Shots capture China's rapid transitions Final Edition

• Published in: The Vancouver sun (1986)
• Main Author: Michael Scott, Sun Art Critic
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vancouver, B.C Postmedia Network Inc 03.05.1999
• ISSN: 0832-1299

Qiu Zhijei has concerns of his own about the pace of change in Chinese society. Perplexed by the pervasive power of computers to reshape and distort photographic images, [Qiu Zhijie] photographs himself in situations that would now be more easily simulated after the fact by computer manipulation. In Tattoo No. 2, for instance, he has daubed the Chinese character that means "it is forbidden" across his face and chest with red paint, painstakingly aligning the character's crossarms so that they seem to continue along the wall behind him. What must have taken him hours of trial and error could have been accomplished by a computer in a matter of seconds. In a separate series of images, Qiu recreates sunny Cultural Revolution images of Red Guard youth in patriotic poses. Ironically titled the Being Good Series, these images show young people smiling broadly and playing at dress-up, a wrenching commentary on one of the most destructive periods of recent Chinese history. According to Qiu, it makes little difference whether a photograph makes a faithful record of a staged scene or a contrived image of a realistic scene. Meaning is mutable in either case. Embracing the computer wholeheartedly where Qiu eschews it, Wang Wangwang makes surreal digital images such as Thank Deng Xiao Ping, in which Mao Zedong and Karl Marx lounge in garden chairs on a lunar landscape, the ruins of ancient civilizations tottering on the horizon.