Made In China: Chinese Artistic Representations of Capitalist Consumption
In this exhibition, themes of appropriation and authenticity play themselves out in the works of Chinese artists Ai Wei Wei, Tamen, and Liu Bolin. Ai Wei Wei challenges us to reconsider what is authentic and what is consumerism. Liu Bolin’s works represents consumerism in the style of the vacation postcard — except in his photographs, the figure is camouflaged, evocative of the notion of China incorporated into a culture, but not identified. Ta Men’s paintings evoke the original anecdote of authenticity and food in the North American imagination.
Chinese art that represents capitalist consumption brings to mind two concepts: appropriation and authenticity. Capitalism is all about taking something we desire and replicating it en masse for people to consume without too much consideration on what it is they are consuming. The end result is consumption without thought. How are we to approach a system that celebrates reproduction? In art, traditional values celebrate originality. However, the search for the original often overlooks the genius we can find in appropriation. It brings us to the example of contemporary Chinese art where capitalism and the need to reproduce have met up with the art world’s demands for originality. Since China has opened itself more and more to Capitalist modes of consumption, what we see in Chinese art is actually not an act of forgery but a sophisticated reflection on capitalism itself. What Chinese artists are doing is challenging traditional accusations of forgery and imitation by showing that acts of appropriation can say new and profound things about how capitalism operates.
Often we criticize Chinese artists for outright faking other art forms. Recently in the news media, the Chinese art world has been put to task for “faking it.” In China, forgeries of Western Masters are sold on the market. National Public Radio, the Huffington Post, and other news outlets criticized the Chinese forgery market as not very creative. Fraud abounds, but we fail to see that the tension between appropriation and authenticity is very much a theme in art. However, why can’t we see this process as an artistic critique of capitalist consumption? Instead of looking at claims to originality, Chinese art forms are challenging traditional definitions of what constitute art.
In fact, appropriation and art has had a long history. Appropriation is the process by which artist borrow elements from other sources. It is a form of borrowing. In fact, another word for appropriation is borrowing. When artists appropriate elements from other artists and other art objects, it is a delicate dance they perform between critique and stealing. Artists who engage in appropriation set out to borrow elements and to “assimilate them” in their work (Stokes 2012). The end result of appropriation is to say something deeper or different from what the original source intended. Jean-Michel Basquiat, an American artists, appropriated Western motifs and symbols in his art to say something deeper and more profound than his source material. Artists like him, such as Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring, echo the postmodern sentiment that “representation could not be original any more” (Woods 130). Or, sometimes it is a way to say the same thing in a different form. For example, the Romans copied the Greeks, and the Greeks copied the Egyptians. So too, in our modern globalized world we copy each other and in the process we ask “Who Am I?” and thus authenticity and art become intertwined. Authenticity is about being original. But what is originality when what underlies art is essentially imitation. Contemporary Chinese art is no different.
What makes a few Chinese contemporary artists interesting is that they are creating art that reflects on this postmodern concept. To be made in China is an unapologetic statement. Chinese artists seem to make no apologies for the appropriation, the borrowing, and the outright copying that takes place. We often fail to consider that Western influences have shaped modern China. No one really bothers to criticize the West for appropriating Asian culture into its own. Chinese artists are fighting back and claiming that this is an injustice. In fact, the title of this exhibition comes from a photograph by the Taiwanese photographer Liu Bolin — “Made in China.” Bolin captures the banality of consumerism with an image of a display of plastic toys filling a store shelf. How many of these toys are made in China? In what playrooms will these toys eventually go? Where is this photo taken? It could easily be a mall in Beijing or a shopping center in rural Indiana. Commercialism makes everything the same. Bolin captures the color palette the objects emit. The colors are sickening and bright. Looking closely at the image, it becomes apparent to the viewer that the products have subsumed a human figure.
Consumer culture represented by Chinese artists plays on this theme of being invisible and of being implicated in the globalization of consumer products. The consumer stands hidden by the consumer products that are outlined by the dolls, both implicated and excluded. The figure is implicated because she is a consumer. She is not a bystander. However, in her participation in consumer behavior she is also excluded. We can no longer see her clearly. She is what she buys. The toys that fill the shelves and take away individuality cover up the human figure. Bolin appropriates the images of consumerism and creates something original.
In Bolin’s work, the image of the human being is outlined by the toys himself, both a consumer and one consumed by consumerism. Perhaps the image of the consumer is the same as coined by Charles Baudelaire who wrote that the man of the world “wants to know, understand, assess everything that happens on the surface of our spheroid” (130).
