The inaugural Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition (until June 26), a show featuring works from 40 top Chinese and international artists, in the touristy Zhejiang Province canal village, presents a new model for engaging with a less-sophisticated rural public. “Second-tier and third-tier cities look to compensate for their lack of platforms for art and culture,” says Chen Xianghong, the show’s chairman. “Wuzhen can inspire other [smaller] cities and towns [to] organise internationally influential cultural events,” he says.
Participating artists include Roman Signer, Ann Hamilton, Song Dong and Xu Bing, who all visited Wuzhen for the exhibition’s launch at the end of March. The Swiss collector of contemporary Chinese art, Uli Sigg, and Hou Hanru, the artistic director of Rome’s Museum of XXI Century Arts (MaXXI), both of whom are members of the event’s advisory board, also made the trip to the small city, 130km south-west of Shanghai.
Chen points out that in the West, big cities do not have a monopoly of cultural events. He believes contemporary art and culture can help revitalise rural villages. “Wuzhen, despite its 1,300 year history, is not a place for nostalgia. We want young people to move here [and] start businesses.” The town is now looking to organise artist residencies. In China’s big cities, top-down interventions importing famous outside curators and artists can marginalise local artists and organisations. Backwater villages such as Wuzhen do not risk this conflict, although the exhibition has drawn some criticism for not including more artists from the nearby art hubs of Hangzhou and Shanghai.
Wuzhen also provides an example of how local governments in China can cultivate cultural development through support rather than control. “Many public cultural events are held by government, but governmental interference makes them less vigorous,” Chen says.
Recruiting top figures, then giving them ample resources and, crucially, free rein, is unusual in China. “All artist selections I did on my own. It was completely independent, otherwise I would not do it,” says Feng Boyi, the lead curator of Art Wuzhen.