Alia Swastika, Residency in Beijing and Shanghai
Time: 1-25 November, 2007
Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia – BizArt, Shanghai China
Alia Swastika was invited to participate in a BizArt residency program, below she describes her experience.
In November 2007, I joined a BizArt residency program in China with our touring exhibition titled The Past the Forgotten Time, organized by Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I went to China with a fellow-artist, Yuli Prayitno, whose works also exhibited in BizArt for the event.
It was my first time to visit China. Before I got there, I heard so much about the rapid growth of economic development in the country, especially, related to my interest, the phenomenal development of the arts. In Indonesia contemporary art scene, the discourse of Chinese contemporary art has been very popular during last five years amongst the artists, critics, curators and collector. Many galleries showed contemporary Chinese art works and the exposure of mass media on China art trends has been very intensive. Even, there is a new tendency amongst the young artists in Indonesia to duplicate the style of Chinese contemporary artists.
During my 25 days staying, I spent most of my time exploring the city of Shanghai. Living in the studio of BizArt, a complex of art galleries and studios, I have much time to see art scene of Shanghai, which appeared to be very commercial. I also had the opportunity to visit Beijing, which enabled me to compare the art scenes of the two cities.
Some exhibitions I saw were quite interesting and gave me a feeling of Chinese contemporary art today. Particularly in Beijing, I saw that the international exposure contributed much to the development of the art scene there. Not only from the art side, but also the international intellectual movement, global culture, has give great advantage to enrich the reference and conceptual ideas of young Chinese artists. Some of those exhibitions such as Bienalle Animamix (Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum), Fabrica (Shanghai Art Museum), Ha Jiemin (ShangArt), 85 New Wave (UCCA, Beijing), Anish Kapoor (Galerie Continua, Beijing), Retrospective of Long March Project (Long March Foundation, Beijing), has shown me the strong conceptual background of Chinese contemporary arts.
What was lacking was meeting artists, curators, and critics. Davide Quadrio and his staff helped me meet some artists and critics in Shanghai. It was a pity that most of the artists could not speak English (to be honest, the problem of language is one of the biggest matter during my residency). If it was possible, I would really like to talk to some artists to have more comprehensive idea about their creative process or their worldview. I met Lothar Sphere and Zao Chan. Our short conversation was very important to me. Davide Quadrio discussed with us and guided us about how to explore the city and arts life in Shanghai.
My stay in China was one of the most interesting experiences in my life. I felt like I met the ‘other’: to see a very different culture, learning about a different language and observing a different way of live. As a curator, those kinds of things will be very important for my ability of seeing difference as a basic idea of art projects. I learned so much about the capability to put the historical background in a right context would lead us to a bright future as social human being.
Alia Swastika, 2007
