O Zhang: New World Order
O Zhang Horizon (Sky) 2009 Installation view / photo Henri Robideau
The intersection of Georgia and Thurlow in downtown Vancouver got a whole lot more interesting this summer with the launch of Offsite, a new outdoor art venue co-organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, the city of Vancouver’s public art program and the Shangri-La Hotel. Exhibitions curated by the gallery will change every six months and even promise, according to the gallery’s press release, to be “provocative.”
First up for Offsite is a three-part installation by New York–based Chinese artist O Zhang. The exhibition’s centrepiece is Horizon (Sky), a large-scale reprisal of a 2004 series of portraits Zhang took of young girls from the same isolated, rural village region in China where she grew up. At a glance, there’s a certain ragtag innocence to these gazes and it’s striking to know that many of Zhang’s child subjects had never seen a camera before. But as one reviewer has noted, the work carries a subtle social and political punch that confronts the plight of young girls in a China still resonating with the consequences of a past one-child policy and ongoing gender biases. Critical contrasts arise in the work's Vancouver exhibition context as well—rural isolation versus the bustling flow of modern urban living and the opposition of Zhang's billboard-sized images in an ad-rich city environment offer points for further reflection. As Zhang writes in her artist statement, the series presents a “future challenge towards the established power.”
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O Zhang Horizon (Sky) 2009 Detail |
The gallery has made significant efforts to represent artists from the Pacific Rim in its programming with past exhibitions featuring Chinese artists Zhang Huan, Huang Yong Ping and Wang Du. It’s a strategy that makes good sense considering the city’s large and uniquely diverse Asian demographic. Zhang’s audio work The Same Day, The Same City taps into this 21st-century cross-cultural urban dynamic. Installed along a bamboo-walled staircase just off a busy sidewalk, the work imports sounds from downtown Guanzhou (Vancouver’s sister city) broadcast in real time via outdoor public-address speakers—ones not unlike those used in China to announce official government messages. In a similar vein of cultural dissemination, Zhang has also installed a set of eight large cylinders that serve as poster displays for another photo series, The World is Yours (But Also Ours). These images depict Chinese adolescents, each wearing Western-styled T-shirts with mistranslated slogans drawn from advertising and popular media, with the teens standing in front of notable Chinese monuments and attractions. Photographed amidst the hype of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it’s once again a veiled image of innocence and a pointed criticism by Zhang of the embedded ironies and real-life limitations of a new world order. Not a bad thing to keep in mind as Vancouver prepares for its own Olympic moment this winter. (1128 W Georgia St, Vancouver BC)
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O Zhang Horizon (Sky) 2009 Detail |
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