longer space
for real people.
The only people that can be found in the photographs are of plastic
or look like lost
Gullivers.
Alienation, disengagement, reality and artificiality - these
are key words in the
work Ni Haifeng has been making since graduating from the Zhejiang
Academy of
Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Fine Arts) in Hangzhou, in
1986. He continually
challenges the way we think we know the world. In his work he
questions and
destabilises the way in which our gaze is involuntarily controlled
and subverted
by the overwhelming amount of images, impressions, experiences,
definitions and
designs we are served up by the media and science, among others.
In his vision, the
reality of present-day visual and scientific culture is identified,
named, categorised
and defined so much that these artificial constructs increasingly
take away our view
on the real world. In this process language plays a crucial role.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein
stated, the limits of the language mean the limits of the world.
The world is
the area that we know because we have already charted it via language;
behind this
a gaping void of unnamable things stretches out. Moreover, contrary
to what we
usually want to believe, words and ideas are only partly linked
to the things they are
supposed to represent. Often language conceals just as much as
it clarifies. Ni is
continually aware of this manipulative structure of language.
'My works are struggling
against the power of definition, nomenclature and interpretation',
he himself
once concluded.1 During his training he effortlessly combined
his preference for
the writings of Wittgenstein and Roland Barthes with studying
classical Chinese
literature and philosophy. After graduating he continued to work
on the interface
between Western linguistic philosophy and Chinese Taoism.
At first Ni made work in which he wanted to destabilise existing
physical situations
and structures and attempted to break through set patterns of
looking. Out of
his involvement with the meaning of language, Ni, after graduating,
joined Red 70%,
Black 25%, White 5%, a group of seven Chinese artists making conceptual
art,
ideograms and so-called Nonsense Calligraphy. At first glance
such calligraphy
appears real, but it later turns out to be meaningless. He quickly
introduced Arabic
numbers and mock mathematical equations to his oil paintings on
canvas or paper.
Dissatisfied with the fact that the works were relatively 'innocent'
because they
remained within the safe confines of a picture frame, in the late
Eighties Ni began
incorporating the paintings into space-filling installations at
everyday locations in
Zhoushan, where he was then living. For instance, using red and
black paint he painted
remnants of material and jute sacks which he draped on the floor;
completely
covered the interiors and exteriors of buildings with mathematical
puzzles and even
took part of the rocky coastline of the island on which he was
living in hand. The
mysterious, poetical installations which he made for many years
were known under
the collective title Warehouse. Contrary to what you would expect
from such a title,
there were hardly any objects to be found in Ni's 'warehouses'.
The alienation of
the seemingly empty spaces was reinforced by the horror vacuï
of the paintings
decorating them. While at first glance the paintings suggest mathematical
formula,
ultimately there is no internal logic whatsoever, let alone any
form of meaning, to
discover in the symbols, numbers and calculations. The handwriting
and the act of
writing itself appear to have been transformed in the paintings
into an objective in
itself. Freely quoting Barthes, Ni coined this autonomous, meaningless
writing and
the emancipation of the writing the 'zero degree of writing'.
As such he took this
zero degree of writing as his strategy in order to destabilise
what he sees as an overdefined
world. With the ironic performative act of painting copious numbers,
he
illustrated all the futility of human attempts to count the incalculable
or to gain a
grip on the complexity of the world. At the same time, through
the meaningless
writing he moulded the experiencing of spaces and objects to his
own will: with the
paintings he created distance between the viewer and the objects.
Because the
objects, like the numbers, had lost their function, Ni made it
possible in a moment
of disorientation and detachment to look at reality with fresh
eyes - a rudimentary
reality of 'fragmentalised language, signs and floating signifiers
which stopped signifying
anything'.2 In an ideological sense the destabilising act of the
zero moment of
writing recalled Wittgenstein as much as Taoism. For when the
limits of language
mean the limits of our world, as Wittgenstein claimed, then the
breaking down of
those language limits implies the removable of the distinction
between the known
and the unknown. In Ni Haifeng's way of thinking, such a thought
is not far removed
from the insights of Taoist philosophy. By letting go of familiar
frameworks, you
come closer to reality and by losing yourself you come closer
to yourself.
