ZHAO BANDI

Xiamen: Zhao Bandi’s Hut

Curated by Du Xiyun

Since November 15, 2020, “Zhao Bandi’s Hut” has been like a flying carpet, landing in three cities: Shanghai (How Art Museum), Wuhan (Wuhan Art Museum), and Nanjing (Sifang Art Museum). It welcomes every visitor with hospitality and opens new possibilities with curiosity. In the blink of an eye, nearly a year has passed, and the project has witnessed all four seasons.

In these four seasons spanning 2020 and 2021, the pace of change in the world has only accelerated. The people who happened to have been involved with Zhao Bandi’s hut have busied themselves inside and outside the cozy place, and the great wave of our times has occasionally thrown their careful plans into disarray, so unexpected surprises might as well be met with optimism. In Shanghai, a wonderful array of different people visited the hut. In Wuhan, an endless stream of local residents poured their hearts out. In Nanjing, the hut was attended by the sun, moon, stars, and clouds in an empty public space; it matched the pulse of the security guards.

The hut is a bamboo shack with a bamboo leaf lawn, a surgical mask hammock, and small interior oil paintings (four have already been replaced), which gives you the feeling that you’re surviving on a deserted island. It is a multi-functional yet strange thing that can be inserted into different spaces. As a platform and a space, its attributes are closely related to the circumstances in which it is placed. The world is changing rapidly, and we can always begin anew: the hut is different with every time, place, and person. The way in which a person uses the hut defines its role; it can be used as swaddling, a refuge, a confessional, an information desk, or a debate stage...Those days in Nanjing, when no one visited or used the hut, allowed the project to reveal its natural properties between heaven and earth, sun and moon.

In these changing times, we insignificant humans affirm what is known and interrogate what is unknown; we explain what is knowable and revere the unknowable. The indispensable live audience allows the hut to move forward in its passion and become abundant in its openness. Between heaven and earth, between land and sea, and in people’s hearts, what can and will happen in the small hut in Xiamen, will be explained by visitor after visitor: “What happened was...”

By Du Xiyun

Artist: ZHAO BANDI

Zhao Bandi (b.1966, Beijing) is a renowned artist and pioneering figure of the Chinese Avant-Garde art movement. Trained as a painter, his practice has evolved to include performance, photography, video, fashion, film, and social intervention. His exhibitions and solo projects include: “Wuhan·Zhao Bandi's Hut” (Wuhan Art Museum, Wuhan, 2021); “Me & Beuys·Zhao Bandi's Hut - A Noah's Ark in the Post-Pandemic Era” (HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2020); "Zhao Bandi: China Party" (UCCA, Beijing, 2017); "Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World" (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2017); "Chopin Underwater" Culture Party (Sichuan, 2016); Zhao Bandi Panda Fashion Show (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2009; China International Fashion Week, Beijing, 2007); "One Man's Olympics" Solo Performance (Bern, 2005); "Zhao Bandi: Uh-oh! Pandaman" (Manchester Art Gallery; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Plymouth City Museum & Gallery, 2004); 48th Venice Biennale (1999); 11th Sydney Biennale (1998); "Moonflight" (Hanmo Art Center, Beijing, 1994); "China Avantgarde" (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Modern Art Oxford; Kunsthal Rotterdam, and further venues, 1993-1994); and "A New Painting by Zhao Bandi" (CAFA Gallery, Beijing, 1992). From 1999 to 2004, Zhao Bandi's public art projects featuring pandas appeared in metro stations, airports and streets of cities throughout China and abroad, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Milan, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Oslo, and Tokyo. From 2010 to 2013, Zhao Bandi initiated the art charity project "Trading Creativity for a Nursing Home", which attracted over two million Chinese youth to submit their artworks. He used the proceeds to establish a nursing home in Kaifeng county, Henan province, which currently houses 46 elderly adults. From 2013 to 2014, Let Panda Fly, a film directed by Zhao and based on his previous projects, was selected by the 29th Warsaw International Film Festival, as well as several children's film festivals, and enjoyed a wide theatrical release in China.

Curator: DU XIYUN

Curator, born in 1978. He received his bachelor's degree in oil painting from the school of fine arts in Shaanxi Normal University in 2000 and his master's degree in fine arts history from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. He was the deputy director of HOW Art Museum, and the deputy director of Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

His artistic views have been published in various magazines and publications, and he used to work as the chief editor of ARTTIME. He has been involved in organizing and planning several exhibitions and projects, most recently: Wuhan · Zhao Bandi's Hut, Wuhan Art Museum, Wuhan, 2021; Me&Beuys·Yin Xiuzhen: Braking, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2021; Me&Beuys·Zhao Bandi's Hut - A Noah's Ark in the Post-Pandemic Era, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2020; Me&Beuys·Yang Zhenzhong, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2020; Co-constructing, Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, 2020; Me&Beuys·Zhou Xiaohu, HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2019; Muntadas: Asia Protocols, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, 2018; Today’s Yesterday: The 1st Anren Biennale, Anren, 2017; The future is here: Musical frenzy from Madrid to Beijing, Instituto Cervantes of Beijing, 2017; Historicode: Scarcity&Supply: The 3rd Nanjing International Art Festival, Baijia Lake Museum, Nanjing, 2016; BEIJING 798 GENESIS(2002-2006), Museum of Song Zhuang, Beijing, 2016.