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I feel like a small seedling that has sprouted but has not yet emerged above the ground. . . . When the

seedling grows it must press the earth surrounding it and the earth must also press the seedling back. I

feel that this is just like my relationship with my surroundings-a relationship of squeezing and pressing.

– Yin Xiuzhen1

Constructed against the framework of her own experiences, Yin Xiuzhen’s installations Ruined

City (1996), Peking Opera (2000), and the ongoing series Portable Cities each begin with and

return to a distinctive notion of the city. Having lived her entire life in Beijing,Yin Xiuzhen has

reacted to the massive changes in the city’s architecture and infrastructure from the mid-1990sonward, her work serving as an index of the evolving life of the city and the life of the artist,

with each piece highlighting the intersection between the two. Since the late 1990s, her increased

interactions with cities beyond Beijing have also motivated reconceptions of urban space and

comparative studies of different locales. Her works not only reveal a constant shift in the perceived

space of the city, but also speak to transformations of her own role in relation to her environment.

In her works, the independent identities of the “city” and the “individual”fluctuate as much as the

relationship between the two. In fact, it is in Yin Xiuzhen’s works that we are made to realize that

each has the potential to both displace itself and be displaced by the other. Applying as much to

the site as to the self, this notion of displacement can be understood as the process of taking

and/or the state of being out of context. For example, displacement in the humanitarian sense can

refer to the forcible movement of persons within their own country. While Yin Xiuzhen explores

this humanitarian definition of displacement as it is applied to Beijing, she also uses it as a point of

departure for further examinations of the term itself. In particular, she interrogates the relation-

ship between the city and the individual and the presupposition of the existence of an appropriate

place for one inside the other.

In tracing the complex and divergent interpretations of the language of displacement present in

her three installations, it is possible to outline the conditions of existence that led to the produc-

tion of each work. Through the treatment of each installation as a separate event, a biographical

reconstruction of Yin Xiuzhen’s life since 1996 can be pieced together. The resulting portrait, how-

ever, is not a single narrative, not a simple monographic identity. Rather, a historicization of the

language employed in each installation reveals that each event led to the emergence of a new and

discrete identity. Through a study of how Yin Xiuzhen constructs her works, I intend to seek an

understanding of how they can be used to construct and position the changing identities of theartist in relation to her living environment.

Yin Xiuzhen’s use of installation art as a spatial medium can be rooted first within the historical

context of 1990s experimental art in China. While her studies in the fine arts earned her a degree

in oil painting from Capital Normal University in 1989, her turn to installation art in 1994 marked

the beginning of her explorations in modes of spatial representation. On the introduction of

installation art into China, critic Yin Shuangxi has noted,“In the mid-1980s, young [Chinese]

artists did not understand the concept, connotations, or origins of installation art. They did not

employ the term ‘installation’ comprehensively even as they adopted it.”2 Although installation art

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was initially used primarily for its anti-mainstream status, the mid-1990s saw a conscious turn

away from collective efforts addressing reflections on and reconciliations with historical ideology.3

A new interest in examining the vast transformations within the present landscape emerged dur-

ing this new era of experimentation that moved beyond indiscriminately adopting installation art

as a mere tool. It is in this address of the contemporary that I will examine Yin Xiuzhen’s investi-

gations of both representations of the city as a space and the space of the city itself.

Ranging from explorations of the city as her home to the notion of the “global city,”4 Yin Xiuzhen

treats the city as a place that never ceases to shift and undergo transformation. In one respect,

with the destruction and construction of an ever-changing cityscape, these shifts can be under-

stood in the strictly physical sense. Functioning in the logic of measurable and rational space, this

re-diagramming of the topology of a place is perhaps the most visually noticeable phenomenon

affecting the city. But it is also the modification of spatial practices, the clearing away of traditional

codes, and the introduction of a new logic within that are causing shifts in value systems as well as

social, economic, and cultural frameworks. Transformations in the artist’s roles as both observerand participant in the spatial practices of the city can thus be traced according to her understanding

of the city as a site of movement, dynamism, and a place for the ongoing dialectic between

displacement and placement.

This essay is organized around three installations—Ruined City , Peking Opera , and Portable Cities .

However, this chronological ordering is not meant to render the works as phases in a linear

trajectory of a historical narrative. Rather, as the evidence will indicate, the process of making

visible the artist's identities and experiences within the city reveals quite the opposite. It is precisely

the complexities and, at times, contradictory notions of the city that defy a simple linear path

for understanding the artist and her imagined cities. It is the unstable identity of the artist, as

constructed by her equally volatile environment, that gains our attention as viewers and readers.

:

Sometimes when I would ride my bike to work I would hear a sound, look around to see a house fall

down. Everywhere you looked you could see the character chai (tear down) written on buildings.

Sometimes you would go out in the morning and see the character on a house, and come back in the

evening to find the house already gone.

