Outsider art is flourishing at FengGuo Box, a monthly creative market held in Beijing's Zhongguancun district. EEO intern journalist Michael Martin reports.
Passing a stall at the FengGuo Box Exhibit, Bai Li picks up a crocheted, yarn-adorned pillow and scrutinizes it with intrigue. She suddenly realizes that it is a pair of breasts. Her confusion turns to shock, and then gives way laughter. "I like this," she says, "because it shows that the female body is beautiful and interesting enough to be art."
At the Zhongguancun Plaza Shopping Mall in Beijing, what first seems like another flea market is actually a forum for everyday people to turn expression into enterprise. The result is both a representation of the diverse issues and experiences that shape Beijing's youth culture, and the cultivation of an art community devoted its own personality in the face an often risk-averse industry.
Founder Wang Sanshi, himself an oil painter, started FengGuo Box in January 2007 to help fellow struggling artists overcome financial barriers to sharing their work. Explaining his inspiration for the program, he said, "The pressure of just surviving makes it very difficult for [artists] to pursue their creativity."
Wang charges artists a 200 yuan-per-month service charge and 20% commission on sales to feature their creations at monthly exhibits and in the unadorned crate boxes at his showroom in Zhongguancun, the fashion and IT shopping district surrounding Peking University. He looks for three traits when assessing submissions: originality, small-scale production (nothing factory-made), and clearly distinguishable artistic intent.
The response was overwhelming. After less than a year in business, FengGuo Box has attracted almost 200 amateur artists and designers, all unified by a common spirit: "This is a group that hasn't succumbed to life's pressures- a group of idealists," Wang Sanshi said, "We feel that the term 'free spirit' best describes [the FengGuo Box] artist."
Portrait of a FengGuo Box Artist
Self-avowed eccentric and non-conformist Wang Xun fills her FengGuo Box with China's present and past.
Reminiscent of Shanghai Tang's mod qipao, Wang designs a series of Chinese-style purses that juxtapose contemporary, fresh color palettes with traditional Chinese patterns and themes. One tote bag, neon orange with red trim, features the Chinese “double-happiness character” and a tassel that she found at Panjiayuan, Beijing's antique bazaar. Claiming that the purse mirrors her world view, she says, "My personality is a mixture of Chinese style and young, modern weirdness. I combine the two in my art, and it's fun."
Proudly sporting her homemade black corduroy jacket with qipao collar that is as much punk rock as it is Qing-dynasty fashion, Wang shows off her designs like one would a political advocacy button. "I hope to show people that tradition is something that grows with us," she said, "It isn't just something dead and in the past." Wang, who was raised in a hutong, or residential sidestreet in one of Beijing's traditional districts, has long cherished Panjiayuan as a favorite hangout. By combining contemporary and traditional design, she hopes to turn old-fashioned Chinese aesthetics into a continuing narrative, and breath life into Panjiayuan's dusty curios.
Unlike Wang's purses, Lou Yingying's knitted, breast-shaped pillows are an intentional departure from sociopolitical messages and other heavy motifs. Lou laughs at the thought that her black busts are sometimes interpreted as a social statement-- "Though I do find the female form beautiful, these objects are not about proving anything about sex," she said.
Rather, bored by the unfeeling paperwork and statistics of her day- job as a SIM card company data processor, she uses the piece to escape the daily grind and create something "fun and light-hearted."
Albeit more symbolic, Wang's designs have also tapped the power of the human body to shock others. She has created a series of gray cloth human busts filled with blood-red hearts and intestines. Exposing her physical innards, Wang claims that the models illustrate her "inner-certainty and ambivalence."
Noting that their design is often too "weird" and personal to be accepted by a mainstream audience, Wang and Lou claim that FengGuo Box is the only kind of forum that will feature their work.
Defying Expectations and Industry Norms
Wang's refusal to compromise her iconoclastic design work for a reliable paycheck has resulted in her dismissal from several jobs. She will soon quit yet another, this most recent one as a jewelry designer. "I am very stubborn, and often won't listen to my boss when they tell me to make changes... so I change jobs a lot." Standing by her knitted breasts, Lou shows a similar determination to preserve the intent of her art. She says that large companies-- like art galleries-- often have their own signature style, and she claims that she would never change to appease an employer. "My art would lose its meaning if I conformed to other people's ideas," she said, "Maybe my designs will mature with age, but they will never change." FengGuo Box' three simple qualifications for potential artists and designers allows Wang and Lou the space to preserve their ideas and intent, however outlandish.
Like Wang Xun's models of internal organs, FengGuo Box artist couple Luo Ji and Li Chunmei make figurines of characters A Ji and A Mu, mummies that hide their faults behind bandages and embody different aspects of self-inhibition. The couple once featured A Ji and A Mu at an exhibit in 798, Beijing's posh factory-turned-art district, but they were not well-received by what they describe as an exclusive art community there. "It is an art circle. Real people can't get in," Li said. Luo commented further on what he saw as a financial barrier: "Most of the artists there are rich people who make so-called art." From a poor family in Hunan, Luo says that he must struggle more than others to publicize his brand in the art and design industry.
The couple is not only inhibited by industry standards, but also by Beijing safety code regulations. Li Chunmei spoke of her boyfriend Luo's failed attempt to start his own store, "He wanted to put a moving truck bed in the store so that he could feature his art in it, but the city wouldn't let him."
While the economic prosperity of 798 artists remains to be determined, the tight-knit artist's circle that shunned Li and Luo is evident in the qualifications that galleries use when selecting artists. Perrine Pautré, manager of the Paris Beijing Photo Gallery in 798, substantiated some of Lou's claims, saying that her gallery has its own distinctive style. "If the work doesn't please us," she said, "Then we don't feature it." She says that, while the photographers are free to choose their own subjects, they only feature photos in a series, unified by a defining message. Though Lou operates in a different medium, her intentionally meaningless knitted breasts would fall outside most galleries' selection rubrics.
When asked whether the artists at 798 studio Gallery Mook are famous before being featured, manager Li Le first said, "All of them are," then paused and said, "Most of them are," and admitted that the gallery accepts very few industry newcomers. Established art galleries like those at 798 illustrate the catch-22 inherent in gaining gallery backing, which is necessary for artists to express themselves in the first place—in effect, one must already be well-known to be known at all.
Thriving in a Comfortable Space
In contrast to the art that can be found at the 798 galleries, Li and Luo say theirs made by and for everyday people. "One of our friends told us that their foreign friend bought a traditional Chinese qipao at 798 without any unique features for an unbelievably high price," Li said, adding that 798 art and design often caters to a moneyed, foreign audience. She said that A Ji and A Mu are meant for "everyday people," and that FengGuo Box is an ideal forum for achieving Luo's dream of widening his audience. She attributed this to the fact that FengGuo Box creations are featured in a mall, where she says a more diverse audience can interact with and enjoy the work of the artists. Luo added that the FengGuo Box showroom and events cultivate a certain air conducive to marketing such work, "I feature my art at FengGuo Box, because everyone there is young and vibrant."
Bai believes that FengGuo Box' colorful expression of diverse personal themes is the program's most striking characteristic. Enumerating the themes that she has encountered at the festivals, she said that FengGuo Box is about, "Love, life, sex, society, orientation, and violence."
But beyond merely conveying a social theme, FengGuo Box is also about its artists doing as they please.
Despite not featuring any industry big names, spectators are pouring into Zhongguancun Shopping Mall to see Beijing's youth culture reveal itself. "We are coming together to create what we like in life," Wang Sanshi said, observing the bustling interaction between artists and customers at the November festival, "That's FengGuo Box's most meaningful aspect."
