In our current world a pandemic has changed the way we live our daily lives. The way we interact with people has already changed drastically, but in reality we were ready for the challenges regarding communication. Technology has become very advanced and in light of this global pandemic, communicating with one another through a computer screen is the safest option. The digital world is one with endless possibilities. The theme of this exhibition falls perfectly into our current situation as it revolves around the digital world. The inspiration of this exhibition is Chinese Artist Feng Mengbo.
Feng Mengbo is an artist’s whose work provides a good example of how art coming from Chinese artist after 1990 and since has been influenced by the political happenings of the time. This exhibition will simply be a virtual presentation of works with voice recordings providing further information. In an effort to demonstrate how Feng Mengbo’s art style and content was very different than traditional work of the time, and also how historical events affected art differently, we must look at what would be considered a traditional piece of Chinese art work from a bit before Feng Mengbo’s artistic blow up.
If we look at a work from 1978 titled Scar Art, done by li Xinhua, and compare it to Feng Mengbo’s Long March: Restart, done in 2008, many differenes can be seen. Below is Scar art,
This piece was done on gouache on paper. The piece tells a sad story of the Cultural Revolution, as you can see the portrayal of the same soldier on the left is very sad and defeated on the right side of the painting. The artwork showed the actual emotion and tragedy that the people going through had to endure. The picture below is now an installation from one of Feng Mengbos pieces,
As seen, this is a very different piece. Mengbo made digital pieces of work and created video games. This one in specific uses Red Army soldiers as characters in the game. So, in comparison to Scar Art, this piece is less emotional and only uses the events from the Cultural Revolution to give a viewer a different but also historical experience.
Sources:
Professor Lullo’s Voicethread presentation. https://voicethread.com/myvoice/thread/14412178/89311123/82174989
Mengbo, Feng. “Feng Mengbo. Long March: Restart. 2008: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art. Accessed May 15, 2020. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/122872.
