Frieze
What does ‘Chinese’ mean in Britain today?
In London recently, I sat through a public panel discussion between a mainland-born Chinese artist and a British curator, held for the benefit of those interested in investing in the Chinese art market. The curator repeatedly urged the artist to recount his childhood growing up during the Cultural Revolution, ignoring his increasingly apparent reluctance to talk about it. The exchange was indicative of how often in the Western art world Chineseness is subjected to the worst kind of essentialist reduction to narratives of suffering, struggle and redemption.