– Yin Xiuzhen5

Figure 1. Yin Xiuzhen, Ruined City, 1996, installation of furniture and cement,Art Museum of Capital Normal University, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist.

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Exhibited in 1996, Ruined City was created in response to Yin Xiuzhen's negotiations with and

internalization of the specific living conditions in Beijing at that time. The overall structure,

individual elements, and material components of the piece all speak to a language of displacement

as seen through a lens of ruin, as suggested in the title.

This installation originally occupied its own three-hundred-square-metre exhibition hall within

the Art Museum of the Chinese Normal University in Beijing (fig. 1). The focus of the installation

is an expanse of grey roof tiles that stretches diagonally from one corner of the room to the other.

Each ceramic tile, rectangular and slightly curved, measures 22 x 25 cm. Arranged in an orderly

manner, the ceramic tiles are placed side-by-side into neatly formed rows that increase in length as

the mass of tiles reaches the opposite corner. Consisting of 1,400 ceramic tiles, the tile formation

widens and leads to a heavy bed frame (fig. 2). The bed itself is covered haphazardly by a sizeable

mound of cement powder, with the same material sprinkled beneath. The tiles surrounding the

bed are sparsely dispersed and appear arbitrarily scattered in contrast to the dense weave of tiles at

the other end.

At the center of this expanse of tiles is a set of four wooden chairs. As a collection, the identical

chairs have been placed evenly, side-by-side, to echo the repetition and rhythm of the neighbouring

tiles. The four chairs appear solid and fixed in a horizontal row. A small mountain of cement

powder on each seat further accentuates the weighty nature of each chair and simultaneously

denies their function as a means of providing respite. Refuting the notion of social engagement,

the chairs all face the corner of the room, where the path of tiles tapers off towards the wall.

The room is divided into three large sections with six islands of individual furniture pieces

dispersed evenly throughout. On the left of the tile formation are a wire stand with a wash basin

Yin Xiuzhen, Ruined City , 1996, installation of furniture and cement,Art Museum of Capital Normal University, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist.

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and a vanity with a mirror. The aforementioned bed lies among the tiles, while a chair, an armoire, and a

table are to the right. Although they are all oriented towards the interior of the room, there is no sense of

engagement among them. With each sitting in its own pile of cement powder and discrete space, they are

unified only by a shared sense of isolation. The overall static feeling is reinforced by the combination of

heavy, inert objects with a definitive division of the space by the mass of tiles.

As objects, the furniture and tiles in this installation can be classified into two categories: found objects

and personal objects. The category “found object”refers to the manner in which the objects were procured.

In the work, these include the roof tiles and all of the furniture items with the exception of the central set

of chairs. The action of finding invokes a sense of discovery and exposure, but implicit in the acquisition

of the found object are the attendant notions of salvaging and collection for the purpose of either reuse or

archiving. The very idea that the object is found brings to light the conditions surrounding its process of

appropriation. Significantly, the artist procured all of the pieces of found object furniture in alleyways

near her home. Neighbours had discarded these items in favour of newer models.

The personal objects in the exhibition include the set of four chairs in the center, which were among the

first possessions that Yin Xiuzhen and her husband and fellow artist, Song Dong, owned after they were

married.6 The placement of the artist's own set of chairs at the center of the installation addresses what is

at stake for her. Through the deliberate removal of possessions from her own home, the placement of

them in the gallery, and the treatment of them in the same manner as the found objects, she is also taking

part in processes of disposal and abandonment.

The practices of recovering found objects and forsaking personal possessions suggest an ongoing dialectic

between displacement and placement. Displacement, the act of taking something out of context, removing

or even banishing something from a place, occurs on two levels here. The first is the displacement of the

object—whether it be a tile or an item of furniture-from the original residence from which it came. The

second act of displacement is carried out by the artist who retrieves the object from its site of abandonment

and gives it a place in the exhibition hall. Displacement suggests a sense of instability, while its opposite,

placement, implies a feeling of rootedness. Placement can be understood as the positioning of a thing into

an appropriate and suitable context. The original context of displacement of these objects and the artist’splacement of them into a new locale suggests that these are objects representing two sides of the same

coin. The rescuing and rearrangement of found roof tiles into what one scholar has argued to be an aerial

view of courtyard houses, seems to suggest a nostalgic reminder of the thing’s original purpose.7 At the

same time, however, the purpose for a roof collapses when it lies futilely on the ground. Yin Xiuzhen’s

interrogation of this binary opposition in her installation opens up questions about the terms by which

placement is established and the means by which it can be eradicated.

