Washing ● Newspaper ● Clothing
Wang Youshen
王友身
Production date
1991-2006
Object Detail
Media
silkscreen on fabric, photographs
Measurements
3 panels, each 191.5 x 131 cm
Notes
Washing ● Newspaper ● Clothing (1991–2006) encompasses all the material and conceptual elements of Wang Youshen’s practice. He says, ‘For the last thirty years, my work has provided me with artistic possibilities, so my everyday work became part of my artistic work. In fact, I really enjoy this kind of blurring of boundaries, which enables me to drift in between the different systems…’ Produced over fifteen years, the triptych includes a Mao suit (the most commonly worn clothing at the time) made from cotton screen-printed with newspaper pages, a photograph documenting his performance, and a ‘washed’ photograph. The suit of clothes on its hanger looks as if it might have been worn in an early ‘90s music video, its stiff fabric printed with pages from the Beijing Youth Daily of January 17 and 22, 1991. Wang deliberately selected stories and images that reflected both national and international news. The black and white photographs of faces come from a story about the National Youth Science and Technology Award; other sections are from a special guide to the First Gulf War.
The second part of the triptych is a photograph depicting a person wearing the newspaper suit, reclining on a bed covered in newspaper fabric, reading the newspaper – a ‘meta’ commentary on news consumption. The photograph documents a performance that Wang Youshen carried out at a time when he felt a degree of conflict about his complicity in the news creation business: he put on his newspaper suit, went out into the street and bought a newspaper, then took it home to read. The Chinese term for performance art is xinwei yishu or ‘behaviour art’; Wang was interested in how our engagement with news media becomes habitual – a repetitive daily behaviour. The final element in Wang’s triptych is the ‘washed’ photograph, produced in 2006. The light-sensitive emulsion on the surface of the photographic paper is scratched and damaged by long immersion in a tank of moving water, and the image has partially vanished. Wang Youshen positions his practice in a paradoxical in-betweenness: aware of the problematic role of the press in an authoritarian state, uneasy about his own complicity, yet also aware of the freedoms and opportunities it affords him, he has produced works of great subtlety and complexity: he reflects on time and process, materiality and meaning, the ephemeral and the eternal.
The second part of the triptych is a photograph depicting a person wearing the newspaper suit, reclining on a bed covered in newspaper fabric, reading the newspaper – a ‘meta’ commentary on news consumption. The photograph documents a performance that Wang Youshen carried out at a time when he felt a degree of conflict about his complicity in the news creation business: he put on his newspaper suit, went out into the street and bought a newspaper, then took it home to read. The Chinese term for performance art is xinwei yishu or ‘behaviour art’; Wang was interested in how our engagement with news media becomes habitual – a repetitive daily behaviour. The final element in Wang’s triptych is the ‘washed’ photograph, produced in 2006. The light-sensitive emulsion on the surface of the photographic paper is scratched and damaged by long immersion in a tank of moving water, and the image has partially vanished. Wang Youshen positions his practice in a paradoxical in-betweenness: aware of the problematic role of the press in an authoritarian state, uneasy about his own complicity, yet also aware of the freedoms and opportunities it affords him, he has produced works of great subtlety and complexity: he reflects on time and process, materiality and meaning, the ephemeral and the eternal.
Accession number
2014.052