从钓鱼岛到泥石流，纽约艺术展讲述中国故事

Pop Art portraits of Mao Zedong and installations of Qing dynasty furniture have long represented the Chinese art world in New York and other cultural centers in the United States.

在纽约及美国的其他文化中心，毛泽东的波普艺术肖像和清代家具装置一直是中国艺术界的代表。

But the Guggenheim Museum intends to broaden the artistic experience with its “Tales of Our Time,” opening on Friday, Nov. 4. Featuring eight newly commissioned projects by artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as from China, this exhibition will present fresh approaches to contemporary art from the region, highlighting alternative narratives that depart sharply from news accounts and official histories.

但是，古根海姆博物馆(Guggenheim Museum)决定用《故事新编》(Tales of Our Time)来拓宽这种艺术体验。该展览将于11月4日(周五)开幕，包括来自香港、台湾和中国的艺术家受委托全新创作了八件作品，它将以新鲜的方式探索该地区的当代艺术，强调与新闻报道和官方历史迥然不同的其他讲述方式。

“Our exhibition is not trying to tell people what is right or wrong, but maybe one way we can think about it is, how can we diversify people’s thinking about Chinese art?” said Xiaoyu Weng, an associate curator. Ms. Weng and Hou Hanru, consulting curator, organized the exhibition under the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative, a $10 million grant devoted to researching and commissioning works for the permanent collection.

“我们的展览不是想告诉人们什么是对，什么是错，不过我们也许可以从这个角度来思考它：我们怎么能让人们对中国艺术的看法多样化?”副策展人翁笑雨说。翁和策展顾问侯瀚如共同组织了这场展览，它是何鸿毅家族基金中国艺术计划(Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative)的一部分。该计划拨款1000万美元，用于研究和委约创作永久收藏。

The initiative’s first iteration, “Wang Jianwei: Time Temple,” which opened in 2014, focused on a single artist of an older generation, whose experimental works have been highly influential in China, while “Tales of Our Time” brings together a diverse group of younger artists to offer a broader view of the next wave in Chinese contemporary art.

该计划的第一场展览《汪建伟：时间寺》(Wang Jianwei: Time Temple)于2014年开幕，它关注的是老一辈单个艺术家——汪的实验作品在中国很有影响力——而《故事新编》则汇聚了一个多样化的年轻艺术家群体，以更广泛的视角展现中国当代艺术的下一个浪潮。

From the catastrophic mudslide in Shenzhen to the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu Islands (which the Japanese call the Senkaku) in the South China Sea, the exhibition touches on topics pulled straight from the headlines, but interpreted by artists who are storytellers more than they are documentarians. Employing media from ink painting to animatronics, they conceive of China more as a concept than as an identity, eschewing easy associations and symbols. This is fitting for a show that takes inspiration from the 1936 modernist classic “Old Tales Retold,” by Lu Xun, who appropriated folklore to critique the social conditions of his time. Likewise, the artists in “Tales of Our Time” examine conditions in contemporary China through approaches that often blur the distinction between fact and fiction.

从深圳的灾难性泥石流到中日对东海钓鱼岛(日本称为尖阁诸岛[Senkaku])的争议——这场展览涉及各种登上新闻头条的话题，不过是由艺术家们阐述，他们更多的是故事讲述者，而非记录者。他们采用水墨画和电子动画等媒介，把中国更多地视为一个概念，而非一种身份，避免简单的联系和象征。这很适合这场以鲁迅1936年现代主义经典作品《故事新编》为灵感的展览。鲁迅借用民间传说批评自己所处时代的社会现实。同样地，《故事新编》展览的艺术家们也通过往往模糊现实和虚构界线的手法审视当代中国的现状。

“Art has its own particular narrative, which is not just about illustrating a given fact,” Mr. Hou said. “It is about imagination and a kind of independence.”

