The inland Sichuanese municipality of Chongqing is hosting China’s first biennial dedicated to photography and video. The Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art launched the Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale on 26 April in southwest China’s biggest city, with a population of around 30 million. The event is due to close on 26 July.
The biennial is organised by China’s Wang Qingsong, Spain’s Alejandro Castellote and France’s François Hebel, and is showing more than 200 works, by around 100 artists from China and abroad. The central them is Real/Unreal, examining the verisimilitude or otherwise of photography and video in documenting the past and capturing the present. There are also prizes for artists, with awards ranging from Rmb10,000 ($1,600) to Rmb150,000 ($24,000), and a teacher-and-student show, displaying the work of two teachers and two students from each of China’s top-ten art academies.
Avant-garde to mainstream
The show explores the recent democratisation of photography and video art. “In this digital era, photography and video is something that everyone can participate in,” says a spokesman for the museum.
China already has several renowned photography festivals, most notably in Pingyao, Shanxi province, and last year saw the debut of its first dedicated fair Photo Shanghai. Long a chosen medium by the avant-garde, Chinese video art has recently garnered increasing mainstream recognition.
Chongqing meanwhile is on its way to becoming one of China’s second-tier art centres. Changjiang is the Mandarin name of the Yangtze River, and the museum is situated on its convergence with the Jialing River, near the Chongqing Grand Theatre and other new cultural developments. The museum was established in August 2012, and with its 22,000 sq. m construction area claims to be the largest private contemporary art museum in south-west China.