Embedded within these processes of displacement is an emphasis on fragmentation. As displaced objects,

the roof tiles and furniture pieces represent fragments of the context from which they were taken. The

roof tiles once served as external architectural fixtures, while the different pieces of furniture once occupied

the interior of a house. Together, they allude to residences and families. In particular, roof tiles derive their

functionality from their ability to provide shelter. Similarly, a furnished house is one that suggests stability

and permanence. Roof tiles lying on the ground and furniture covered with piles of cement powder not

only point towards their state of disrepair and decay, but, more immediately, to their disuse. Moreover, in

the case of the found object furniture, these items were discarded because the owners replaced them with

newer, recently purchased pieces. These two models of disuse, one enforced, the other voluntary, are both

instigated by a desire for the new.

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Indeed, the most significant force influencing the materialization of this language was the city’s

large-scale urban renewal project, which displaced numerous families and left the rubble of their

destroyed residences in its wake. In 1990, the Old and Dilapidated Housing Renewal Program was

implemented under the auspices of the Beijing municipal government. Ostensibly, the objective

was to better the living standards of those inhabiting the run-down residential housing. The con-centration of dilapidated houses fell within the 62 square kilometres of the old city of Beijing. The

traditional architectural layout of the Old City consisted of blocks of siheyuan , or courtyard hous-

es, divided by a network of narrow alleys called hutong . Until 1989, about 30% of the land was

occupied by traditional buildings, including courtyard houses, which totalled about eleven million

square metres and housed some 1.2 million people.8 Of the families that were displaced, most

would be required to resettle in suburban dwellings. Although the new housing on the city’s

periphery was often larger and equipped with more modern conveniences, this process of dis-

placement had severe social implications. The tearing down of houses is more than a physical act

of destruction; it affects the homes and families within. Yin Xiuzhen collected all of the roof tiles

for Ruined City from demolition sites near her home. Her scattering of these tiles and aging furni-

ture in the exhibition alludes to the torn social fabric of contemporary Beijing.

The swiftness and scale of this program of physical restructuring created an urgency for transfor-

mation, and, subsequently, disruption within the artist’s own neighbourhood. After her marriage,

she moved into a siheyuan . As residents of a courtyard house, she and her husband were also at

risk of having their home torn down and being displaced themselves. Given the risk of being

uprooted as a result of these transformations, it was only natural for her to question what would

become of her life in the midst of these destructive activities.

The artist’s incorporation of cement powder as a unifying element in the installation is integral

to her language of destruction. The presence of cement powder in her everyday environment, in

its use as a common material for new construction, implied the inevitable destruction that

would ensue. The transformative quality of the cement powder itself refers to this process of

destruction. Hydration, the chemical reaction that takes place between cement powder and water,

occurs as soon as the two make contact. Even the piles of cement powder in the exhibit willundergo this exothermic reaction as the moisture in the air starts to set. When the surface hardens,

it becomes as hard as stone. Impossible to reverse, the cement has become concrete. There is irony

in that, though it may resemble the dust left by time, it cannot be wiped away so that one can

revive what is beneath.

This slow, silent process of obliteration instills a very particular view of the city. We see the

conditions of her existence in the numerous forms of destruction that she has presented in her

installation. This soundless destruction points not so much to the extreme violence of demolition

as it occurs in her physical environment, but to the silent, insidious violence done to the social

environment. The slow paving over of displaced remnants and fragmented traces of life indeed

shows a city in ruins. The artist’s own role here is as an inhabitant of a city undergoing hyper-

modernization and, subsequently, as a resident within a neighbourhood undergoing demolition.

She is both an observer and a victim within her ruined city.

:

Nobody can avoid life. Life is no more than self experience.

– Yin Xiuzhen9

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From 1996 to 2000, Beijing saw vast changes, both from the outside in and the inside out, most

notably through the rapid expansion of transnational corporations, a remapping of its physical

terrain, and the continuation of capitalist-inspired economic reforms. Created in 2000, Peking

Opera can be understood as a materialization of the artist's response to the changes in the city

during a time of movement and transition.

First exhibited in 2000, Peking Opera was shown at several different international venues. Two

particular incarnations of the work will be examined here: the first is Fuori Uso 2000 , The Bridges ,

which took place in Pescara, Italy. The second is Living in Time , which took place in the

Hamburger Bahnhof Contemporary Art Museum in Berlin, Germany, in 2001. The treatment of

each exhibition as a separate event leading to its own construction reveals the artist's own

rethinking of her vision and conception of this work in relation to its changing location.

Peking Opera consists of three basic materials: life-size colour photographs, small wooden stools,

and sound recordings. Fuori Uso 2000 included three life-size photographs. While Living in Time

expanded upon these images, I will first focus on the original three.

The first of these three photographs (fig. 3) attends to a group of elderly people performing

Peking opera music in public spaces in the Houhai district of Beijing. In the foreground, a man

is singing and standing with arms theatrically outstretched. Meanwhile, accompanying him on

traditional Chinese instruments are two men seated on small stools and one man squatting on

the curb. Six men can be seen standing or sitting in the background, openly watching and

enjoying the performance.

