The Rush to Normalcy

Shanghai has been relatively stable since the first lockdown was lifted at the end of February. Yet, in the rush to recover and return to normalcy, one of the biggest dangers is that we will forget too quickly some of the serious issues, highlighted by the pandemic, related to how we were living before. The lockdown experience in Shanghai shifted our thinking in many contradictory ways. For instance, it can be argued that the use of personal data led to a highly efficient infrastructure of containment and protection from the virus­—but at what cost and consequence? In some surprising ways, we had a certain measure of freedom compared to the lockdowns in other cities. For example, there was never an enforced citywide rule to determine how to socially-distance from one person to another. Many rules were interpreted in an ad-hoc way from place to place, causing unexpected tensions. I remember the improvised barricades to public roads and suburban enclaves closing themselves off to “outsiders.” Suddenly there were condos or housing blocks that functioned with their own set of rules almost like a medieval fiefdom.

The first art event that I attended not long after the initial lockdown eased was a tentatively arranged gathering of young artists, hosted by AM Space, one of the few artist-run spaces still operating in Shanghai, and which re-emerged after its own self-initiated hiatus that predated the outbreak. In the absence of rules, they improvised their own safety measures like taking people’s temperature at the door. Despite initial precautions, it descended into a gathering like any other very quickly; food and drink were served and shared liberally between hands with one another—the human desire to reconnect was stronger than fear of the virus. There was a lesson here: the threshold that determines our vigilance in a given situation is relative to the balance between our immediate experience compared with the wider, macro-picture of how the pandemic is evolving. Yet there is a time lag, as the pandemic impacts us at different levels, which has happened in delayed waves—the effects are not always immediately apparent.

Notable artistic projects that circumnavigated, in their own ways, the challenges of an apocalyptic year included a complex installation by the Taiwanese artist Hsu Che-Yu, featuring the new film, The Unusual Death of a Mallard (2020). In the work, Hsu shifts between different technologies of capturing information, using 3D scanning, reflected mirror images, thermal imaging, and hand-held camera work. With its theme of our impossible desire to return something back to life, the film was especially moving to experience now, as Hsu asks,
even with the technology we have at our disposal, how much is really retained in our attempt to re-animate something lost?

Similarly exploring the boundaries between the living and the dead, the large-scale kinetic sculpture, Carriers, horizontal forms (2020) by South Korean artist Mire Lee, shown in the group show, “Breathing Through Skin” (11/7–1/2/21), curated by Alvin Li at Antenna Space, was my first time seeing the artist’s work in person. With splayed cords and a viscous fluid that embalmed a set of amorphous forms together in a pristine, low-lying cement platform, it was like a post-industrial riff on the kinetic systems of David Medalla and the anti-form principles of Eva Hesse.

“Stressed Herms, Sweat, & Period Gas” (9/24–12/19) was a very timely two-person show by Candice Lin and Patrick Staff, which was organized at the Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai. Their works related to the fear of vulnerability, toxic contagions, and the interdependence between issues of health and identity. They together dispersed a “hormonal fog,” a herbal concoction that affects viewers’ estrogen levels, and displayed a series of seemingly innocuous paintings by Lin—with pigment brimming with materials now considered public health risks—depicting places in Lebanon purported to be clandestine sites of buried waste.

For the art world in Shanghai, the smooth opening of art fairs and exhibitions in November offered a reassuring message that all has returned to normal here. Yet in this moment, to ensure that we have things to put in art fairs and exhibitions in the first place, there is still an urgent need to maintain an even closer sensitivity to issues of health, not just in terms of public and social well-being, but also in terms of the vitality of an arts ecology, a system of interdependence that is the one thing that helps us to thrive together in the first place.

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