Yan Pei Ming and Adel Abdessemed
A letter from Hou Hanru to Hans Ulrich Obrist
Dear HUO,
I’d like to return to the reflections on Paul Chan’s work that you sent me two issues back. I’m keen to exchange views with you on the position of individual artists from non-European backgrounds in the intensive debate on the new European identity today. Yan Pei Ming and Adel Abdessemed are two perfect examples of this negotiation familiar to both you and me.
I just curated an exhibition of their recent works in the Mala Galerija, of the Moderna Galerija (Museum of Modern Art), Ljubljana, Slovenia. This debate is definitely crucial in the context, since Slovenia, an ex-Yugoslavian republic, is one of the newest members of the European Union, and represents an opening up to a totally new perspective on the making of Europe today. The incredibly active art scene of this tiny country is gaining a wonderful reputation in the global art world today, with artists such as Irwin, Marko Peljhan, Marjetica Portc, and Tadej Pogacar; curators like Zdenka Badovinac and the late Igor Zabel; musicians like Laibach, and the writer Slavoj Zizec.
I hope this modest project Each from his own side, the same destiny with Yan Pei Ming and Adel Abdessemed can inspire a more intense exchange with this dynamic scene. The following text is based on my essay for the exhibition catalogue.
‘Struggle’ central to creative activities
Yan Pei Ming and Adel Abdessemed are two very different artists who share a great deal in common.
Yan Pei Ming was born in 1960 in Shanghai, China, and moved to France in 1981 when Adel Abdessemed was only ten years old, living in Algeria where he was born. Abdessemed managed to settle in France in 1995, by which time Yan Pei Ming was already a star of the French painting scene. In the last few years Abdessemed has attracted growing public attention, while Yan Pei Ming continues to occupy a key position in the French art world.
Ming (as he is known to both the art world and popular press) has been focusing his extraordinary energy and imagination on producing large-scale, monochrome paintings, mostly portraits. His works are the vivid results of passionate, dynamic and powerful gestures of ‘attacks’. Growing up in the transition from the Cultural Revolution to the first period of China’s opening and reform, namely from the early 1960s to early 1980s, and having built up his artistic career in France over the last two decades, Ming has experienced radical, drastic changes that few can imagine. This complex and complicated experience is not only about his own life, but also represents the very common destiny of a whole generation that has not only survived the theatrical mutation of contemporary global geopolitics, especially since the end of the Cold War, but has also contributed significantly to the reshaping of the globalization process.
Struggle, both physical and spiritual, is always central to Ming’s creative activities. His paintings are literally actions rather than frozen structures of color and form. They are in constant agitation, with large, fast strokes conquering the moving ground. However, they are by no means simple expressionist, extravagant and self-indulgent manifestations. Rather, they are consistently highly ‘economic’ and efficient – black and white, and occasionally red and white, are the only colors he employs to create a universe beyond the ‘reality’ of real colors. He constructs his own realm of existence, navigating between memory and humanist concerns. Naturally, with his own particular history, iconic images of historic figures that have exerted a profound influence on him and his contemporaries, such as Mao Zedong, the Pope, etc. are regularly depicted in his paintings. These are not only images that have marked his memory of public spaces dominated by the propaganda of Maoism and other ideologies; they are also key elements of his intimate and personal memory and imagination. This is why Mao’s portraits are often produced and presented alongside images of Ming’s own father, his friends and other, imaginary figures.
However, Ming’s portrait paintings are far from any kind of celebration or worship of these personalities. On the contrary, they are provocative, critical and even subversive. The personalities are always presented in uncertain settings with ‘morally problematic’ titles, such as naming his own father ‘the most respectful man’ and ‘the most hateful man’. In addition, they are often politically incorrect: a series of public debates on the morality of public presentations of the portraits of certain criminals and politicians were launched in France due to Ming’s paintings presented in the exhibition Force de l’Art, an event organised by the government. This provocation not only subverts the convention of artistic representation, but more importantly, it challenges the common sense of values in public languages and established social psychological structures, namely the very relationship between freedom of imagination, representation and social conventions that are systematically conservative.
Cries from a loving heart
Ming’s work is without doubt politically engaging. And this engagement is clearly shared by Adel, as we like to call him among friends, a younger artist who utilizes very different languages and conceptual strategies to achieve a comparable spirit of struggle and provocation.
Questioning the system of the spectacle of art and the power system that it represents is an essential motivation for Adel’s engagement with art. Behind it, he probes the bio-political power of social norms and taboos. His language, resorting to a wide range of media from drawing, video, photography, and performance to installation, is always radically minimalist and straightforward. The contents however are always sensitive and powerful. This power comes from the very radical and audacious mobilization and surprising combinations of forms, motives and situations derived from his trans-cultural experience.
This is invariably related to a belief in revolution, both social and individual. And intimately, as one can understand by reading this young and talented artist’s life trajectory: an immigrant to France from Algeria in the mid-1990s, during the rude internal conflicts of that country, he now has to confront a totally new but no less rude reality in the West where racism and other ideological presumptions towards the other are omnipresent while late-capitalist power and political corruption, often in the form of soft-fascism, are totally unquestioned. This confrontation has led him to a profound revolt against the system.
In his work, Adel has developed a strategy that combines intensive and enduring negotiation and momentary ruptures with the established system. Staging his often subversive performances that transgress social taboos pertaining to religious, moral and cultural codes inside the established system, he intelligently utilises the system, ironically and critically, to make his claims visible and audible, and to provoke public discussion. Works like Talk Is Cheap, a looping image of a few seconds of a foot stepping on a microphone in the street, or The Birth of Love that shows a close-up of a cat eating a small rat in public gaze, are surprising, uncannily ironic and even violent. The images are shot in a cool, distant manner that makes the acts even more cruelly true and impressive, so much so that one cannot leave them without feeling greatly disturbed and uneasy.
They are cries from a deeply loving heart faced with a cruel reality that unfolds conflict, oppression and violence in the most indifferent manner.
Each from his own side, the same destiny
In turn, in Ming’s work, one can sense exactly the same ecstasy-like feeling of love and pain. As a father, he has become intimately involved with the destiny of children, especially those languishing in poverty and marginalization. Unfortunately they are the most ignored, and their numbers are increasing rapidly around the world due to natural disasters, economic gentrification and wars. He has produced numerous portraits of poor children in South Africa, La Réunion, Saint Denis, etc and presented them in the most respected and sublime public venues including the Pantheon in Paris. His latest series Pirate’s Flags, first shown in the 2nd Sevilla Biennial, consists of a hundred flags with black and white watercolor images that reproduce the suffering faces of children from areas such as Sudan and Lebanon embroiled in wars, or those who are victims of human insanities…next to them are images of a skull and a US dollar bill. Exposed in the fashion of festival celebration, they become a most powerful but aching reminder of our awareness and conscience. Like facing Adel’s work, one cannot turn away from them without feeling an indescribable pain and uneasiness.
Ming and Adel are very different artists, and of course, very different personalities. However, the common experiences of being immigrants from non-Western backgrounds surviving a global reality largely dominated by West-centric interests, and the same engagement with artistic and creative actions aiming to improve human consciousness have led them to share the same destiny. And this is a destiny that we should all learn to share and commit to, thanks to the art work they offer us.
All the best
HHR
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Originally printed in ART iT No.14 Winter/Spring 2007