A similar critical stance towards the influential role played
by language as well
as image, media and science in our conceptualising of reality
also distinguishes Ni's
later work. For instance, in the first half of the Nineties he
made works in which he
was preoccupied with geographical maps and the concept of territory.
Ni's involvement
with maps came about after he had read a story by Jorge Luis Borges
about the
map of an empire. The map turned out to be not an accurate depiction
of the actual
empire's territory. Amazingly enough, over time the empire shrunk
until it coincided
exactly with the size of the map itself. Ni interpreted this story
as a future vision on
the way representation increasingly takes the place of real things.
The power of a
simple aid like a geographical map should not be overestimated.
While they show an
extreme, almost ludicrously simplified vision of reality, maps
play a deciding role in
political and ideological structures and the way in which we see
the world. Important
ideological concepts like 'father- or motherland', 'holy' or 'promised
land', 'independence',
'unity', 'freedom', 'occupation', 'folk', 'power', 'enemy' or
'compatriot' are
inextricably linked to the simple, neatly arranged world that
maps suggest. In this
way, these simple pieces of printed paper dominate the earth in
one sense. In the
installation Territory (1993), with which he was represented in
the high-profile travelling
exhibition China Avantgarde, Ni confronted the artificial, symbolical
world of
maps with actual earth. On the floor he presented a dais with
a detailed collage
made from useless misprints of regional maps of Germany down the
centuries.
These were painted with numbers and made-up mathematical equations
and then
scattered with rice and soil. On the dais and hanging from the
ceiling were transparent
plastic bags filled with rotting, fermenting leaves and again
painted with numbers
and calculations. These hanging plastic bags comprised a new element
in his
work. Hanging and painstakingly balanced objects were to become
frequently recurring
motifs in his installations - their tenuous balance had just as
much destabilising
potential as the early nonsense writing. It seemed with the installation
- first exhibited
in Berlin shortly after the fall of the Wall - that Ni Haifeng
wanted to show that
the ostensible steadfast and reliable reality of a geographical
map is just as changeable
and capricious as nature and earth itself. One object entitled
Made in China is
a related subject. The work comprises pieces of burned Chinese
maps and a wooden
chest with two kilos of Chinese soil to which a tube containing
the ash of the burnt
maps is attached. Ni made this in 1995, a year after he settled
permanently in
Amsterdam with his Dutch wife. It can be seen as a kind of luggage
- a souvenir to
perpetuate the memory of the mother country: a memory however
that is extremely
fragile and selective. Nothing more remains of the homeland than
a few geographical
indications, a pile of earth and some ash.
From 1992, along with his spatial installations and objects,
Ni also became
involved with photography. It was in keeping with his choice of
subject of representation
and (national) cultural identity in a post-colonial perspective
that he began to
make use of the medium. Thus his Made in China - the ironic title
is taken from the
labels of cheap Chinese exports for Western consumption - had
a thematic sequel in
the delightful photo series Self-Portrait as a Part of the Porcelain
Export History
(1999-2001). The seven coloured pictures show parts of Ni's body
painted with blue
decorative patterns similar to those found on porcelain, as well
as quotes taken from
Western standard works on Chinese porcelain. The patterns are
partly derived from
traditional indigenous Chinese porcelain but are also taken from
seventeenth and
eighteenth century porcelain designed in the West and manufactured
in China. In the
series Ni depicts himself as part of this history of export and
import - as a juncture
where Western and non-Western perspectives; past and present;
emigration and
immigration; as well as political, social and economic aspects
of export and import
come together.
The fragmented and painted body - the body as a projection screen
for stereotypical
or biased concepts - is a recurring theme in Ni Haifeng's work.
In 1996 he
made a photo series entitled Asian Yellow in which he photographed
bluebottles that
landed on his skin. The fact that the prints were completely covered
or branded with
patterns using the number five adds to the photos' sense of unease.
In an ironic way,
Asian Yellow toys with the manner in which skin colour is assigned
a leading role in
racial discourse. Paradoxically, the photographs are printed in
black and white so
that any link between the prejudiced, needlessly simplistic term
'yellow Asian' and
the actual visible skin colour is 'derailed'. The fact that categorisation,
definitions
and nomenclature take away all insight into real individual people
was more radically
visualised two years later in Ni's installation The Constituents.
