National Anthem 1
Shu Yong
舒勇
Production date
2009
Object Detail
Media
photograph
Measurements
90 x 160 cm
Notes
Between 2007 and 2009, Shu began to organise collective performances of large groups of people singing the Chinese national anthem. Utilising the colour red, another element of Shu’s symbology, he explores ideas of nationalism, powerful emotion and ritual. China and Chinese culture is his ‘laboratory’, says Shu Yong. Singing the National Anthem in Red Uniform features hundreds of participants wearing red robes or revolutionary-era army uniforms gathered to sing in unison, ‘Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves / With our flesh and blood, let us build our new Great Wall’, directly confronting the tensions between collectivism and individualism in contemporary China, in a context where many are increasingly nostalgic for ‘red times’. Recorded in the photographs National Anthem 1 and 2 (2009) these events reveal inescapable elements of authoritarianism, populism, and of the triumph of emotion over reason. We think of the photographs of Leni Riefenstahl, or of the staged mass patriotic rituals seen in North Korea.
Accession number
2014.081