The Beijing Olympics, The Carrot And The Stick

by Nicole

The Daily Mantra has very mixed feelings about the Beijing Olympic Games. One the one hand, we of course want to support the Tibetan people, and register our displeasure at the atrocious human rights record of the Chinese Government (and are aware that right now, sadly, America is not in a position to cast the first stone in that department). On the other hand, this is a sporting event that should transcend politics in order to celebrate international cooperation and human achievement at its finest.

The Olympic torch's troubled trip around the globe perhaps highlights that fact that the world's trouble spots are the very places that can benefit most from the global spotlight that follows such sporting events. Certainly, we very much hope that the current overwhelming international condemnation of China, that the torch is serving as a catalyst for, will at least result in some benefit for those oppressed by the communist state.

The issue is not an easy one. We certainly can't let China off the hook, simply so everyone can have a jolly good time at the games. Nor do we want to back China into the kind of corner where their only face-saving response will be harsher repression and greater isolation. It is therefore a question of balance, and of the delicate application of both the carrot and the stick.

The need for a little of the ying along with the yang when approaching the issue of China came into focus for me on a recent visit to New York's Guggenheim Museum, which is hosting a major retrospective on the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese artist who has been bestowed with the prestigious job of creating a fireworks spectacular for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Cai Guo-Qiang, an artist who works in video, and on paper and canvas with gunpowder, has had an interesting relationship with his motherland. Both Cai and China have suffered at each other's hand, but ultimately, in choosing to persevere with their relationship, despite its difficulties, everyone has benefited.

Cai was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, China. His father, who was also an artist, ran a bookstore favored by the party elite. With access to a little privilege, he was able to slip his son the odd forbidden book, such as the iconic Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot. Cai moved to Tokyo to study in 1986, and, after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, remained in self-imposed exile in Japan until 1995, when he moved to New York.

In 1999 he attracted the wrath of the Chinese government thanks to his ironic recreation of a famous Maoist work of art, the Rent Collection Courtyard, which celebrates the "People's Revolution" by reminding the viewer of the cruelty of the pre-revolution overlords. A copyright lawsuit ensued, but was subsequently dropped. The artwork also earned Cai the Golden Lion Award at the 48th Venice Biennale for which it was created.

Moving to the West and creating the artistic equivalent of a red flag to China's bull aren't the best ways to court favor with the Communist Party there. But Cai's international fame and success proved to be an irresistible carrot, and he was invited back to China and honored with a solo show at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2002. The show was the first solo exhibition for a contemporary artist in China, and created new opportunities for the nation's growing stable of modern artists.

Of course Cai could have chosen to stay away. To punish China with a personal boycott. But that is not in his nature, or true to his work, which he sees in social terms as a means to break down boundaries and unite people. Such themes are intrinsic to his work. For example, an ancient fishing boat resurrected from the sea, which is filled with shards of the white porcelain it might once have been used to transport, is always installed with the help of the Japanese villagers who originally helped Cai raise it from its watery grave (a team traveled from Japan to New York for the Guggenheim show).

In another conceptual piece yet to be physically realized entitled Project for Extraterrestrials No.6, Cai hopes to gain the cooperation of the Chinese and Japanese governments in order to set off a series of gunpowder footprints that will stomp across the border between the two giant superpowers.

Cai's choice of gunpowder as his primary medium is a nod to the Maoist principle that things must be destroyed before being reformatted or rebuilt in order to wipe the slate clean. So while China's current regime may be in need of such treatment, let Cai's Olympic art speak for itself as it explodes above Beijing. And give China some credit for allowing Cai’s revolutionary voice to burst forth, for that is the carrot that goes with the stick.

| 04/11/08 | Commentary