Curator: Yu Shijie
Red Brick Art Museum<\/strong> (Hezhuang Village, Cuizhuang Township, Chaoyang District, Beijing) November 2, 2019 \u2013 February 16, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legendary British artist Sara Lucas has come to China. A part of the Young British Artists generation, Lucas still maintains the spontaneous drive of that era in her work today. It is said that she has never established a permanent studio, preferring instead to borrow a friend\u2019s studio or temporarily use space in her home to work. This nomadic state underlies the improvisational mode that has kept her work both timely and avant-garde. At first glance the exhibition appears to present a set of improvisations, but it is soon evident that there is a logical thread to their combination. Although seemingly \u201cwillful\u201d and unrelated, works on show featuring thousands of eggs or smashed cars actually present avenues for the artist to transcend determined gender or identity. Like a non-female, one can actively launch, destroy, and change things instead of passively accepting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the artist\u2019s performance for the exhibition opening, women or men in women\u2019s clothing hurled eggs at a wall. Through this on-site performance work, with its shocking ritualistic aesthetic, the audience was also able to notice the perplexed confusion on the face of the female cleaning staff after the performance. The incomprehension in the women\u2019s eyes is precisely the reason why we need to spread increased awareness and understanding of power. Behind these rough and even caustic works by Lucas is actually a disregard for gender identity\u2014especially a disregard of women\u2019s power as defined by male power. Feminism is the mother of all equal rights movements, or put another way, one could ask: Without feminism, what are human rights? Feminism\u2019s ability to awaken the power consciousness among different levels of society is what makes this exhibition an event of special significance in contemporary China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great contemporary art is able to break through the existence of political and cultural symbols and boundaries, and great \u201cfeminist art\u201d should also strive to break through the limitations of gender and identity, while remaining grounded in individual life experience. Only in this way can art truly become a medium and cultural symbol for universal human exchange. Lucas\u2019 ready-made\/impromptu installations are directly related to sexual and gender issues, inevitably bringing \u201cfeminist\u201d discourses to mind when viewing her works. Here, what should grab our attention are not the causes of the so-called \u201cfeminism,\u201d but rather the other avenues of thought that it leads us down. In a certain sense, feminism is the foundation and premise of egalitarianism and postmodern thought; or put another way, it is precisely because of the guiding and demonstrative role of feminist thought that many postmodernist trends of thought have emerged to constitute a re-evaluation and critique of prevalent identity politics and cultural discourses. \u201dFeminism is not the study of women and gender, but the politicization of gender differences.\u201d (Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon<\/em>) It is through the politicized expression of art, or thinking about various social power relations, that the category of \u201ccontemporary art\u201d can be constructed. And the strategies and concerns of contemporary art should also be egalitarian, shared by different classes and races, with artistic forms that are cross-cultural. The aim of feminism is not to erase gender, but to reflect on female identity as defined by (male) power. The improvisational and insolent attitude of Lucas\u2019 work is not a blasphemy against art, but a resistance to an exquisite and elegant feminine art as defined by men. For example, in Lucas\u2019 well-known work \u201cAu Naturel\u201d from 1994, an \u201cimprovised\u201d arrangement of fruit and vegetables on a dilapidated mattress serves to symbolize male and female sexual reproductive organs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, when the feminist strains hidden in contemporary art are gradually being uncovered, we should think more about the position of women\u2019s consciousness in the social power system. In the European context, the rise of women\u2019s consciousness began with the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution; throughout the 19th century, a small number of social elites began to pay attention to issues of women\u2019s rights and interests; but it was only in the 20th century that women achieved the most rights in social life, first being realized in written law and then gradually in daily life. It was in the second half of the 20th century when feminist voices and discourses were realized to a significant extent. In step with the large-scale equal rights movements of European and American societies, as an initial discourse of \u201cpolitical correctness,\u201d feminist practice turned from an antagonistic stance of resistance into a habitual mode of thinking\u2014feminists became more introspective and thoughtful, examining myriad aspects of social life in detail to rethink the \u201cfemale\u201d condition from multiple perspectives. In writings on art, this was reflected in a change from questioning the \u201ccanon\u201d in traditional art historical writing to instead focus on examining the modes and positions of viewing and their public effects. Through overstepping and ridiculing women\u2019s \u201ctaboos\u201d that originate from the male-dominated order, Sara Lucas highlights a new relationship between art and the public, a type of \u201cpost-feminist\u201d perspective that is gradually emerging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to artistic production, artists must show their perspective based on the premise of \u201cuniversal female art.\u201d Sara Lucas\u2019 \u201cimprovisational\u201d creative approach does just this, avoiding a state of \u201cself-othering.\u201d It is not just female artists for whom this applies; any cultural and political power that is not in conformity with so-called mainstream discourse can easily come to be regarded as an \u201cothering\u201d existence. The power of the \u201cother\u201d is actually a kind of reconstruction of self-awareness in a postcolonial context, and the concept of the \u201cfemale\u201d is closely related to this existence. Unlike other feminist theorists, Kristeva believes that the \u201cfemale\u201d cannot be defined. According to her, \u201cfemale\u201d is outside of naming and ideology: it can only be negative and does not compromise with the state of things as they are. This is in essence a view for women\u2019s complete difference and the position of the other. (Li Jun, The Fable of the Home, 1996) Sarah Lucas effectively uses an \u201cimprovisational\u201d method in her work, unleashing it to reject male definitions and differentiated identity, and even to reject the power-driven mechanisms of art collecting. However, under the premise of \u201cuniversal female art\u201d it is difficult for the \u201cother\u201d in any sense to escape the conventions and ideology of globalized contemporary art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Author: Gao Yuan (Ph.D., Critic, Curator … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-43.png\")
One Thousand Eggs: For Women
\u00a9 \u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
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Opening of \u201cSarah Lucas\u201d at Red Brick Art Museum
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-44.png\")
One Thousand Eggs: For Women
\u00a9 \u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
\u7ea2\u7816\u7f8e\u672f\u9986\u201c\u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af\u201d\u5f00\u5e55\u73b0\u573a
Opening of \u201cSarah Lucas\u201d at Red Brick Art Museum
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-45.png\")
Au Naturel
\u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
Sarah Lucas
1994
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Mattress, melons, oranges, cucumber, water bucket
84 x 167.8 x 144.8 cm
\u00a9 \u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
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Courtesy Murderme Collection, London
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-46.png\")
Epitaph BLAH BLAH
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Sarah Lucas
2018
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Car, cigarettes
210 x 450 x 245 cm
\u00a9 \u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
\u7531\u7ebd\u7ea6\u3001\u58a8\u897f\u54e5\u5e93\u91cc\u66fc\u5179\u6258\u753b\u5eca\u53ca\u4f26\u6566\u8d5b\u8fea HQ \u753b\u5eca\u63d0\u4f9b Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City\/New York
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-47.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-48.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-49.png\")
Bucket of Tea B
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Sarah Lucas
1993 \u2013 2013
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Four cut colour photographs on red Perspex, chrome tubing, wire
150 x 290 cm
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\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
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Courtesy the Artist
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hant\/image-50.png\")
VOX POP DORIS
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Sarah Lucas
2018
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Cast concrete, steel
359 x 250 x 250 cm
\u00a9 \u838e\u62c9\u00b7\u5362\u5361\u65af
\u00a9 Sarah Lucas
\u7531\u4f26\u6566\u8d5b\u8fea HQ \u753b\u5eca\u63d0\u4f9b
Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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Image Courtesy of Red Brick Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"