ARTS | Biennale works reflect Mio’s struggle under Cultural Revolution

The Macau exhibition will be set up in an old building facing the Biennale’s Theme Pavilion

A set of 30 artworks created by Macau-based contemporary painter Mio Pang Fei have been selected and arranged at the Macao Museum of Art (MAM). They will soon be ready to be transported to Italy and debuted at the 56th Venice Art Biennale in May.
These exhibits will make up the core of the Macau Pavilion exhibition at the  Biennale. Together they will show the painter’s journey to explore a modern Chinese aesthetic that he calls “Neo-Orientalism,” while also representing his adventures in the study of Western art throughout the special 1960s–70s era in China.
The exhibition will take up two floors and a yard. The first thing people will see upon entering is a Post-Calligraphy installation right next to the entrance. It is a set of wooden slips that showcases Han Dynasty-style calligraphy.
“The calligraphy has no intent but to simply present a traditional art form to the Western audience and let them to see if its beauty resonates,” the artist explained. “I’ve always tried to predict the future of Chinese painting. Throughout thousands of years of evolution in Chinese arts, of course some problems in our heritage have accumulated. But we can’t see those problems until we take an outside perspective,” he told the Times. “So I took a Western approach to showcase our Oriental art,” he added.
In order to pursue such a path, Mio said he committed to years of intense studying, thinking, exploring and experimenting under the harsh conditions that were implemented during the Mao-ideology-dominated “Cultural Revolution.”
“The Cultural Revolution is a very important period to me. It’s not only the misery, but [the fact] that I persisted along the path,” he stressed.
“When we tried to paint and study those Western genres, we were constantly frightened that the neighbors would find out, or that our home would be searched,” he said, recalling a denunciation campaign (known as “pidou”) targeting him, which is still fresh in his memory.
“But without oppression, the things I learnt wouldn’t carve a deep impression in my memory. Step by step, it took me many years to develop [an understanding of] contemporary art history from the books. That impression is much deeper than [the one] today’s students can get when flipping through the book pages,” the 79-year-old painter added.
Accordingly, the exhibition – titled “Path and Adventure” – inevitably emphasizes a collaborative memory of that special era. Through three curated series of works, visitors will see several pieces that Mio secretly created during the 1960s, some Water Margin Series paintings that he created after moving to the liberal territory of Macau, and a documentary that more deeply explains his path to the Neo-Orientalist style.
At the MAM last Thursday, Mio Pang Fei revealed another wooden installation to the media. Titled “The Special Era,” it features a number of items from Chinese daily life in the 1960s, such as food stamps and Mao jackets.
“We put it in the yard, so that right after people enter through the door, they will have a clue that [the exhibition space] is a Chinese place among the many foreign exhibitions, and that there are some things from that era inside,” he explained.
While most of the collateral events are taking place in venues scattered around the entire city, the Macau exhibition will be set up in an old building facing the Biennale’s Theme Pavilion, which is located in a former armory. According to the curatorial staff, this is a favorable location, as everybody who visits the Theme Pavilion will pass by it. The same building has hosted the local delegation in previous years.
Since 2007, Macau has presented a total of 14 local artists at the Venice Biennale. Comparing with art exhibitions held overseas, Mio said that the contemporary art scenes in China are not yet as open, in terms of concepts, creations and the scale.
“The mainland has also been opening up; it’s much different from the past. Nowadays, I don’t need to come to Macau, as I can also freely create art in the mainland. Nevertheless, our exhibitions can be more open and allow greater thematic expression,” he said.