Moving with the times

A state-of-the-art exhibition space at Songzhuang, where a huge number of displaced artists are headed. Photos by Chitralekha Basu

The bulldozers are moving in on a number of artists' villages in Beijing, causing dismay and loss. Chitralekha Basu reports

Australian installation artist Denise Keele Bedford was given notice to vacate her studio in Beijing's Huang Hua, near the Suojiacun artists' village, on Dec 15. She took the news with equanimity, having been through a far more harrowing experience in 2005, when she was rudely jolted out of sleep on a November morning by police, who asked the 126 artists living in Beijing International Art Camp at Suojiacun to move out.

This time, at least, she had two months' notice to shift base.

In December 2009 a huge number of artists living and working in Beijing's Chaoyang district were told to step aside in favor of a government project of humongous scales. After the artists of 008 Art Zone and Zhengyang Creative Art Zone lost their studio spaces and were left out in the cold in what has turned out to be Beijing's harshest winter in 40 years, hundreds of others working in 13 other art zones realized that the threat of demolition is probably a real one.

"The sense of trauma is less this time round, as the order to move was both expected and unexpected," says Bedford, whose huge installation works, often mounted across expansive walls, emanate a quiet beatitude.

Japanese artist Satoshi Iwama is less forgiving. His studio, which doubled as his residence, in Zhengyang Creative Art Zone, was vandalized in the last week of December, following a notice about a month before to move out. First the water supply was cut off, then the power.

Iwama moved his wife and two young kids to a sympathetic friend's house, but was not sure how to move the large installation pieces, featuring bamboo, water harp, bricks and fiber-glass, to an alternative space. He is angry that the builder to whom he paid rent for six months never told him the building would be pulled down soon afterwards to make way for a government project.

For one whose art is concerned largely with preserving harmony and ecological balance on planet earth, being abused, cheated and driven out of his creative space is an irony that perhaps doubly reinforces itself. One of the reasons he moved base from Tokyo to Beijing was because he wanted to view global concerns from "the perspective of the resident of a continent, of which China is at the center" rather than that of one living "in an island".

Still stunned by the impact of the realtors' mafia descending on his studio, Satoshi cannot visualize yet where he is going to land up when his studio is razed completely to the ground. But he is certain it's not going to be too far away from Beijing in the next five years. "This demolition has increased social contact between the artists," he says, grateful at the renewed bonding, thinking perhaps the situation will inspire his art sometime in the near future.

Lin Chunyan, who immigrated to Australia in 1989 and took a degree in visual arts in Sydney, then became an Australian national, has returned after 17 years.

"My friends were here, my roots were here," says Lin, whose paintings of leaping figures sprouting flowers or fruits in the place of heads have been exhibited widely across China, Australia and the United States. "Besides, this was a way better place to sell one's work," says the painter, now based in Songzhuang.

He keeps an open house, where guests, fellow artists, potential buyers and curious onlookers can walk in to watch him at work. There's obviously more to gain than lose from such "intrusions" and one of the reasons why one would want to live in an artists' commune.

Maartje Blans, an installation artist from the Netherlands who lived in Xiedaoxi until she was recently asked to pack up and leave because of the impending demolition, is not so keen on making her artistic practices public. She admits, however, that the touristy interest in an artist's life, or artists' villages, is sometimes necessary.

"I think it's important to have an area where people can stop by to watch artists at work, and also other spaces where the artist can work in peace and quiet, without intrusion," she says.

The notice to move base could not have come at a more crucial time for Blans, who was totally immersed in the making of an installation piece using transparent materials embellished with color and thread to be shown at the Shanghai Expo in May. She has temporarily found asylum at a friend's studio at Huantie, but is not too sure how long that place will remain unaffected.

But the loss of personal or creative space is not strong enough to make her want to leave Beijing altogether.

"This is an interesting cultural hub through which I can get to other places, Shanghai, for example. It also helps me get an Oriental perspective on things."

Japanese photographer Inri came to China following in the footsteps of her Chinese beau, the photo and video installation artist Rong Rong. They moved to Caochangdi in 2004, a chic and expansive artists' hub, dotted with futuristic buildings designed by the maverick artist Ai Weiwei - a quieter, more reserved and elegant cousin of the bustling 798 art district about 1 km away. Three Shadows, arguably Beijing's most lavishly-equipped center for the practice of photography and video installation, was built in 2007.

If Three Shadows - its spectacular structures, hi-tech galleries and incredibly huge collection of archival material - also has to make way for the bulldozers of development, would Inri consider going back to Tokyo?

"A creative artist's life goes on," she says. "Everything we do here, including connecting to people across the globe, is part of our creative process. Physical displacement will make a breach in the chain of work we do, but surely won't have a lasting effect on our lives or work."

Sun Li contributed to the story