The second photograph (fig. 4) portrays two men, one facing us and the other with his back

to us, playing Chinese chess in a hutong . In this narrow alley, bordered by courtyard houses,

the two men have set their chessboard onto a simple wooden table. Seated on small stools,

pushed all the way to the right hand side of the alley, they intently play their game while a

bicyclist exits in the background.

The third photograph (fig. 5) focuses on a group of people gathered around a table. The group

clusters in the center of the middle ground of the photograph, each member visible either in

Figure 3. Yin Xiuzhen, Peking Opera , 2001,print on silk, 145 x 210 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

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profile or with his back to us. The

numerous circular cages hanging from

the trees in the foreground refer to a

leisure activity, common among the elderly,

called liu niao . Early in the morning,individuals bring their birds in cages into

parks or small streets, hang the cages in

the trees, and then sit and chat.

As a set of three, the photographs capture elderly Beijingers in the midst of daily activities. These

ordinary scenes from their lives offer an intimate view of one pocket of the Beijing community.

It is critical to note that the focus of each of these photographs, in content and positioning, is a

grouping of individuals. In the first image, there is both a central music group and a scattering

of peripheral bystanders. In the second photograph, two men are absorbed in a game. And in the

third photograph, a tightly knit group is gathered in the middle of the image. These different

forms of interaction are brought together by their status as everyday activity. Each individual’s

inward-looking stance, close proximity to another individual, and thorough absorption in the

activity at hand, serves to magnify a sense of intimacy and interaction.

Accompanying this language of

interaction is the notion of engagement,

understood as a sustained connection toboth people and place. Indeed, the figures

are all engaged with each other through

a shared activity. Underscoring their

interactions, however, is also their

apparent fixity to their location. In the

first photograph, seated musicians play

instruments while the central singer, with

gestures deliberate and timed, enacts a

performance to the accompaniment. In the second image, we see a game of thought and strategy

as it is being carried out; the pair’s concentration on the activity at hand captures a stillness that

is emphasized when placed in contrast with the bicyclist speeding out of the picture plane. And in

the final photograph, an informal gathering shows no indication of dispersion. Here, we are

shown the dynamics between performing an activity with others and being at rest.

The critical feature in each photograph that activates and epitomizes this dynamic is seatedness.

In each image, the seats ground people to their location. The seats themselves reassure us that

these people are rooted and engaged, rather than itinerant and rushed. This notion of seatedness

is most readily apparent in the artist’s inclusion of small stools in the exhibition. The acts of

simultaneously being seated and being active are manifested in this physically interactive element

of the installation. The artist’s incorporation of wooden stools refers both to the activities being

carried out in the images and to the viewer’s awareness of her own role as participant and

observer. Most of the stools stand no more than a foot off the ground and, as pieces of traditional

Beijing furniture, they represent pieces of the everyday.

The sound element, which consists of recordings of elderly people performing Peking opera in

the park, further enhances this sense of interaction. Through the visual and the aural, the visitor

Figure 4. Yin Xiuzhen, Peking Opera installation view, 2000, including photographs,

stools, and sound recordings. Fuori Uso 2000 , Pescara, Italy. Courtesy of the artist.


stools, and sound recordings. Fuori Uso 2000, Pescara, Italy. Courtesy of the artist.

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is given the opportunity to involve herself in the installation. Particularly in reference to the first

image, the act of sitting, watching, and listening to the scene presented seems to be an attempt,

on the artist’s part, at recreating a particular experience. In fact, this language of engagement and

interaction, as displayed in the actual images and between the image and the viewer, speaks directly

to the artist’s own experiences in Beijing.

While the artist, herself, does not fit into the demographic of elderly people, their inclusion in her

living environment afforded her the opportunity to observe their activities and lifestyles. Her

documentation of elderly people addresses issues that confront this particular segment of the

population. The urban renewal projects detailed in Ruined City saw the displacement of entire

families, including the relocation of elderly family members who often faced particular difficultly

in adjusting to life away from the siheyuan and hutong network. With the removal of their social

infrastructure, elderly people needed to adapt physically and psychologically to a quickly changing

environment. The artist's capturing of their daily activities suggests the continuity of place that

exists despite initiatives towards displacement.

In contrast to Ruined City , displacement in Peking Opera does not lead directly to disuse and

decay. Rather, we find evidence of the survival of habitual activities. These habits are part of a

slower pace of life, one based on themes of community and leisure, and seemingly at odds with

the high-speed, mobile, and commercially driven lifestyle promoted by the global city.Yet, the

elderly have managed to find their own place even within this newly modernized Beijing. The

artist’s language of engagement and interaction reinforces these notions of placement, rootedness,and survival. The incorporation of stools into the exhibit is an attempt to further provide ground-

ing and placement for the viewer to observe this process. Seen in contrast to the set of four chairs

in Ruined City , the stools here are inviting, accessible, and functional. They speak to the continual

use and reuse of objects, the placement of such objects into a specific environment, and a deliber-

ate purpose for doing so. In contrast to the complete destruction and displacement of life as dis-

played in Ruined City , Peking Opera invites, incorporates, and depicts the continuity of the living.

