The Chinese Saga of Olympic Shame Continues.....Zhang Jianhua's
sculptures of coal miners ruffle Chinese censors

International Herald Tribune
Zhang Jianhua's sculptures of coal miners ruffle Chinese censors
By Howard W. French
Friday, July 13, 2007

http://img.iht.com/images/2007/07/13/13profile550.jpg
Chinese sculptor Zhang Jianhua's figures hit close to home. (Chang W.
Lee for The New York Times)

BEIJING: It is not easy to forget an encounter with Zhang Jianhua's
sculptures of Chinese coal miners; that is, if one is lucky enough to
see them.

Many of the life-size works depict miners sitting on the ground in their
black rubber boots wearing looks of sheer fatigue. Some stare blankly
into the distance or prop up their heads with both hands, their faces
fixed in nameless agony.

Yet, easily overlooked at first are the most haunting sculptures of all.
At the edge of the out-of-the-way Beijing lot in a newly created art
zone that is frequented by foreigners - but few Chinese - lie six
figures shrouded in green blankets. Silently, they symbolize the largely
anonymous victims of China's rolling mine-worker catastrophe.

Although Zhang, 35, has an impeccable background as a student of the
Central Academy of Fine Arts and has received critical praise for years,
no Chinese museum or established gallery has been willing to display his
coal miner work in its entirety, as he insists they must.

When an exhibit was organized in April at 798 Art Space, one of the
premier forums for contemporary artists in Beijing, censors demanded
that he leave the six dead workers out of the show.

Officially, 4,794 coal miners died in work-related accidents in China
last year - more than 13 every day, on average, though many believe the
official figures understate the real toll. But Zhang's temerity in
representing the victims has won his work what might be called a soft ban.

"Each year, countless coal accidents take place," he said. "The media
puts the death toll at six to seven thousand, but I know the numbers
don't stop there. There are between 20 and 30 thousand deaths a year,
but those who die at many illegal mines are not counted, and these
deaths are not allowed to be reported."

These days, a great deal of contemporary Chinese art veers into
abstraction, or clever visual punning, often riffing on the
revolutionary past or on the new prosperity that many have found. But
Zhang's route to prominence has been more old-fashioned. He embraces
realism and uses it in a time-honored tradition as a prod to the Chinese
social conscience, which he finds lacking.

The artist's first taste of successful shock realism came with another
series of sculptures four years ago in which he depicted the lives of
peasants from his native Henan Province. The 12 figures in that series
included an elderly woman sitting alone, threadbare migrant workers and
rural schoolteachers.

The work drew critical praise when it was introduced at a gallery in
Beijing. But when the show began touring other venues in the capital
that year, displayed on the grounds of two middle-class housing
developments and at China Agricultural University, it drew strong
protests, with residents and students attacking it as vulgar, striking
the artist and knocking over some of the figures.

The university exhibition had to be canceled after only two hours.

"These were beggars," said one commentator in a school newspaper. "It's
sick." Another complained that "rural areas have progress, too, why not
show that?"

Zhang's answer is that China these days is consumed with what he calls a
"bubble reality." Euphemism and sentimentality have deep roots in
Chinese art, but on top of this has come a kind of idealizing
self-censorship reinforced by the state propaganda system and further
fueled by years of strong growth.

In China today, news reports are typically full of problems being
solved. The radio airwaves are full of odes to perfect love, and art
galleries are full of pretty pictures.

"Very few works speak to social problems," Zhang said. "Chinese
contemporary art doesn't make people understand. It has lost its
function and its very important social, avant-garde and revolutionary
features.

"Today's artists now create neither pain nor itch, and they don't remain
in people's memories. Many of them are scared."

Zhang's choice of topics is not the only thing that sets him apart from
many contemporaries. He said that to prepare for his miner series, he
made numerous trips to the coal country in Shanxi and Henan provinces,
living with miners for weeks at a time, soaking up their hard-knocks
culture while simultaneously observing the lives of the illegal mine
owners, with their flashy, sudden wealth.

The artist grew particularly animated as he described the scenes of
lavish weddings organized for the daughters of coal mine owners in
Datong, one of China's most famous mining towns, of motorcades of
stretched Cadillacs and Hummers and Mercedes-Benzes, festively honking
their horns. "This is the kind of ostentation they want," he said. "Yet
underneath the wheels are piles of white bones and pools of fresh blood."

Although he is a habitué of the capital, in many ways, Zhang's reporting
on coal miners was a return to his roots. He was born in a small village
in Henan Province to simple parents who worked in agriculture. As a boy
he cut hay to supplement the family income, and he ran away to Beijing
after high school to escape his parents' pressures on him to conform.

Zhang's pursuit of art grew out of praise from a boyhood teacher for his
calligraphy. He took small jobs, paying his way through art school, and
eventually his parents came to understand that his developing love of
painting was a way to assure his future.

An early source of rebelliousness was his resentment of the domineering
village chief, who he said constantly bullied the weak and forced people
to flatter him. "I've been very sensitive since childhood," he said. "I
don't know why, but because of my sensitivity, I did things that other
people ignored."

For his next project, clearly another effort at unveiling a ubiquitous
but officially invisible social problem, Zhang said he planned to
portray the country's large numbers of prostitutes. "Not the prostitutes
of the rich, but the ordinary, working-class prostitutes, who live in
very difficult conditions."

Was there pleasure in such provocation?

"I am not just trying to criticize my country for the sake of it," Zhang
replied. "I want my country to be better. I want it to be more
democratic. I want it to have even better development."

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