New normal's many dimensions

An ongoing exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is putting a renewed focus on its future. Lin Qi reports.

The fate of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is unclear as it is not known who will take it over from Belgian founder and collector Guy Ullens.

One of Beijing's landmark museums, the center has received more than 4 million visitors since its opening in 2007, becoming "a catalyst for contemporary culture in China".

An official statement in June said that because of age, Ullens who is in his 80s, is looking for a new owner.

Since then, the art circles have been worrying about UCCA's future.

Now, an ongoing exhibition at the institution reinforces its will to stay in the 798 art district where it has been located for a decade.

The New Normal: China, Art, and 2017 shows the creations of some 23 artists from home and abroad.

A bulk of the Chinese artists were born in the decade after the country adopted reform and opening-up.

The exhibition, which runs until July 9, is being supported by more than 30 sponsors, including Shanghai's West Bund Group and Linyao Kiki Liu, director of Beijing's Sishang Art Museum.

The exhibition shows how artists respond to today's world in which universal values, such as freedom and openness, are being challenged, or even replaced.

Philip Tinari, director of UCCA and the exhibition's chief curator, says every featured artist has a distinctive perspective on the current global situation, and the bulk of the artworks are being shown for the first time.

Beijing-based Liang Ban, 32, often uses daily-use objects to portray historic and political events and personal experiences as art.

His works range from paintings and videos to installations.

His work, titled A Poet Who Never Saw the Ocean Wrote a Novel about the Ocean, dwells on the refugee crisis that has swept Europe since 2015.

In the work, seven microphones are suspended in air in a passage-like space. When visitors walk below them, they can hear the sound of waves.

The audio recordings were made by Liang's friends in Europe. They went to beaches in Greece, Italy, Spain and on the Balkan Peninsula that once witnessed attempts by potential refugees to enter Europe.

Liang says that although the waves have washed away the traces of refugee landings, the sounds of the waves give people an "indelible" feeling of the incidents.

Li Qi, 33, who divides time between Beijing and Chengdu, probes the anxiety of factory workers in Dongguan, a city in southern Guangdong province, that is seeing a decline in its manufacturing sector.

During his recent travels to Dongguan, Li found a company that had laid off most of its workers, and managers who had organized the remaining workers to plant vegetables as a way to alleviate stress.

So, Li produced a video called Jungle to show the workers farming.

Thus, he touched on the dilemma of the workers, who migrate from the countryside for a better-paid job than farming, and how they have to do farm work again.

Tinari says the world is undergoing many changes which is causing tension.

"I feel people can return to art and find a way with which they will better understand reality," he says.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

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The New Normal: China, Art, and 2017 at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art displays works by artists from home and abroad. Photos Provided By Ucca