As viewers, we are made to identify with the artist’s position as a witness to the survival of tradi-

tional narratives of Beijing, as represented by both the elderly and the local traditions they carry

on. In Ruined City , we saw the artist as a potential victim of programs of displacement. The signif-

icance of Peking Opera extends beyond a concern for the elderly in Beijing to a concern for the

continuity of all local traditions, practices, and memories.

The artist interrogates the effects of globalization on local communities. Fredric Jameson points to

two opposing, though interrelated, interpretations of this globalization:

If you insist on the cultural contents of this new communicational form [i.e., globalization], I think

you will slowly emerge into a postmodern celebration of difference and differentiation. . . [as well as] a

falling away of those structures that condemned whole segments of the population to silence and to

subalternity. . . . If, on the other hand, your thoughts turn economic . . . [then] globalization is a picture

of standardization on an unparalleled new scale; of forced integration as well, into a world-system

from which “delinking” . . . is henceforth impossible and even unthinkable and inconceivable.10

In examining the incongruity between globalization’s instigation of plurality versus standardized

universality, it is possible to uncover the conditions and terms surrounding the artist’s questioning

of these different interpretations of globalization and its implications for notions of displacement.

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Yin Xiuzhen’s interrogation of the city as

the site of contestation for a global/local

duality can be seen in Peking Opera when

we consider each incarnation of it within

its particular site of installation. Theinstallation of the work in foreign cities

demonstrates a further questioning of the

survival of the local when moved into the

global. While the materials and content of

Peking Opera address the persistence of

tradition when faced with the entry of

global forces into China’s borders, the installation of the piece in a foreign city takes this represen-

tation of the local and deliberately places, or rather displaces, it into that city. The artist’s emphasis

on interaction and engagement must be analyzed with careful consideration of the location of the

installation, its physical composition within the site, and the audience of each exhibition. As

demonstrated by the two distinct installations of the work considered here, these factors all have

direct implications on the artist’s articulation of displacement and placement, and, in turn,

notions of exclusivity and inclusivity.

Fuori Uso 2000 took place beneath

highway bridges in Pescara, Italy (fig. 6).

Fuori uso , meaning “out of use,” refers tothe exhibit's annual theme of choosing a

place in Pescara that can be temporarily

converted into an exhibition space. The

installation of Peking Opera into such a

transformed space reinforced this very

question of the survival and loss of the

activities that come to occupy a location.

Installed under the highway, each element

of the piece—the photographs, stools, and audio recording—appeared extremely out of place.

Against a backdrop of large concrete structural supports, metal fences, and tall buildings,

the stools appeared disproportionately small and awkward. The recording of Peking opera

sung in a park clashed against the ambient noise of activity beneath the bridge. Placed in this

surrounding urban environment, the slow pace of life pictured in Yin Xiuzhen's images was

made even more palpable.

The bright white border surrounding each photograph further served as a visual barrier

between the space within the image and the place in which the image was installed. The whiteborder as a framing device placed the image within its own discrete space while emphasizing its

two-dimensionality. Its denial of any real sense of interactivity distanced the viewer from the

subject matter and emphasized the difference between the represented image and the environment

in which it was presented.

For the 2001 Berlin exhibit, Living in Time , the work was installed in its own gallery within the

museum rather than in an outdoor, urban space. Again, small stools were placed in front of images

of the elderly in Beijing engaged in quotidian activities, while a sound recording played in the

background. This time, however, the large photographs were replaced with wallpaper images


stools, and sound recordings. Fuori Uso 2000 , Pescara, Italy. Courtesy of the artist.

Figure 7. Yin Xiuzhen, Peking Opera installation view,2001, including photo

wallpaper, stools, and sound recordings. Living in Time , Berlin. Courtesy of the artist.

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(fig. 7). Through this entire visual and aural immersion, the viewer was encouraged to pause and

enter the scene. The compositional design of each image, placed within the installation space,

communicated the work’s language of interaction and engagement. In each case, the ground

portrayed in the picture plane appeared not only unobstructed, but also altogether inviting. While

the previous installation saw the solid white border as the line of demarcation, the erasure of thatline here attempted to blur the idea of discrete spaces. Regardless of whether it is the viewer

entering the photograph’s space or the photograph spilling into the viewer's space, the composition

speaks to a notion of crossing boundaries.

This institutional venue allowed the artist to remove the distracting noises and visual diversions

that were present in Fuori Uso 2000 . These two distinctive installation sites provided an opportunity

for the artist to investigate variations in the conveyance and reception of local traditions. Initially

confronted with these questions of displacement in her own home city, the artist took her

documentation of these local narratives abroad to examine how they would fare when doubly

displaced in a foreign environment. Through her experimentations with and explorations of

installation sites, we see her own rethinking of how local traditions can be translated and transmitted

across borders.

