Stories of a Changing China
August 30–November 29, 2013 ★ Sun Valley Center for the Arts
Visual Arts The Center’s visual arts exhibition features work by Chinese artists responding to the rapid social and economic change in their country. The Luo Brothers, Ren Sihong and Suo Tan all make work addressing the rise of consumerism. The Luo Brothers’ wry sculptures and collages use China’s tradition of socialist-realist propaganda to comment on the invasion of Western brands into China’s market. Ren Sihong and Suo Tan each create sculptures that probe the commodification of Chairman Mao. Chen Qiulin has created a body of films and photographs based on elaborate performances that consider the speed with which China’s past is being erased by 21st-century development. YunFei Ji tackles this same issue in Three Gorges Dam Migration, a scroll that uses traditional Chinese landscape painting techniques to address the social and environmental impact of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Hai Bo’s photographs consider how the lives of those who lived through China’s Cultural Revolution have (and have not) changed in the intervening decades. Xu Bing, who has long been interested in languages as systems, creates work that explores the collision of East and West through an invented English-language, character-based calligraphy. Ying Zhu is creating a sitespecific installation for the exhibition in The Center’s Project Room.
Currently based in Lincoln, Nebraska, Zhu travels back and forth between the United States and China, where she visits family in a city along the Yellow River. Her installation, China Grey, Grey China, addresses her own experience of China as a place in transition, at once familiar yet foreign. She writes, “It is like living in a fog, everything under a gentle haze.” The exhibition also includes work by Western artists reflecting on contemporary China. Rachel Davis has twice spent extended periods of time in China. Her experiences inspired a series of watercolor paintings that are meditations on the collision between China’s cultural history and the rapid rate of development there today. Bovey Lee, born and raised in Hong Kong and now based in the United States, uses the Chinese tradition of paper cutting (jianzhi) to comment on the human relationship to the natural environment. Of her Briefcase Vacations, she writes that they are “about us turning nature into big business for recreation….China is doing quite a bit of it, turning remote villages into golf courses and resorts.” Saya Moriyasu has made a series of ceramic Fu Dogs based on the traditional dog sculptures that guard Buddhist temples in China and Japan. Moriyasu’s Fu Dogs link several ideas: the influence of Chinoiserie on Western ceramics, U.S.-China trade, mass production and the notion that symbols with deep cultural meaning sometimes devolve into knickknacks.
Opening Celebration Fri, Aug 30, 5–7pm Free at The Center, Ketchum
Join us for the August 30 Gallery Walk as we celebrate the opening of Stories of a Changing China. Artist Ying Zhu will be present and will speak about her installation project at 6pm.
Gallery Walks
Fri, Oct 11 and Fri, Nov 29, 5–7pm Free at The Center, Ketchum Start your Gallery Walk at The Center!
Art History Lecture Jeff Kelley: Half-life of a Dream
Wed, Sep 18, 6:30pm Free at The Center, Ketchum Jeff Kelley has written extensively about contemporary Chinese art and has also curated numerous solo and group exhibitions about art in China today for the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His talk will examine the haunted and iconoclastic works of Chinese artists from the New Wave of the late 1980s to the market boom of the mid-2000s. Kelley will also speak at the September 16 screening of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a film by Allison Klayman about the infamous artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whom Kelley has known since 1987. To better sketch out a context for the film, Kelley will offer a brief history of the artist’s recent works. With support from Robert Lehman Foundation.
Sun Valley Center Symposium for the Curious: China Today One tuition fee to include all programs listed in gray box $130 / $240 nonmembers All classes are also offered ‘a la carte’ The Center’s multidisciplinary model is designed to engage our community of curious learners through art and ideas. In the spirit of that commitment we offer what we hope will be the first of many symposiums organized around current events and ideas. Join us over the course of six weeks to see films, hear lectures and participate in book discussions and seminar classes that explore the social, artistic and economic realities of 21st-century China. For those who are ready to dig in to all of it, we offer a single, discounted pricing option that will allow you entrance into all of the programs listed in gray box.
TEEN WORKSHOP
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry with a post-film conversation with art critic Jeff Kelley Mon, Sep 16, 7pm Liberty Theatre, Hailey $10/$12 nonmember
Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous artist and its most outspoken domestic critic. Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. This documentary follows Ai as Chinese authorities shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldoze his newly built studio and hold him in secret detention. Jeff Kelley, art critic and Consulting Curator of Contemporary Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—and friend of Ai’s—will speak afterward. With support from Robert Lehman Foundation.
Mastering the Art of Cut Paper with Danica Robrahn
Beijing Flickers
Sat, Nov 2, 10am–4pm The Center, Hailey $10 pre-registration required
Thu, Nov 7, 7pm Liberty Theatre, Hailey $10/$12 nonmember
Inspired by Bovey Lee’s cut paper sculptures, young artists will explore the traditional process of paper cutting, or jianzhi. Students will walk away with one-of-a-kind creations.
Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yuan skillfully sets his worn-down characters against the dazzling lights of China’s teeming capital. San Bao is a young man left behind by Beijing’s fabulous new wealth, having just lost his job, his apartment and the woman he loves (who’s left him for a richer man). Even Happiness, his dog, has run away from him. Lovelorn, self-destructive and desperately aimless, San Bao nevertheless has moments of euphoria amid his own despair, as he roams the sleek, shifting city with other soulful, misfits. Note from The Center: This movie is for an adult audience. It is a dark look at those left behind in the new China. It is a difficult, but fascinating view of Beijing today.
