Gu Xiong: China Diary
Diane Farris
Gallery,
Vancouver
Oct 4, 2001 - Oct 27,
2001
 Ice Coffin Store - Mao & Audrey (2001), photograph |
Gu Xiong is a multi-media artist
born in Chongquing, Sichuan in the People's Republic of
China. Under conditions of near-slavery and poverty, Xiong
spent early years as a field worker in the remote
countryside. He later expressed the indelible impressions of
this experience through a number of wood-block prints.
After the Cultural Revolution of 1978, Xiong was able to
complete a B.A. and an M.F.A. in printmaking and begin
teaching. He was exposed to Western art during an exchange
program at Banff, and eventually fled China in 1989. Xiong
has since made his home in Vancouver, where he works as a
technical advisor in University of B.C.'s Department of Fine
Art.
The images in "China Diary" were selected from 45 rolls of
film taken last summer on a trip back to his homeland. Here
Xiong revisited sites of his personal history. In these
photographs it is almost as if he has caught two Chinas: the
occupied China of the Revolution and the one of today. Yet
never are the two fully integrated. A parallel Western
universe of Starbucks and Kodak infiltrates scenes of
traditional Chinese products, stores and landscapes. The
juxtaposition is often incongruous and unsettling, both real
and surreal, much like Gu Xiong's two lives must be.
© Mia Johnson