Art on the move
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Museums, galleries and studios are booming in Songzhuang, but its core spirit is changing. |
The Yuanmingyuan Artists' Village suffered forced evictions by the local authorities in late 1994 and early 1995. "Artists were seen as troublemakers," says Wang who relocated to Xiaopu village along with Yi and others, in Songzhuang town, in eastern Beijing in 1996 after the evictions.
"At that time, nobody outside Beijing had heard about Songzhuang. But now it has established a global name," says Yang Wei, an artist from Hunan province.
Yang has seen the booming of artists' villages over the past two decades in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Hangzhou. In 2001, artists from Beijing and from other provinces began opening studios at the 798 district, an ordnance factory that is still partially functioning.
798 has an advantageous location - in downtown Beijing and just miles from the embassy quarters -and boasts of Bauhaus style space and warehouses designed by East German experts.
It soon attracted widespread attention, inviting visits by a legion of international dignitaries and heads of state, and has emerged as the icon of vanguard artists' communities in China.
In 2003, the 798 Art Zone was listed as one of the 22 cultural landmarks of the world by Time magazine.
Two years later, it was designated a Cultural and Creative Industry Cluster, along with others including Songzhuang.
In recent years, a dozen satellite artists' villages of smaller scale, have sprung up around the 798 Art Zone.
However, Li Wenzi, a Beijing-based art dealer and frequent visitor to Yuanmingyuan in the 1990s, points out that these artists' villages are very different from the one that was in Yuanmingyuan. "From the very beginning, these other villages have been driven by money. The Yuanmingyuan Artists' Village was a haven for idealists, for troubled souls seeking freedom and peace," she says.
Many of the early occupants of the 798 Art Zone were art professors at the Central Academy of Fine Arts such as sculptors Li Xiangqun and Sui Jianguo and some already successful artists who had returned to Beijing from abroad such as musician Liu Sola and painter Huang Rui, Li says.
There is much concern now about the rampant urbanization and commercialization that is forcing artists to be on constant move. More and more disputes between landlords and artists have been reported in Beijing since 2005.
A growing number of artists, unable to afford sky-high rents, are moving farther away from the city center.
The entry of big galleries, boutiques and high-end restaurants are pricing out a growing number artists, who are struggling to achieve commercial success. Conflicts between real estate developers and artists' villages have been escalating over the past year.
But Yi Ling believes this is inevitable. "This is also happening in developed, industrialized nations. The only problem here is that it is happening too fast."
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