“艺术有自己独特的讲述方法，不只是描绘已知的事实，” 侯瀚如说。“它是关于想像和一种独立精神。”

Mr. Hou, artistic director at Maxxi, the National Museum of the 21st-Century Arts, in Rome, joined Ms. Weng on studio visits in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou, starting in October 2015. In the end, they chose five individual artists, Zhou Tao, Chia-En Jao, Kan Xuan, Sun Xun and Tsang Kin-Wah; the team Sun Yuan & Peng Yu; and the three-member Yangjiang Group, most of whom will be making their American debuts.

侯瀚如是罗马的21世纪国家艺术博物馆Maxxi的艺术总监。从2015年10月起，他和翁笑雨一起拜访北京、上海、广州、南京和杭州的艺术工作室。最后，他们选了五位独立艺术家：周滔、饶加恩、阚萱、孙逊和曾建华，以及孙原、彭禹组合和三名成员构成的阳江组。他们大多是首次在美国展出自己的作品。

Sun Xun, a 36-year-old Beijing artist who has already shown in New York at the Sean Kelly Gallery, prepared several mural-size scrolls onto which his hand-drawn animations will be projected, offering a surrealistic look at his hometown, Fuxin, a coal-mining capital in northeast China that has fallen into decline. The Yangjiang Group — Zheng Guogu, 46; Chen Zaiyan, 45; and Sun Qinglin, 44 — is creating an interactive tea garden for the circular gallery overlooking Central Park, with a blood pressure station for visitors to measure the calming effect the installation has on their senses.

36岁的北京艺术家孙逊曾在纽约的肖恩凯利画廊(Sean Kelly Gallery)展出过作品。他准备了几幅壁画大小的画轴，把自己手绘的动画投影到巨大的画轴上，以超现实的视角展示自己的故乡——中国东北部衰落的煤都阜新。阳江组包括46岁的郑国谷、45岁的陈在炎和44岁的孙庆麟。他们正在为这个能俯瞰中央公园的环形展厅构建一个互动性茶会花园，还设了一个血压站，观众可以测量这个装置作品对他们感官所起到的镇静作用。

For the Taipei artist Mr. Jao, 40, the exhibition was a chance to complete a video, “Taxi,” that he has been contemplating for several years. For this work, he surreptitiously recorded conversations with taxi drivers en route to politically charged sites around the city. From a group of 60, he chose to concentrate on five who specifically spoke of the history of their destinations from personal experience. “Through this project, I get to view not brainwashing, but how things imprint on our memory,” Mr. Jao said in a telephone interview.

对40岁的台北艺术家饶加恩来说，这场展览给他提供了一个契机，使他完成了构思了七年的录像装置作品《计程车》。为完成这个作品，他去了台北多个有政治意味的场所，在路上偷偷录下他与出租车司机的谈话。从60位出租车司机的谈话中，他选取了5位作为素材，这几位从自己的亲身经历出发，具体谈论了他们所要去的目的地的历史。“通过这个项目，我触及的不是给人洗脑的观点，而是呈现事物如何在我们的记忆中留下痕迹，”饶加恩在接受电话采访时说。

Ms. Kan, 44, another artist from Beijing and one of two women in the exhibition, also completed a long-term project, based on extensive travels throughout China to 110 ruins of ancient cities. Her multimedia installation “Ku Lue Er” plays videos on 11 screens compiled from the thousands of images she shot on her mobile phone during her journey. Mr. Hou and Ms. Weng recall their visit to her studio as one of their favorites; in contrast to the luscious images they were seeing, Ms. Kan’s cramped apartment, which served as her studio, was in a rundown building, unlike the vast spaces that many successful Chinese artists inhabit. They reviewed work and listened for more than five hours as her ideas poured forth.