:

When I began this series, I was constantly traveling. I saw the baggage conveyer at the baggage claim

every time I traveled. Many people waited there. I was one of them. Since I always traveled with a huge

suitcase, it felt like I was traveling with my home.– Yin Xiuzhen11

Figure 8. Yin Xiuzhen, Portable City —Beijing , 2001, installation. Courtesy of the artist.

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In 2001, Yin Xiuzhen began a new series entitled Portable Cities . In addition to the construction of

an identity based solely on the conditions of existence in Beijing, the series also includes theartist's first attempts at visually representing foreign cities. In 2002, one year after the making of

Portable City—Beijing (fig. 8), she created Portable City—Shanghai (fig. 9) and Portable City—

Berlin (fig. 10). The series is ongoing, and the artist has since added thirteen cities, ranging from

Lhasa to Vancouver. The thread that connects all of these apparently disparate places is the artist’s

personal connections with each location, whether as an inhabitant, temporary resident, or tourist.

Located within the conceptual framework of the global city, this series examines the artist’s self-

positioning as both an insider and an outsider. By endowing each piece with the potential for

portability, she raises a question of whether a thing is perpetually in or out of place, thereby prob-

lematizing the very notion of displacement.

An investigation of both disparate and unifying elements in the first three portable cities, Beijing,

Shanghai, and Berlin, will evidence how the artist distinguishes between representations of the

cities according to varying levels of familiarity with them. Situated against the historical backdrop

of time, these notions of sameness and difference in urban spaces speak to the shifting relationship

between the city and the individual in the face of globalization.

Portable City—Beijing , which takes a suitcase as its physical framework, measures 30.5 x 91.4 x 61cm. Within the interior, a ring of little colourful cloth buildings and a television tower line the

perimeter of the suitcase. A light green shirt has been stretched out across the interior to create a

surface on which the cloth buildings have been sewn. The space within the frame of buildings is

bare except near the center where the green base has been stretched into a circular opening.

Within this hole, the artist has affixed a macro lens through which one can see a map of Beijing

lining the bottom of the suitcase. Along the bottom of the suitcase, beneath the stretched green

base, she has installed a light and a set of speakers. Emanating from the speakers is a sound record-

ing of noises from Shichahai, the public district just north of Beihai Park. In addition to the noises

of people chatting, one can also hear elderly Beijingers performing Peking opera.

Figure 9. Yin Xiuzhen, Portable City—Shanghai , 2002, installation. Courtesy of the artist.

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Constructed and exhibited in 2001,

Portable City—Beijing ostensibly served as

the template for subsequent works in the

series. However, given Beijing’s position as

her home, Yin Xiuzhen’s perception of this place is markedly different from that

of the other cities. The four essential

recurring elements of these works are

the suitcase, the map, the clothing, and

the sound recording. While the three

installations appear visually uniform in

their inclusion of these materials, each

installation’s particular use and synthesis

of these common materials reveals

divergent interpretations of the city based

on the artist’s own relationship with the

represented place.

It is striking that when looking at Portable

City—Beijing , the viewer cannot discern

any distinctive features in this constructed

cityscape that speak to its identity asBeijing. It is only by peering through the

magnifying lens that one can receive any real confirmation of the city’s identity. Simultaneously

concealed and magnified, the map at the base of the suitcase seems to anticipate the viewer’s

deference to the objective interpretation of a diagrammed place as an authoritative tool. The map

here offers a particular interpretation of the city as a space rendered through lines, landmarks, and

text. It is the city as a diagram, reduced to its most technical, mathematical, and geometric terms.

A testament to the results of urban planning, the map is a powerful instrument used to record the

supposed spatial and geographic order of a place.

This static and stringent two-dimensional representation of the city serves as a base for the three-

dimensional cityscape of buildings above. Rather than adopting the map's method of reporting

recognizable features of Beijing’s geography, the line of anonymous, simplified structures denies

the notion of a simulacral representation. Each cloth building is a small, colourful rectangular

block devoid of distinguishing characteristics. The composition of these buildings, which follows

the contour of the suitcase, also lacks any sense of specificity. This is not a place one could point

to on a map, nor one that anyone other than the artist herself could identify with certainty as

being Beijing. It is the artist’s own familiarity with Beijing that shapes her imagination of theplace. While these buildings remain anonymous to the viewer, to the artist they mark an intimacy

that extends beyond the need for mapped sites.

In contrast to this seemingly anonymous rendering of Beijing, Portable City—Shanghai and

Portable City—Berlin each display recognizable features. Portable City—Shanghai , measuring

129.5 x 80 x 40 cm, has a blue-green shirt stretched across its surface. The back cover of the suit-

case, covered with a piece of red cloth, is decorated with a circle of lights. A pair of nylon stockings

have been stretched from the left side of the back cover to the front right corner of the suitcase.

