Rising Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography

Since it’s early development in Mesopotamia in 3200 BCE, the system of writing has helped us evolve and thrive as a species. Similar to language, we use writing to communicate to one another ideas, messages, and feelings through a visual medley of characters such as symbols, letters, and numbers. The two oldest writing systems are noted to be from the Sumerian and Chinese cultures (Daniels, p.83). There is no question that millions of ancient stories and memories from the past have been transcribed, but not necessarily documented on paper by many Chinese generations. The Chinese people have shared a common culture longer than any other group on Earth (Zisman). Recently, the San Jose Museum of Art compiled an exhibition that explores the drastic changes in China’s social and political landscapes over the past twelve years. Appropriately titling the exhibit, Rising Dragon (inspired by the Chinese Culture’s Year of the Dragon) these changes in China are documented and interpreted by artists through contemporary Chinese photography. 

Traditionally in Chinese culture, the dragon symbolizes good luck, power, and strength. Although Western culture associates the dragon with having aggressive and war-like qualities, the Chinese people compare the dragon to people who are outstanding and accomplish high achievements. Rising Dragon is a clever name for this exhibition in many ways: for one, the years that the exhibition explores are between 2000 and 2012; both of the years that bookend this period are the Year of the Dragon. Secondly, dragons are closely related to China and their culture, both historically and popularly. The dragon, typically illustrated to appear serpent-like and beastly, is given a more majestic and soft bird-like feeling when paired with the word rising. The word selections for the title are quite strong and clever as well; the choice to have the word Rising paired with the word Dragon instills the feeling that an obstacle has been overcome. 

The period between the Dragon years of 2000 and 2012 for China was an exciting yet devastating time. On the brink of the new millennium, China was largely an agriculturally based economy and soon quickly shifted to the world’s industrial mecca with its continual expansions and increases in industrial outputs. Like any culture losing it’s traditional and classic identity, many of China’s citizens struggle to hold on to traditional ways of life in the face of such swift modernization. 

When you enter the exhibit, the complete title, Rising Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography, is painted on a white wall to the right in brick-red paint. Next to the painted red text is a photograph of a face painted in white. It appears to be a man, or could possibly be a woman with short raven-black hair. Painted on top of the white paint that covers this face are cherry blossoms with nuts and rolling hills all around-- a complete landscape of what one can assume China’s natural landscape looks like. Upon entering (directly to the right) the viewer is greeted with a floor to ceiling map of China, accompanied by an introduction prologue. So many stereotypical conventions and symbols are immediately introduced to a guest entering this exhibit: the choice of colors for the exhibit title is red, an Asian face (man or woman) is painted white, and cherry blossoms are the iconic tree painted on the white facial canvas. All of these factors set the tone of a traditional Chinese setting. It was very smart to include a large scale map of China so that anyone who enters the photography exhibit can locate where, globally, the inspiration and ideas derive from.

Continuing further into the room, the visitor is inclined to walk through the giant room counterclockwise. Up on the walls hang photographs of contemporary art. Some photographs appear to have more bright colors than dull, some boast more pop-culture elements than historic, and some are more political in contrast to nature. What was very clear was that each artist was depicting some sort of message, each individually thought out and executed, yet all bound together through the central theme of traditional  ideals versus modernization. A photograph that catches the eye was an enormous photograph of a man and a mule. It was set dead center directly across the room from the entrance. The picture was massive, the composition symmetrical, and the most brilliant hue of pink dominated. This photograph dealt with the political issues of going through the process of a transnational marriage and all of the barriers that stand in the way, making it seem impossible to achieve. 

Upon further viewing of the exhibit, the visitor approaches a 47” x 47” photograph by the artist, Qui Zhijie. The photograph, titled Depth in the Reality Shadow is part of Zhijie’s Light Writing series created in 2005. The image was created in a color coupler print, and looks to be a visual of a building from the outside, in unsaturated colors. In front of the building are four Chinese symbols, seeming to be written in some type of light colored marker. In the artist’s excerpt you read that this piece is actually a performance art piece with Chinese calligraphy, captured in a photograph. Qui Zhijie, using a flashlight instead of a brush, wrote Chinese characters in reverse in the night air. He captured this light-writing with a digital camera, and then digitally super imposed that image onto another photograph. The Chinese script directly translates to “reality deep place”. In the artist’s excerpt about the piece, Qui states that his inspiration came from “Chán monks painting plum blossoms in the air... Some monks spent their whole lives (doing this) but did not leave a single brush mark on a piece of paper”. Every aspect of this piece was beautiful and incredibly brilliant in harmony. The fact that the artist could capture performance art onto a photograph in addition to the element of the historical script of Chinese calligraphy marries the past to the present, in adjacent to all of the other pieces in the exhibit. The inspiration of the monks Qui got was almost holy, and gives the viewer a sense of inner peace, achieved with the capture of this movement through light, with digital camera techniques, still never touching ink to paper. Qui Zhijie presents a complex, yet sound solution to the objective of presenting a bridge between the past and present of contemporary Chinese culture.  

Works Cited

Daniels, Peter. "The Symbolic origin of writing and the segmental origin of the alphabet." Trans. Array The Linguistics of Literacy. Pamela A. Downing, Susan D. Lima and Michael Noonan. The Netherlands: John Benjamin's Publishing Company, 1992. 83. Print.

Zisman, Alan. "Chinese Cultural Studies:Concise Political History of China." Compton's Living Encyclopedia. 1995. <http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinhist.html>.