Slides showing
pages from encyclopaedias from the Fifties were projected onto
five photographs
of masked faces. In retrospect the entries on people and races,
written from a religious,
cultural, political, medical and archaeological viewpoint, in
no way provide
the objective facts they profess to. From a contemporary viewpoint
they show an
all too exaggerated, politically incorrect racial preoccupation.
In The Constituents
the individuals are literally hidden behind a projected and generalised
type of image.
The theme of the subjugated body that is 'culturally dirty' recently
recurred in Ni's
video installation Washing Hands (2003). Monitors show two pairs
of hands being
thoroughly - indeed, almost desperately - scoured: one pair with
soap, the other only
with water. The video images are played back to front so that,
as time goes on, inscribed
historical texts gradually emerge on one of the pairs of hands.
The artist's
message is apparently that the harder people try to forget the
colonial past, the more
they are forced to face up to it.
The thematic consistency of Ni's visually varied work was clearly
demonstrated
by his first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands, held in
the GEM in The
Hague. Two of his installations there linked the theme of dysfunctional
communication
with his earlier nonsense writing. Unfinished Self-Portrait (2003),
for example,
featured mysterious computer codes painted on glass. The codes
were just a fraction
of those needed to create a simple digital portrait photo of the
artist. This simple
intervention reveals that an apparently faithful representation
in fact possesses
a completely different structure and is nothing like the artist
at all. Similarly, Xeno-
Writings (2003) shows the inability of man truly to understand
the world. A video of
a hand writing fake mathematical formulae and then erasing them
again is projected
onto a wall of books. In accordance with Ni's philosophy, the
books constitute a
bastion of knowledge impeding rather than facilitating communication
with the
world - a bastion called into question by the xeno-writings. In
addition, Ni included
in the exhibition an auditory equivalent of his 'writings of zero
degree', in the form
of his mini-installation Hundreds of Songs (2003). This is composed
of a touching
photograph of a child wearing a cow's-head mask and clamping its
hands over its
ears, together with a soundtrack containing an indefinable jumble
of inextricable
sounds. To produce this deafening cacophony, Ni mixed countless
children's songs
together. All the individuality of the child is being lost here,
as a result of the deluge
of well-intentioned but commonplace songs to which it is subjected
by the adult
world.
As a critical and engaged conceptual artist who does not neglect
the visual
appearance of his work, Ni Haifeng has a prominent place within
contemporary art.
In his poetic, multifaceted work he is able to couple a radical
conceptualism to a
certain Baroqueness and drama in the visual language. Any lurking
treat of ponderousness
in his emotionally charged choice of subject matter is knocked
on the
head by a light Dadaist irony that is never too far way from his
work.
By simple interventions in fixed patterns of looking and expectations,
he continually
enables the viewer to see the world with fresh and amazed eyes.
The creation of
such confusion and subversion is possibly his most important artistic
premise. By
making the ambiguity of things manifest, he demonstrates that
reality always lends
itself to more than one interpretation. 'My work is all about
transformation, about
liberating things', Ni Haifeng concludes.3 His work can be interpreted
as a critical
appeal not to be content with the Multiple Lies with which we
are surrounded daily -
to use the title of his first video installation (2002). In this,
two video projections
and two stacked monitors simultaneously show images of the threatened
traditional
Dutchness of Madurodam's artificial world. One of the projectors
shows a foreign
family's reflection in the water as they cross an artificial dyke
in the theme park.
Canned sounds can be heard of the Dutch national anthem that blares
from a miniature
PSV stadium when visitors insert a coin into the mechanism to
activate it. While
there was a large measure of oppression, alienation and irony
present in No-Man's-
Land, in the video installation Multiple Lies the idea that there
is any such thing as
national identity is rendered almost absurd. Your view of the
Netherlands will never
be the same once you have seen the country through the eyes of
Ni Haifeng.
1
Unpublished notes by Ni Haifeng for a lecture at Utrecht
Polytechnic for the Arts, Utrecht, 2002.
2
Idem.
3
Ni Haifeng in an interview with the writer, January 2003.
Previous, Next
|
