Gu Wenda's art signifies cultural visions

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Singapore

The installation of 188 flags measuring 4 x 6.5 feet each at the entry hall of the new Singapore Esplanade Theatres on the Bay emanates an ambience befitting the significance of this arts center. Like a solemn pledge, flags made of human hair hanging from the ceiling of the hall signify 188 nations of the world.

Gathered as United Nations-Man and Space, the hair that make up these national symbols come from 450 barbershops and salons of 18 countries, containing and mixing the DNAs of people otherwise separated by national and political boundaries. It shows Gu Wenda, the internationally renowned installation artist in a profoundly innovative mode of awesome imagery and artistic skill which has become his particular feature.

Sharing a view with the new emerging art center for creative arts development without deserting tradition, while bringing together the creative powers of the world to build a new culture of unification, Gu's artwork in dark hues of hair - meticulously glued to each other - transcends into what might sound utopian, but is nevertheless a thrust of hope for an ultimate achievement of human unification.

Just as the Esplanade aspires to be a center of artistic creation, education and development of the human being, Gu Wenda is preoccupied with the future of humankind. In this, the bridging from the traditional to the contemporary is an important part of the process, so what better material could be used than human hair which carries the DNA of every individual to which it belongs. In the Chinese tradition, as also in the belief among native Americans and in the Samson story of the Bible, hair denotes strength and is a source of physical power. In China, hair is also used for medical purposes.

The use of human hair may evoke a sense of revulsion for people who have experienced the Nazi shaving of Jewish women before sending them to the gas chamber, then having clothes made out of the hair. At first, she was taken aback, admits a French journalist from the Paris based newspaper Le Figaro. Gu's hair- made installations for Poland (1993) and the Sweden and Russia Monument:Interpol in Stockholm had earlier provoked controversies.

Gu Wenda, however, departs from the intrinsic cultural value of hair. In Eastern societies hair symbolizes the body and the spirit, while it is also believed to be the location of the soul. Gu Wenda, says, when human body materials are reincarnated as an art creation, the significance comes from the inside of the body materials.

Taking his hair-explorations even further, Gu is also producing ink made from pulverized human hair, and his series titled From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium have art works using genetic ink.

Unifying humanity through his creations has been his preoccupation ever since he started to do the United Nations series in 1993. Besides the use of human hair with its unifying DNA feature, Gu Wenda also uses pseudo characters to transcend the separative nature of language in other installations. Having the appearance of Chinese, it is in fact a combination of the Chinese seal script with Arabic, Sanskirt and the Roman alphabet. His mastery of calligraphy and Chinese ink painting obtained at the China National Academy of Art in Hanzhou where he studied after graduating from the Shanghai School of Art and Craft has been a firm foundation for developing these pseudo characters which was to become an important element in his art.

Gu was born in Shanghai (1955) but left China in 1987 as he felt the overall climate at that time could not bring his artistic urges to fruition. He settled in New York after some time in San Francisco and the York University near Toronto.

Remarkably, Gu then became obsessed with his own culture, and he strongly felt the urge to re-vitalize the traditions he was born into. "I want to bring my Chinese tradition to the future," he says, pointing out that the future denotes a intensified activity in biogenetics. This obsession is closely interwoven with his intent to create a new world identity of peoples, free from racial, ethnic, religious or whatever-else prejudice, segregation and discrimination.

Gu Wenda became a major leader in the China contemporary and avant-garde movement and is mentioned in several major books on Art today. He has studios in New York, Shanghai and Xian, and exhibits in countries around the world.

Edward Lucie Smith, the author of dozens of art books says Gu's work is both universal in its ambitions and deeply rooted in the Chinese literati culture that he once wanted to reject. Appreciating the revival of the literati sensibility is having an increasing effect on Chinese avant-garde art, Smith also considers Gu as the pioneer of this development, and the first Chinese-born artist working since the end of the Cultural Revolution to have made himself into a fully international figure.

The installation at the Esplanade was previously exhibited at the Singapore Museum of Civilizations, and is one of the 20 installations Gu Wenda has so far created as part of his United Nations project, a series about a multi-culture based on spiritual exploration in the social, cultural, and historical sense of identity, which Gu started in 1993 and aims to cover 25 countries.

Gu Wenda's captivating visionary works are profoundly thought- provoking. As Edward Lucie Smith says, "he is in more senses than one a key figure in the culture of our time". To have his work in the entrance hall at the grand opening of the Esplanade implies the expectation for this new art center to play a key role in the future flow of art development.