The legs of the stockings form two parallel curves, which swoop diagonally over the surface and

Figure 10. Yin Xiuzhen, Portable City—Berlin , 2002, installation. Courtesy of the artist.

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divide the blue fabric base into two triangular regions. While the front, lower left triangular region

remains bare, small rectangular cloth buildings and a television tower are clustered in the back,

right-hand corner of the suitcase. Again, a magnifying lens has been set into a central circular

opening through which one can see a map, this time of Shanghai. A light and a set of speakers

have also been placed in the bottom of the suitcase. The light can be seen shining through the bluecloth, while a recording of the Shanghai soundscape is emitted from the work.

Portable City—Berlin , also 129.5 x 80 x 40 cm, uses a brown-and-orange-striped shirt as the cloth

surface on which are attached the cluster of buildings. Most of the buildings are centered towards

the back of the suitcase, while some, including a television tower, are placed on the interior of the

suitcase cover. Architectural features such as columns and pediments can be detected on two of

the buildings. Two sleeves extend parallel out of the front of the suitcase, onto which the artist has

sewn four small, cloth rectangular vehicles. The circular opening with a magnifying loupe is also

included in this work, through which one can see a Berlin map illuminated by a light bulb.Again,

an audio recording of sounds from the city plays from the bottom of the suitcase.

Prominent architectural features of both cityscapes feature significantly in the artist’s two renderings.

Her depiction of Shanghai, for example, is anchored by the presence of the Oriental Pearl

Television tower. Similarly, the Fernsehturm, Berlin’s television tower, looms large on the city’s

horizon. The detail of the architectural structures in the image of Berlin stands in sharp contrast

to the anonymity of Beijing’s buildings in Portable City—Beijing . Brandenburg Gate, for example,

is easily identifiable in the artist’s rendition of Berlin. This movement away from the anonymouscityscape can be explained by the artist's own rapport with and understanding of each place.

Through Portable City—Beijing , the conditions of existence are understood as affecting the artist

as an inhabitant experiencing and observing the everyday changes occurring within her home. Her

relationships with Shanghai and Berlin, meanwhile, are far less intimate. While she did spend one

year abroad in a residency in Berlin, from 1999-2000, a sense of identification with the city is not

evident in her depiction of it. The display of recognizable attractions and renowned sites conveys

the understanding of place of a sightseer. It is the identification with the tourist-oriented sites,

rather than the intimate knowledge of its daily practices, that marks the artist’s role as a visitor.

These two separate identities, as insider and outsider, account for the differences in perception and

construction of the cities.

Portable City—Beijing includes both visual and non-visual references to the city as a lived space.

For this work, the artist collected old clothing from her own wardrobe and her family to build the

structures and base within her city. Once personal possessions, each item of clothing retains a

peculiar sentimental significance. These items have their own stories in how they were procured,

the occasions for which they were worn, and the value that they had for the wearer. For the renditionof Beijing, the artist’s inclusion of her own clothing speaks to the place as her home. For the other

works in the series, the artist collected used clothing from the residents of the represented place.

The actual integration of residents’ old belongings lends each separate installation its own

significance as a work possessing the remnants of that place's living memories and experiences.

Adding to this notion of the city as a social space of activity, the audio recording in this installation

broadcasts voices and noises that occupy the represented place. While the audio component of

Peking Opera was used to help recreate the experience of actually being in a space, the acoustic

element of Portable Cities serves more as an allusion to such an experience. For example, the

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sounds of the Beijing park remind the viewer that this place is a home to its inhabitants. In partic-

ular, the inclusion of the sounds of Peking Opera in the park speaks to the continuity of tradition.

In her construction of the different portable cities, from the perspective of either the resident

or the tourist, the artist interrogates the city as a site of contestation, especially of the binaryopposition between the global and the local. In her standardization of the same basic physical

structure of the different portable cities, she questions the gradual uniformity of all global cities.

Perhaps the most telling example of this returns to the repetition of the television tower motif.

Evidence of the growth of high-speed communication and mass media, the television tower

has become a ubiquitous element of the global city. Dissolving boundaries through broadcasts,

the television tower seems to be the fundamental sign for the technically based, high-speed,

boundary-free interpretation of space and practice.

It is this notion of crossing borders that speaks most directly to the rise of tourist culture and the

artist's place within it. Rather than being rooted to one place, accessibility to the world has allowed

the individual to move freely throughout. Implicit in this mobility, however, is also a sense of root-

lessness. The artist’s representations of Shanghai and Berlin both reify this notion of the tourist as

displaced individual. The artist’s employment of a recognizable cityscape emphasizes the map

beneath, which provides an authoritative tool for determining one’s place within the terrain. In its

identification of “you are here,” the map serves as a tool for placement. The language of placement

here is ironic, however, given the traveler’s implicit displacement within a foreign environment.

