An Interview with Gu Wenda July 30, 1998 Bar 89, New York City On a sweltering day in late July, I had the opportunity to meet Gu Wenda before he started work on his monumental installation. I met him on Canal Street, right along the edge of Chinatown and SoHo. An appropriate location, I thought, given the cross-cultural influences in his work. We headed to a small bar/cafe in SoHo where Gu explained some of the intentions and aspirations behind his work: Joan Kee: Tell me a little about your project, what it is you hope to accomplish. Gu Wenda: So many people ask me that [laugh]! I should make a videotape about this! Actually, the project is a little complicated, because it's like a chain. I would say this is the thirteenth or fourteenth installment. Basically the whole project uses hair--this one will be a hair-made tent. I want to use one side [for] a Chinese text and the other side an English text. [Interviewer's note: At the time of this interview, Gu was contemplating a work in Chinese and English, given the nature of the exhibition. However, as Gu remarks in a subsequent letter, "I want my creation to be alive beyond today." He later inserted false Arabic and Hindi scripts because he realized the "multi-cultural, multi-racial nature of America" and that the goal of his art was not simply to "serve as a translator of my own culture, but to be hybrid, transcultural."] (Quotes taken from a letter to the interviewer of October 19, 1998) JK: One thing I was interested in was this fake Chinese text. Is it possibly because you wanted to have your viewers be on the same playing field? Because sometimes some Asian artists will go out of their way to be as Asian as they can and only people of their heritage, such as, for example, a Japanese artist using Japanese script, so that only Japanese spectators could really understand their work whereas non-Japanese spectators would be, "Oh that's really exotic, but we don't know what that means." GW: Well, it's a complicated game, actually. It depends on the artist's intention. Some artists like to play this "exotic" game; others like to play the "multicultural" game. For me, I like to deal with global issues and this whole project is ten years, ongoing. I try to sum up all the different races, contexts. For the Asia Society, it's only about China, so it's called the "Temple of Heaven." The title comes from an actual temple in Beijing, which is really beautiful. The space will be totally sealed by curtains; there will twelve chairs and eight stones and two large tables. The seating area will be replaced by TV monitors and the monitors will show running clouds, so the audience they come, and will be able to sit on the clouds. It's like meditation, transcendence... [Note: The artist later adds in the letter of October 19 that the work is intended to have audiences "face heaven made of fake text in different languages...the image of the running clouds is, in a way, urging the audience to think freely beyond the burden of cultures, beyond the limitation of mankind's knowledge. In this way, you [the spectator] are as free as if you sat on flying clouds in a blue sky. We [mankind] created all artificial civilizations, and yet we are not free from what man made...this meditating site provides a moment of freedom."] JK: Are you influenced by Buddhism, because there is that whole idea of meditation? GW: I guess in general, it relates to Chinese culture, Asian culture, even the culture of history. If I did an Italian or American piece, I would collect hair from that country and the piece would relate to Italian or American history. JK: So speaking of hair, I understand that you collect it from barbershops. That reminds me of the work of the African American artist David Hammons who would collect hair from barbershops and make pyramids...how did you get the barbershops to participate? GW: Generally the museum (such as an Italian or Spanish local museum) commissioning the work will do the collecting for me from local barbershops for a long time--three months or four months. Then they ship it to me, or I go there to make the work. JK: For this project, did you just collect hair from Chinese barbershops in the United States? GW: Actually the United States project was the most complicated: I collected hair from Chinatown, from Park Avenue, Washington Square, San Francisco, from Indian reservations; the Chinese one I brought the hair from here but there were small portions of hair from Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. JK: I would think that there would be some similarity between the China and the United States monument because China is also made up of so many different cultures, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Hakka, etc. GW: True, China has Jewish, Tibetan peoples, etc. Chinese people, however, integrate whomever it is that comes into their country. But Chinese people never really aggressively go out and occupy other races or other lands. The core of American culture seems to be WASP culture in the sense of assimilation--it seems that that is the culture that is forced upon other people, other races. JK: What is that you want people to take away from your work? GW: Well there are several things; by using human hair in my work it becomes a readymade object. Human hair is [a] very unique subject and the work itself becomes immediate. The audience, when they see the work, will immediately relate to the work because the materials come from themselves. They