2020 CAFA Graduation Works Online Exhibition
School of Experimental Art
Please scan the QR code below to enter the exhibition.
Foreword
The Historical Mission of the School of Experimental Art
Every school of any university has its own historical mission. After three decades of exploration after the Reform and Opening Up, experimental art has taken on its unique look, and is widely accepted by Chinese audience. The experimental art today is the representation of Chinese people's pioneering spirit, adventurous spirit and experimental spirit.
We need to contribute truly creative art in the future, that's why it's time we rethink and redefine the historical mission of the School of Experimental Art.
It is the most important mission for a school to cultivate talents. The talents that the School of Experimental Art cultivates should be familiar with both the full picture of international contemporary art and the practice of Chinese artists over the last century. The talents that the school cultivates should be vigorous art practitioners with social concern, humanistic sensibility, deep care for traditions and curiosity for novelty. They should bear in mind that a pure mind is always the most important character. Teachers and students of CAFA are the hope that the century-old Chinese art experimentation would see breakthrough in the future. The School of Experimental Art is not proud of cultivating 'Internet celebrity' artists or satisfied with having graduates make a living with running art exam training classes. Different from previous generations of artists, graduates from the school should aim for the renaissance of art and aesthetic education, the break of disciplinary limits and western individualistic identity, and devote themselves to the integration of writing, research, curation and creation.
The mission of the School of Experimental Art as a research institution is collecting and sorting the experience of experimental art in the modernist development across the last century, especially in the last 40 years, transferring the unconscious, intuitive individual experiments into disciplinary, research-based comprehensive academic program; and turning art experiments into verifiable and sustainable theories and pedagogy of experimental art. It's like scientific experiment from gentleman scientists' amateur practice into university labs' concentrated research. New rules are to be summarized through research like this, and thus lead to the generation of Chinese style experimental art, especially experimental art methodologies, and the presentation and solution of a series of fundamental theoretical questions including the ontology of experimental art and its social relevance.
China is undergoing rapid development, and hasn't yet been able to calm down for self-reflection. Chinese art has completed its mission of breaking through the old and dull, and has transferred to its new mission of creating new ideology and new world. But that should be based on fundamental theories, and the School of Experimental Art should take the responsibility of building that base. Other than the mission of cultivating talents, our school also has the mission of re-writing art history. The counterfeit history that formed in the last centuries should go through overall questioning until it is overturned. When every teacher and student could reconstruct their own recognition of art history and abandon the false ideas forged by popular discourse, the construction of a new art history would thus begin.
For artists in the art circle, they should consider how to reconstruct their relationship with the society ourside the increasingly rigorous and automated system of art museums, galleries and exhibitions, to fight against our self-regulation and self-cencorship now rooted in our artistic imagination.
As a social installation, the School of Experimental Art is faced with a time when China has just alleviated extreme poverty, and when economy is on the rise in this modern nation-state. A rising country must consider more humanity issues and take more universal responsibilities, and the Chinese experimental art must be able to provide solutions for world issues. The uniqueness of Chinese civilization will not only be explicated, but also regain respect, and that's the time when certain elements of Chinese civilization become part of the human reason.
Chinese artists have talked about the east and the west, the traditional and the innovative for over a century. These issues may become less trendy in the future, as the the mankind is facing challenges from a new round of technological revolution. People today can't comprehend how artificial intelligence will bring to the humanity and its art. It's possible that our economic life, political life and emotional life will all undergo reorganization. Hedonism and consumerism are trying to take advantage of AI to blow up their evil and superficial characters, turning our youths into fools with fragmented expressions, words, memories and ideas. We on the other hand should use AI and other new technologies as a tool to augment our creativity, and rethink how "humanity" as an art project could adapt to today's situation.
If Bauhaus is an aesthetic created to adapt to the industrial revolution, and if Black Mountain College is founded to use the spirit of avant-garde art to fight against consumerism and hedonism that permeated and occupied the world, then our School of Experimental Art should exist to answer to the renaissance of Chinese culture and the arrival of artificial intelligence.
That's the historical mission of the School of Experimental Art and its students as I understand.
Qiu Zhijie, Head of School of Experimental Art
Graduation Works by Graduate Students from the School of Experimental Art
(Search the student number in the online exhibition for more details of the works)
Tong Yanming, student no. 12170300011
Portraits of the Li Village
Xiao Ning, student no. 12170300018
Therapy Project: One Day
Wang Changcheng, student no. 12170300017
π
Zhang Xianxu, student no. 12170300005
Must not be confused
Hu Yi, student no. 12170300003
正³
Lin Wencai, student no. 12170300001
Substitute
Liu Jiaying, student no. 12160300014
Sound Money
Feng Zhijia, student no. 12170300008
A hollowed-out crowd
Huang Wenqing, student no. 12170300016
Fish Tank
Wang Yanjun, student no. 12170300021
Night sail in Qingxi
Zhu Qia, student no. 12170300002
Yi Ge Jing
Yin Liuna, student no. 12170300015
Family Pedigree series
Guan Jun, student no. 22170300023
Family Photo
Zheng Jiayan, student no. 12170300012
Dislocated Town - After Leaving the Town
Jin Tiantian, student no. 12170300013
Nausea
Li Yixuan, student no. 32170200022
Celebrating every day with ease
Shou Shengnan, student no. 12170300010
Embroidery
Liu Dixian, student no. 12170300020
Index
Xiong Shuang, student no. 12170300019
Cold Fire
Qin Yingpeng, student no. 12170300007
Picnic in a Park
Wang Ying, student no. 12160300019
Beyond the crowd
Hong Wei, student no. 12170300006
Cleaning
Bao Wanyi, student no. 12160300011
Seperated
Sun Ruoxi, student no. 12170300014
Three movements in a space
Kang Heng, student no. 12170300004
Skeleton