44岁的阚萱也来自北京，是这次参展的两位女艺术家之一。她也因这次展览而完成了一个长期项目——她在中国各地进行大量旅行、探访了110个古城遗址。她的多媒体装置《圐圙儿》在11台显示器上播放视频，它们是由她在旅途中用手机拍摄的数千张照片编辑而成。据侯瀚如和翁笑雨回忆，去阚萱工作室的过程是他们最喜欢的一次探访;与他们看到的赏心悦目的照片形成对比的是，阚萱住在一栋破楼里的小公寓，这里兼作她的工作室，不像一些成功的中国艺术家，住在很大的地方。他们评估她的作品，听她讲了五个多小时的创作理念。

“Often, we see artists today working in a situation that is much more glamorous, but this was one of the most memorable meetings,” Mr. Hou said.

“一般，我们看到现在的艺术家在一种光鲜得多的环境下工作，但那是我们最难忘的会面之一，”侯瀚如说。

The artists who tested the limits of the Guggenheim as an institution are the team of Sun Yuan, 42, and Ms. Peng, 44 (the other female artist), who in the past have made installations using human body fat, live animals and corpses. At the Guggenheim, they will present a shovel-wielding machine scooping up a bloodlike liquid as it seeps across the floor. “When we first heard, we thought it was pretty cool, we thought it was pretty awesome, but we did not know how it was going to get realized,” Ms. Weng said, noting that the museum had concerns about safety and potential damage.

42岁的孙原和44岁的彭禹(另一位参展女艺术家)则挑战了古根海姆作为一个艺术机构的底线。过去，他们曾用人体脂肪、活体动物和尸体创作过装置作品。在古根海姆，他们将展示一台挥舞铲子的机器，将地面流淌的一种看起来像血液的液体铲起。“一开始听说的时候，我们觉得非常酷，觉得它很棒，但我们不知道它会如何实现，”翁笑雨说。她表示博物馆担心安全问题，怕造成什么损坏。

For this generation of artists, Chinese identity is a completely different experience from what it was for the previous generation, which suffered through the isolation and repression of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976.

对这一代艺术家而言，中国身份是一种与上一代艺术家完全不同的体验，后者经历了1966年至1976年的文化大革命的隔绝与压抑。

Many of these artists studied abroad, and most work internationally. Mr. Jao earned a master of fine arts from Goldsmiths in London, for example, and Ms. Kan divides her time between Beijing and Amsterdam. “These artists concentrate on individual identities, rather than Chinese identity, but all build on quite Chinese topics,” Mr. Hou said. “It’s really about what happens at this moment in Chinese society that provokes debates, which on the one hand is a globally important question, and on the other, really a very individual interpretation.”

这代艺术家有不少曾在海外留学，大多在世界各地工作。比如，饶加恩在伦敦戈德史密斯大学(Goldsmiths)获得了艺术硕士学位，阚萱在北京和阿姆斯特丹两地生活。“这些艺术家关注个体身份，而不是中国身份，不过他们的作品都是围绕非常中国的主题，”侯瀚如说道。“它实际上是关于此刻中国社会在发生什么引发争论的事，它既是具有全球重要性的问题，同时又是一种非常个人化的阐释。”

In such an exhibition, China is no longer an exotic territory or a national identity, but a cultural construct framed as much by current social conditions as by 5,000 years of history. “On the one hand, I don’t want people to get intimidated if they don’t know anything about Chinese art, but, also, I don’t want people to think they are experts and come looking to match their preconceived knowledge,” Ms. Weng said. “I want people to think about geopolitics, I want people to think about contested landscapes, I want people to enter the exhibitions and think about concepts and ideas, not a set of identities.”

在这样一个展览中，中国不再是一个有异国特色的地方，也不是一种民族身份，而是一个当前的社会状况与5000年历史各占一半的文化构建。“一方面，我不希望人们因为觉得自己一点也不了解中国艺术而退缩，同时也不希望他们觉得自己在这方面是专家，拿自己事先形成的知识来进行匹配，”翁笑雨说。“我希望人们考虑考虑地缘政治学，想想存有争议的场景，希望人们走进展厅考虑种种的观念和想法，而不是一套身份。”