Back to the future for China pavilion

The title of this year’s China pavilion is Other Future, which might initially be read as yet another strident proclamation of China’s increasingly dominant role in shaping the future of global affairs. Yet there is nothing futuristic about the works included in the exhibition, which offers instead a surprisingly socially engaged chronicle of China’s folk art traditions, agrarian communities and the fragility of cultural memory. While the conjunction of folk art and China immediately calls to mind the sort of things that one might find in a Beijing souvenir shop, the curatorial team from the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation has succeeded in pulling off a very polished display of videos and installations by a refreshingly interdisciplinary range of artists. Upon entering, the viewer is greeted by Wu Wenguang’s ‘China Village Documentary Project’ (2005), a ground-breaking work filmed by villagers taught to use DV cameras, that offers a rare glimpse of everyday life under the democratic village self-governance system introduced in the post-reform period. A little further in, one encounters another seminal piece, the experimental choreographer Wen Hui’s ‘Dance with Farm Workers’ (2001), performed by 30 hired manual labourers who had moved from the countryside to the capital in search of work. The main atrium is occupied by the internationally celebrated composer Tan Dun’s video installation, set to a powerful score, which focuses on the enigmatic Nu Shu tradition—a dying language used solely by women in his native Hunan province. At the very far end, one finds the most putatively ‘futuristic’ work in the display—the young artist Lu Yang’s unapologetically kitsch cyber-folk video mash-ups of Tibetan Buddhist deities blazing through a gaming universe, which adds a welcome touch of levity to the meditative and often sobering presentation of documentary-based work preceding it. Installed in the gardens outside is a visually arresting structure by the architect Liu Jiakun that could be said to perform a social function—offering the weary Biennale visitor a pleasant place to rest after trundling through the full length of the Arsenale—even if it is the least interesting piece in what is otherwise an inspired and cohesive exhibition. Rather than presenting a glowing vision of the ‘Chinese Dream’ for all the world to see, the curators of this year’s pavilion have boldly put the spotlight on the localised experiences of Chinese social reality, its fading traditions and conflicted memories, and, more importantly, done so without resorting to stereotypical tropes of ‘Chineseness’, nostalgia or pessimism. This is an objective, yet evocative, take on China’s past and present that is hopefully a sign of even better things to come.