Text & Photo / Wu Hongliang

President of the Beijing Fine Art Academy, Vice Chair of Beijing Artists Association Curator of the China Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale

“Pavilions” is a public art project echoing “Re- 睿 ”, the theme of the Chinese Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. In ancient China, pavilions were specially built for information and document exchanges, for boarding and lodging, for people to switch to well-rested horses, and for travelers to take a break. Concurrently during the Venice Biennale, the exhibition of the Chinese Pavilion also established satellite pavillions for information sharing in multiple cities in China, including Jingdezhen, Suzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Chengdu, to offer a different experience to the audience who could not travel to Venice.

Every pavilion had drawn certain visual elements from the English prefix “Re”, turning the pavilion into a public art piece itself. The pavilions, installed in different cities, adopted various visual forms per different local features, bringing a window through which landscapes of other places could be enjoyed by the audience in real-time as if those sceneries were “borrowed” and presented to the audience in a parallel universe.

From 2019 to 2020, we installed several pavilions in Jingdezhen, Suzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and other places in China, echoing “Re- 睿 ”, the theme of the Chinese Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. At that time, we were just hoping that as humankind steps into the next wave of globalization and encounters “profound changes unseen in a century”, there would be a place – a pavilion – for us to take a break inside, to pause and ponder before we move on. Yet by an awful coincidence, the whole world had to press the pause button in 2020 due to the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the idea of “Pavilion”, in retrospect, did have some unintended implications.

The theme of the 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live in Interesting Times, which could also be interpreted as “just the right timing”, was an open-ended topic. When faced with difficulties in human development today, whether from media coverage or from our daily lives, in cyberspace or in the real world, every “I”, more or less, senses that human beings are starting to face “new problems”. China has long entered a new era with a focus on creativity and innovation. It boasts one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures, yet like other countries in the world, it is also facing complicated opportunities and challenges against the backdrop of globalization. From this point of view, the topic of “interesting times” was actually critical, especially after the pandemic had plagued the world. While we were amazed by the prophecy-like ability of Ralph Rugoff, the curator of the 58th Venice Biennale who decided on the theme, it was also inescapable that we reconsidered the three major threats proposed by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow — famine, plague, and war.

Therefore, “Re- 睿 ” was given a new meaning. “Re”, a frequently-applied prefix in vocabularies of various languages, means one more time or once again. And the Chinese character “ 睿 ”, meaning wisdom, shares a similar pronunciation of “Re”. By naming the Chinese Pavilion “Re- 睿 ”, we hoped that through “Re”reflecting on our past, we could “Re”think our future with the “wisdom” drawn from the past. And to reflect, we look to the coincidence in the history of human civilization, events in our daily lives, and our own feelings and perceptions. To engage more viewers and encourage them to rethink the possibilities of the future through art, we decided to set up a number of pavilions in China for information sharing before the official exhibition at Venice. Liu Xi, a renowned Chinese scholar from the Han dynasty, explained in his work Shi Ming (meaning “Explanation of Names”) that “Pavilions, to pause, places for people to take a break together”. In ancient China, pavilions were specially built for information and document exchanges, for boarding and lodging, for people to switch to well-rested horses, and for travelers to take a break. Having gained insights from our ancestors, we built pavilions with touchscreens for the audience outside Venice to obtain multi-angle and multi-level information and enjoy the fun from far away.

Before the opening of the Venice Biennale, as a prelude to the Chinese Pavilion there, the first pavilion transmitting the exhibition information in real-time was built in Ceramic Art Avenue Art Gallery in Jingdezhen. It used red – the theme color of the Venice Biennale – as its fundamental tone, which complements the red brick wall of the ancient buildings in the district. Yet its staggered and asymmetrical structure and its translucent texture presented a modernist touch, conveying the Exhibition’s idea of fusing the east with the west, and the traditional with the contemporary – a perfect lead to the official launch of the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Shortly after, another installation named “Whom-to-Share-Interest-with Pavillion” was installed in the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Suzhou. The pavilion had a pair of vertical gates that mirrored each other: one with a round top and a squared bottom, and the other with a squared top and a round bottom. Such design resembled the Whom-to-Sit-With Pavilion of Su Style, which also sits inside the garden. The name “Whom-to-Sit-with” was taken from a poem written by Su Shi, one of China’s greatest poets back in the Song Dynasty. The poem reads, “With Whom to Sit? The moon, the wind, or me”. It also echoed the Venice Biennale’s theme “May You Live in Interesting Times”, implying that Venice and Suzhou shared the same interest with every “me” who would stop by the pavilion.

The third pavilion, sitting in Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, was called “Nan Ting”, meaning Southern Pavilion. “Southern” was drawn from the name of SUSTech, while “Southern Pavilion”, in ancient Chinese poetry, referred to the image of people taking a sightseeing tour. Thus, this Southern Pavilion was a bridge for exchange and communication, as well as a window to appreciate the gorgeous scenery of elsewhere. Its arch-like design echoed the idea of a bridge displayed at the Chinese Pavilion on the Venice Biennale, and its sloping edges created a spacial area with rich layers. Bearing a resemblance to books, the stacked glass formed the pavilion’s main structure.

At night, faint haloes would shine through the tempered glass, matching the vibes of Shenzhen as a modern city and the scientific and futuristic aspects of SUSTech. Along with the unveiling
of Nan Ting, the Public Art Committee of the SUSTech Education Foundation was also officially launched, which was a perfect indication of art and science joining hands and advancing together.

At the end of 2019, as the first stop of the pavilion exhibition in China, Beijing welcomed its “Rui Ting”, meaning Wisdom Pavilion, in the Guardian Art Center. Rui Ting adopted the elements of rhombic grids and circles taken from the façade of Guardian Art Center and applied the color of pink, mirroring the symbolic color of Venice. The building material, in its translucent pink, added a touch of vivacity and lightness to the calm gray of the pavilion. This contrast, in a visual sense, responded to the exhibition’s theme that harmonious coexistence could be achieved in a world full of differences.

Every pavilion had drawn certain visual elements from the English prefix “Re”, turning the pavilion into a public art piece itself. The pavilions, installed in different cities, adopted various visual forms per different local features, bringing a window through which landscapes of other places could be enjoyed by the audience in real-time as if those sceneries were “borrowed” and presented to the audience in a parallel universe.

Wu Hongliang

May 9th, 2021 Wangjing, Beijing