Roundtable Discussion

SOAS Gallery

Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting  and the Persistence of Daoism

SOAS Alumni Lecture Theatre (SALT), Paul Webley Wing, SOAS

This round table discussion, which takes place in association with the SOAS Gallery exhibition ‘<a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/strange-wonders-jizi-and-pioneers-contemporary-ink-china" title="https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/strange-wonders-jizi-and-pioneers-contemporary-ink-china" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Strange Wonders - Dreams, Desire and Daoism: Jizi and Other Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Painting from China</a>’, will explore the relationship between Daoism and ink painting in contemporary China. Since the compilation of its founding text, the Daodejing in the 4th century BCE, Daoism has provided an intellectual focus for resistance to state and other forms of social control as well as the calming achievement of neixin (heart - innermost being) in the face of worldly conflicts and suffering. Examples of these include the classic Daoist text the Zhuangzi (c. 3rd century BCE), wherein the principle of wu-wei (effortless action) is upheld as a corrective to overly legalistic imperial authority, and the so-called Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who in the 3rd century CE resiled from public service at a time of major political upheaval in China to engage in the contemplation of Daoist teachings and related cultural activities, including painting, poetry writing, calligraphy and music-making, sometimes under the boundary blurring influence of alcoholic intoxication.The roundtable will discuss the continuing relationship between Daoism and Chinese ink painting and its implications for cultural resistances to authority, individualism, transcendent spirituality, care for the self and respect for nature in an authoritarian-materialist post-revolutionary China now officially aligned with Confucian-related aspirations toward social harmony. Also discussed will be the situating of contemporary Chinese ink art as part of the now conspicuously pluriversal conditions of early 21st–century contemporaneity downstream of post-Cold War globalization. The extent to which the relationship between Daoism and ink painting can indeed be talked or written about will be addressed given Daoism’s ultimate recourse to ineffable feeling rather than cognition as a way of gaining insight into the ontology of the cosmos.Participants in the roundtable include its moderator Prof. Paul Gladston, the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art, Dr. Katie Hill of Sotheby's Institute of Art, London and the curator of ‘Strange Wonders - Dreams, Desire and Daoism - Jizi and Other Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Painting from China’, and Prof. Wang Chunchen of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing who is the son of the artist Jizi, also known as Wang Yunshan [1941 – 2015].An opening presentation by the moderator and discussion among the participants will be followed by an audience Q&amp;A.VenueSOAS Alumni Lecture Theatre (SALT), 1st Floor, SOAS Senate House North Block, Malet Street, London WC1H OXG The 'Strange Wonders' exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art.

Roundtable Discussion

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Roundtable Discussion

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