will feel closer and that's what I hope the work will do--to close the gap between the media and the audience. That's what I feel the work can do; to be more connected to the people rather than having the people see the work as just a piece of stone, or metal. JK: So do you want to make your work as accessible as possible? GW: It's very interesting because in my own life, I'm very private and low-key. For my work it's just the opposite; I want to be involved with the audience and society. My work, actually, is not art for art's sake; it's more on the cultural side and the way you talk about culture can extend to politics, the economy, it can be related to so many different things. JK: And how has your work been received by other countries? GW: [pauses briefly] My work has two aspects: one is that it's very large, like a monument, almost architectural. For me it's a real effort, so every time I do a work, I reach my limitations, money-wise, material-wise. The second aspect is that it is very controversial. [pause] The United Nations project I did in eight different countries and the reaction was all different. Overall, as a single creator in this commodity culture and reality, I think I am a little bit politically incorrect. If it were a team project, I think I would be more correct in terms of depicting race and culture; if I had black, brown, red, white, Latino, and other artists working together. All this work is kind of ambitious. The monument I did for Israel was a problem because it brought up memories of the Holocaust. JK: Yes, during the Holocaust, all the Jewish women had their hair cut off. GW: Also, it has to do with religion; for some sects, hair is power so if you shave off the hair, the power is gone. I don't know if Hitler knew that but it was a very sensitive issue. My proposal arrived in Israel on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, so when I arrived at the airport, my proposal had been widely spread out and caused a lot of protest. The proposal went to the parliament and two days later, the organizers and I had a conversation. Afterwards, I got total support from the parliament there but that's the controversy. Other than this, in Poland, where I did my first monument, I ran into big problems and the work was dismantled within 24 hours. The work was set up in a lobby and the work really reminded many Jews of their experiences in concentration camps. The Swedish-Russian one was based on the dialogue between eastern and western Europe and was made right after the Berlin Wall was torn down. These two groups of artists, the Swedish representing the west and the Russians representing the east, almost ended up fighting due to differences in ideology. My work in this particular show was in the center of the space and so became the target of this ideological struggle. It was really chaotic and I never experienced anything like this, not even during the Communist period in China. My show was closed in China, but this was a struggle that was even more emotional. JK: I remember from reading about Chinese history, that during the mid-Qing Dynasty, there were people who allegedly would go around and cut off queues. They called such people "soulstealers" because people then thought that your soul was in your hair. GW: This idea, I think, is particularly true for the Native Americans who believe that the power is in the hair, or on top of the head, similar to Jewish religion. Hair always becomes the identity of the person, the culture of that person. [Whether] Punk or hippie, people cut or do their hair according to their political stance--you see these white supremacists shave their hair [for example]. When you go to the barbershop and cut off your hair, you don't really think about it. But when you put all this hair together as an installation and make people think about their body waste it's sort of like body waste becomes an aesthetic. JK: I'm really interested in this idea of the hair collected from barbershops. In Korea or Japan, barbershops are places where people get together to talk, a meeting place. GW: It can be; it can be public or private. Sometimes it can be very difficult to import hair through customs. The museum will sometimes set up a precutting area and when people come to the show, they will think, "has my hair been included?" All the barbershop names are listed in the beginning of the show. So far, more than 350 barbershops have displayed their work. It's different from making a work from a piece of stone or metal because then there is a distance between it and the audience. For me, the work has been constructed by living people, real people. That's something I feel proud of. I did a piece in Johannesburg and somebody got information about my participation in the show and people sent boxes of hair from Canada--they would tell me, "These are my friends' hair, can it be in the work?" Museum people always have questions, too, whether the hair is archival or not. They collect items that do not decay, but hair is also like that. Hair from ancient times is still here. To [take it to] the extreme, everything is prone to decay, even the planet. So it depends on the concept of decay or non-decay. I think people fear body materials. JK: Did you use any of your own hair in your works? GW: No, I have too little. [lifts ponytail] Maybe for a very [emphasizes "very"] small piece. [laughs] * * * Joan Kee is a freelance critic who writes frequently on contemporary Asian and Asian American art.