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M+, Hong Kong, © Zhou Tiehai
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Mediatheque
Zhou Tiehai 周鐵海
WILL/We Must 必須
1997
Shot in the style of a silent film from the early twentieth century, WILL/We Must is a satirical reflection on the state of affairs in the Chinese art world in the late 1990s.The period was marked by internationalisation and the expansion of the market, with Chinese artists participating in exhibitions abroad, and critics, curators, and collectors encountering Chinese contemporary art for the first time. Nine independent scenes comprise the work; each is a small narrative centred on a specific cliché. For example, in the fifth scene, entitled ‘Heartfelt Calls’, an artist calls five curators and recites the same sentence to each: ‘I’ll take part in any exhibition you have’. Other sequences demonstrate stereotypes perpetuated by foreign ‘experts’, such as in the seventh scene , when a visiting diplomat ridicules China for having ‘no art’. The final segment conveys the struggles that accompanied the meteoric rise of many Chinese artists in the 1990s, depicting ten artists on a raft that is unable to move forward or backward.
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