However, in aiming to understand, to assess, quickly becomes in modern life a perverse need to consume. Consumerism is irreverent because even artifacts from history are not safe from its branding techniques. Nothing is sacred. In an age where consumerism has become global, artists often speak of the effects of consumer culture around the world. Western sensibilities, which desires art with “Chinese characteristics” becomes conflated and stripped to its essential parts (Pohl 96).
“Made in China” now means the world’s products are mass produced, proliferated, disseminated, and encouraged around “the surface of our spheroid.” Bolin’s work is the central image of this exhibition because it nicely ties all the themes together: of appropriation, of originality and of consumer culture. The “allure of consumerism” has completely undercut national pride and any sense of authenticity (Minglu 25). Minglu talks about how consumerism has stripped China of national pride. In this way, we see consumerism in China not just China’s reproduction of Western popular culture objects, but the way in which consumerism makes hidden Chinese culture by overlaying it with an image of its own making. Who is making who? Made in China is not as literal as one may think.
It is why Ai Wei Wei’s “Neolithic Vase” is included in this exhibition. The exhibition should really be a medium-sized room, with a few forgeries of Western Art on display. In the center of the gallery would rest Wei Wei’s sculpture. The object is a vase that dates from China’s pre-historical roots. Wei Wei stamps the logo of Coca Cola on the vase. In this way, he shows how commercial advertising strips identity away from the places it infiltrates. Everyone drinks Coca Cola. Everyone understands and recognizes the symbol. Coca Cola has become so much a visible force on the global market, that the logo of the beverage company has more meaning than the vase! We see here an example of duplication. If Coca-Cola could stamp their logo on ancient Chinese artifacts — they would. With the rise of mass consumerism emerges the class of people that we can only call the consumers. Cultural artifacts become placeholders for corporate gain. What is next? Will the terracotta soldiers, uncovered by archaeologists, in the Shaanxi province be branded with Coca Cola or Apple? What Wei Wei works shows us is that Western appropriation is even more vicious and relentless than Chinese attempts at imitation. Capitalist gains in China do not just seek to appropriate, but they seek to completely strip away the original lifeblood from the region it exploits. What the Neolithic vase suggests is that nothing is too holy. Anything can be used to benefit the brand.
Brands become stripped of their original meaning. We live in a world where consumers buy products that they often do not know the origins of their production, nor do they understand -- or care to understand -- the modes of production that go into its mass supply and demand. Authenticity has collapsed into blind appropriation -- we sit at the cafeteria feast of infinite supply, not sure how we got there or where we are going. The “slow process of appropriation” is both a transformation of capitalism China’s, and a refiguring of our relationship to consumerism (Said 219). It is in this way that the final image of the exhibition takes it forms.
Ta’Men’s painting “Cafeteria” is different from the other two selections for several reasons. The work is a visual representation of the act of consumerism. The image is violent. It shows the act of consumerism as like going to the cafeteria, choosing what you want to eat and quickly consuming it. The figures in the painting swallow snakes. Snakes come out of one woman’s mouth. A spider-looking creature crawls over the face of one human figure. The setting looks like a traditional place of meeting. We can see the mountains through the windows. What appear to be smudges of black paint on the canvas reveal themselves to be either bugs, or uneaten portions of food. The painting depicts the effects of overeating on the body. The body feels full. It cannot take anymore. In this way, consuming food no longer fulfills a basic human need to alleviate hunger. We eat because it is something we do, not because we do it because we need nutrients. However, in this painting, it seems as if the consumer and the consumed are in a struggle. The consumer is not effortlessly consuming what is on their plate. The snakes appear to fight back. There appears to be blood on the walls. The painting is then a representation of a violent struggle. Finally, Ta’men’s image appropriates Chinese culture. Ta’men’s work is a collaborative effort of two artists. In the painting “Cafeteria,” they use both the Chinese landscape as inspiration, and the cafeteria as a stage to represent the relationship between consumerism and over-indulgence. The pieces of paper that resemble the fortune cookie lie on the table. If we took out the gruesome elements, the painting’s visual elements resemble an image one might find in a Chinese restaurant in North America. Without the grotesque scene of overconsumption, the landscape viewed from the window is peaceful and calm. What does the painting say, then, about our theme? It says that there are consequences to China’s adoption of consumer, capitalist values. It is a struggle between being consumed and being the consumer. What Ta’men’s image leaves us with is the sense that in the capitalist world of unreflective consumption, the game is a survival of the fittest. Ta’men expertly captures this consumerism massacre in vivid imagery.
The goal of this exhibition, then, is to depict consumerism through a Chinese lens. The artists selected to present this theme evoke the themes of appropriation and authenticity in unique ways.
Ai Wei Wei, “Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo”
Ta’Men, “Cafeteria”
Liu Bolin, Made in China
Works Cited
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