‘Chinese artists are now part of an international conversation’, Meg explains passionately, rather than just an exotic source of post-communist-inspired art. Meg Maggio is an American who has been in China for more than twenty years. She is also the Director of the Pekin Fine Arts Gallery in Cao Changdi Village, an area in north Beijing where Ai Weiwei has established an artist community, which is geographically and ideologically separate from the popular 798 Art District (see previous blog entry http://journals.worldnomads.com/amcommins/story/102914/China/Scorpions-and-post-apocalyptic-industrial-chic). WeiWei bought land in Cao Changdi and designed buildings that, from the outside, resemble bland, grey and unassuming two storey apartment blocks but, inside, reveal a series of cavernous white-washed and exposed-brick spaces: art galleries and artist studios. These buildings sit rather conspicuously in an obviously more deprived suburb of outer-Beijing.
Meg sits behind an oversized computer screen on a desk covered in books and leaflets for her forthcoming exhibition, ‘New Paper’. She is embedded and enmeshed in the Chinese art scene, which is broad and diverse. I swing my head round to look at paintings and sculptures that she identifies as pieces by Chinese artists who now live, work and find influence in Switzerland, Korea and the US. They are expensive specimens. Meg is unashamedly critical of the 798 Art District. ‘It is marketed as part of the Chinese leisure scene. They bus thousands of students and tourists there’, she explains in a still-strong American accent, whilst simultaneously giving instructions in Chinese to someone called Summer, who is sat behind a screen and who I assume is her assistant. What Meg tells me is true. Wandering the vast stark-white gallery rooms in Cao Changdi, the exhibitions are clearly professionally curated, expensive and exclusive. Men in their twenties smoke pipes! The most crowded gallery I visited had four people in it, one of whom was me. 3-D video art installations trail über-cool short movies in darkened rooms. Cao Changdi is unashamedly pushing modern Chinese art but its draw is limited by its market position. I guess that is exactly the point.
By contrast, the 798 Art District is an old East German industrial city of factory spaces, brick chimneys and workshops, which, when abandoned, grew into a warren of galleries. It is a very busy place. The land is state-owned and leased to the artists. In Cao Changdi, however, the galleries are built by private enterprise and on private land. Meg is proud of the independence of the area from any state influence. ‘This is not a tourist destination’. That much is evident. However, the reality is that modern, interesting, accessible and individual artistic expression is a relatively new concept in China and, like everything else in this country, it has – and is –developing at breakneck speed. The public need time to catch up, and the 798 District offers a mix of the more ‘traditional’ Chinese (and international) modern art blended with the comfort and familiarity of coffee shops, street vendors and design shops. For those with a taste for art at the edge of development; for visitors seeking a more ‘pure’ insight into the shape of cutting-edge Chinese expression – the sort that you will see in exclusive galleries throughout the world – Cao Changdi is definitely worth the taxi ride.
