Gloriana Riggioni is struck by the conformist but mesmerising pieces at the Hayward Gallery's Art of Change exhibition.
I arrive at the gallery expecting anger and dissent. Described in the press release as "some of the most interesting art to come out of mainland China over the past three decades", I immediately assume Art of Change seeks to capture the shocking, rebellious atmosphere of the Chinese avant-garde of the 80s and 90s. Culminating with the infamous ‘Fuck Off: An Uncooperative Approach’ exhibition- co-curated by Ai Wei Wei and Feng Boyi in November 2000, this atmosphere was characterised by practices which “do not cooperate with the contemporary mainstream trend in China, do not cooperate with the established structure of today’s art world, do not cooperate with the Western standard” according to Boyi.* What I experience at the Hayward, however, is no such retrospective, and it certainly wasn’t uncooperative in the slightest sense.
On the contrary, it seems to wholeheartedly embrace the ‘Western standard’, posing little challenge to the modus operandi of today’s art world. With one or two exceptions, the work exhibited is in fact from the past decade alone. Nonetheless, the careers of the artists involved do extend back to the '80s and '90s, and the same current buzz words span all three decades of their work; namely, the recently much enunciated ‘Performance and Installation art’.
Not a decade ago, Performance and Installation were valued as instruments for dissent and anti-establishment pronouncements, largely unbridled as they were by the institutional facet of the Western art world, and altogether censored by the Chinese political authorities. As art forms per se, however, and if Art of Change is anything to go by, they have now come to function in a perfectly unthreatening way within the changed status quo. A good thing, perhaps? A sign of more cohesive times, more openness and freedom of expression in a world where institutions (both the political in China and those of the Western art world) have somehow matched the stride of the voices of dissent? Or does it merely suggest conformity and a convenient compromise? Whatever the larger implications about the current historical times, one thing there is emphatically no compromise about is the quality of the work.
The art displayed is, as already pointed, inordinately engaging. Whether it be due to the poetic quality, symbolic acumen or humour involved, each of the forty-or-so pieces has a considerable thrill in store. A powerful source of persuasion if ever there was one, as it certainly isn’t often one wanders around an exhibition for a solid three hours with unblinking wide eyes and the unmistakable air of a child in a sweetshop.
Looking around to gauge the reactions of my fellow attendees, I perceive a widespread fascination. Each with a silent performer in slippers and stripy pyjamas firmly in tow, the viewers alternated between grinning, looking shifty and casting surreptitious glances over their shoulder. A surreal army of.- .. was it sleepwalkers? - stand at a strategic point between the first and second rooms, before selecting their victim as he or she walks past unaware. The effect of being constantly observed is inescapable, and the rest of the viewing is spent in acute self awareness; something which undoubtedly heightened the intensity of the experience.This is not to suggest that the allure was all due to a single clever trick; most pieces had a comparable, if not even more acute effect.
Happy Yingmei, for instance, is not so much engaging as utterly transfixing. A siren’s chant beckons from a hole in the wall, just large enough to hunch through. Inside there is no gallery space to speak of, but a forest in golden, crispy-leafed twilight where Yingmei walks and sings her wordless, dreamlike song. It would be easier to think of her as a small bird, as she moves gracefully through the trees and down the path towards you, hands in the pockets of her nightie, serene but intensely fixed on her audience. She moves closer, slowly, gently, until she shares a breath with you, brushes your skin... or until you back away in a panic.
Far from anger and dissent, the ‘change’ embodied by this exhibition seems to have more to do with meditative eastern traditions, and a sense of non interference by changing in tune with the constant ebb and flow of the world; a surprising and radical change of direction, both for an artistic tradition of political dissent and for the use of performance and installation art in China.
Art of Change is at Hayward Gallery until 8th December
*Boyi, 2001. 
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