FAMILY DAY Paper Lanterns
Sat, Nov 9, 3–5pm Free at The Center, Ketchum Families will have the opportunity to tour the exhibition with Center staff at 3pm and 4pm. Once families have toured the gallery, they will then create traditional paper lanterns.
Evening Exhibition Tours Thu, Sep 5, Thu, Oct 24 and Thu, Nov 21, 5:30pm Free at The Center, Ketchum
Discussion & Classes
Enjoy a glass of wine as you tour the exhibition with The Center’s curators and gallery guides. Favor de llamar al Centro de las Artes para arreglar visitas guiadas en español.
Book Discussion Series: Lost and Found in Translation with Kim Frank Kirk
Images top to bottom, left to right:
Images top to bottom, left to right:
Chen Qiulin, Garden No. 1, 2007, digital photograph, collection of Max Protetch;
Yun-Fei Ji, The Three Gorges Dam Migration (detail), 2009, hand-printed watercolor wood-
Rachel Davis, Parallel Universe, 2012, watercolor on paper, courtesy the artist and Traywick
block mounted on paper and silk, ed. 20 artist proofs, courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New
Contemporary, Berkeley;
York & Shanghai;
Xu Bing, Quotation from Chairman Mao (detail), 2002, ink on paper, collection of Driek & Michael
Suo Tan, Fashion and Mao, ed. 3/8, ceramic, courtesy Robischon Gallery, Denver;
Zirinsky.
Saya Moriyasu, Fu Dog No.39, 2010, ceramic glaze, acrylic paint and wallpaper, collection of Driek & Michael Zirinsky, photo courtesy the artist and G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle; Hai Bo, I Am Chairman Mao’s Red Guard, 2000, c-print, collection of Max Protetch.
Lectures
FILM SCREENINGS
Weds, Oct 16–30, 5:30–7pm $50/$100 nonmembers Wed, Oct 16, The Liberty Theatre, Hailey Weds, Oct 23 & 30, The Center, Ketchum Registration deadline: Wed, Oct 2 Join writer, teacher and Chinese literature enthusiast Kim Frank
Kirk in exploring the brilliant and entertaining works of Tony Awardwinning playwright David Henry Hwang, Nobel Laureate Mo Yan and rediscovered, celebrated prewar author Eileen Chang.
A Tale of Two Firms with Wharton School Professor Marshall Meyer Sat, Sep 21, 11am–12:30pm Tue, Sep 24, 7–8:30pm $25 for A Tale of Two Firms/$40 with Is it Capitalism? $40/$75 nonmember The Center, Ketchum Registration deadline, Fri, Sep 6
In these seminar classes we expore the leadership and strategies of two Chinese firms, one a firm steeped in Chinese culture that has become a world-famous brand, the other perhaps the most Western of large Chinese firms that was also the first Chinese firm to achieve global dominance in its industry even though its brand remains unknown beyond industry insiders. A key issue is how US and EU firms can compete with these Chinese powerhouses. (A reading list is available for this class.)
Is it Capitalism? with Wharton School Professor Marshall Meyer Sat, Oct 26, 11am–12:30pm Tue, Oct 29, 7–8:30pm $25 for Is it Capitalism?/$40 with A Tale of Two Firms $40/$75 nonmember The Center, Ketchum Registration deadline: Fri, Oct 11
In these seminar classes we discuss different versions of Chinese capitalism—centrally managed capitalism where the Chinese government retains control over the largest Chinese enterprises, regional decentralized authoritarianism where local governments compete for revenues and economic growth, and bottomup capitalism where small and medium-sized enterprises flourish as government influence recedes. None of these models seems to be working especially well at this point. The question is what’s next for China and how the reverberations and spillovers will affect us. (A reading list is available for this class.)
Orville Schell Thu, Oct 10, 6:30pm Church of the Big Wood, Ketchum $20/$30 nonmembers
Internationally respected author and journalist Orville Schell is widely recognized as an expert on China and Tibet, having written ten books on the subject. His newest book, China’s Long March to Wealth and Power, profiles 11 prominent figures asking, “How did ‘the sick man of Asia‘ end up as the most dynamic economic force in the world today?” Schell is the Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S. China Relations (NYC) and is a regular contributor on China for PBS, NBC and CBS. He also served as the Dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. This lecture has been generously sponsored by Jeanne Meyers & Richard Carr, with support from Marcia & Don Liebich.
David Henry Hwang
Thu, Oct 17, 6:30pm Church of the Big Wood, Ketchum $20/$30 nonmembers This Chinese-American playwright, described by The New York Times as “a true original” and by Time magazine as “the first important dramatist of American public life since Arthur Miller,” has turned issues around ethnicity and identity into an award-winning career. Hwang is best known as author of M. Butterfly and Ch’inglish, a hit comedy about an American businessman in China, which was named best American play by Time in 2011. For M. Butterfly Hwang was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and was awarded a Tony. Hwang is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale University School of Drama. This lecture has been generously sponsored by Katherine A. Abelson & Robert J. Cornell, and Jeri Wolfson, with support from Gail & Rhys Wilkie.
208.726.9491 www.sunvalleycenter.org