These references to mobility and displacement apply just as much to the place as to the person in

the age of globalization. This is demonstrated by the artist’s use of the suitcase as the framework

for each piece. Maintaining its original function, the suitcase can be shut, sealed, and transported

with all of its contents intact. By representing the city as a packageable and mobile entity, the artist

has not only stripped it of its rootedness, but has also effectively conferred it with the ability to

cross borders and boundaries. In its mobility, the movement of the city from one place to another

suggests a constant displacement of place.

The continued transformation of Beijing into a global city certainly contributed to the artist’s

interrogation of the effects of globalization. But it was also the artist’s own travels outside of her

home that served as the source of many of these questions about the sameness and difference of

place. While changes in Beijing seemed to signify a movement towards the displacement of its

inhabitants, when travelling abroad, the artist was again made to question her position as an

individual out of context. Unable to avoid questions of displacement within an increasingly

mobile world, the artist's self-positioning moves constantly into, out of, and between cities.

Through examinations of these three works by Yin Xiuzhen, I have reviewed a series of events

that shaped the artist’s life from 1996 onwards. These works, all created in response to the conditions

underscoring and controlling her living environment, reflect constant change in the artist’s

conception of herself. As evidenced by additions to her Portable Cities series, her concern with

the relationship between the individual and the city has continued to shape her life and her work.

Initially, as reflections upon the volatility and transformation within the city itself, her own

definitions of the city have altered as she has repositioned herself with regard to changing

perceptions of place.

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Since 1996, she has continually encountered the effects of displacement, particularly through

the lens of globalization, which has become an increasingly influential force in her environment.

In 1996, the notion of the global city appeared on her horizon as a threat to entire communities,

including the danger of displacement in her own. Her construction of Ruined City saw these

initiatives towards “renewal”as catalysts for destruction and loss. A persistent concern for thepossible loss of local tradition, as brought about by Beijing’s drive towards hyper-modernization,

led the artist to examine the conditions of displacement and the possibilities for survival in these

circumstances. In Peking Opera , her juxtaposition of surviving local traditions with foreign sites

helped her to realize her own role as an artist with international renown capable of communicating

the concerns of a local Beijinger. Her travels to other global cities have led to a questioning of the

possession, occupation, and connection that people have to places.

Each of her installations begins with and returns to her concern for Beijing. Its changes in physical

appearance, social fabric, and local traditions all evidence its transformation into a global city. In

accordance with the growing power of global forces, Yin Xiuzhen has also experienced great

changes in her own identity. While she began as someone who necessarily saw the city solely from

the inside, she has since been able to gain an outsider's perspective.

The opening up of the artist’s own world through effects of globalization should not be overlooked.

Audience participation and involvement in Yin Xiuzhen’s works has also been facilitated through

global channels. Through such means as the distribution of materials, digital media, international

exhibitions, and travelling exhibitions, the artist has been able to communicate her recreations of

local experiences, questionings of global forces, and continual studies of sameness and difference.

Understood in post-industrial terms, exhibitions of her work represent occasions for information

exchange. This possibility for greater diversity and plurality through the uncovering of more

voices and languages represents another facet of globalization. Not only have her works opened up

the very nature of the city as a site of contestation, she herself represents the complexities inherent

in an understanding of globalization and its effects on the individual. Ultimately, it is the

emergence of the diversity of Yin Xiuzhen's identities that speaks most clearly to the contradictory

negotiations of displacement between the local and the global.

Notes

1 Wu Hung, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art,University of Chicago, 1999), 125.

2 Yin Shuangxi, “The Periphery and Cultural Concerns: Making and Exhibiting Installation and Experimental Sculpture in the 1990s,” inReinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art,2002), 67.

3 For more on this turn to addressing the “contemporary” in the 1990s, see Wu Hung, “Introduction: A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art(1990-2000) in Reinterpretation , 10-19.

4 The term “global city” here refers to the interpretation put forth by Saskia Sassen in Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: The NewPress, 1998), which suggests the city as a strategic site for the “new politics made possible by globalization in a detailed understanding of theeconomics of globalization, and specifically in the centrality of place against a rhetorical and policy context where place is seen as neutralizedby global communications and the hypermobility of capital.” (21)

5 Ai Weiwei, ed., Chinese Artists,Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 1998-2002(Hong Kong:Timezone 8, 2002), 130-31.

6 Wu Hung, Transience , 123.

7 Lin Xiaoping, “Beijing: Yin Xiuzhen's The Ruined City,” Third Text 48 (Autumn 1999): 46.

8 Zheng Lian, “Housing Renewal in Beijing-Observation and Analysis” master’s thesis, McGill University, 1995,http://www.mchg.mcgill.ca/mchg/lia/lianch3.htm (accessed September 27, 2004).

9 Half of the Sky: Contemporary Chinese Women Artists (Bonn: Frauen Museum, 1998), 70.

10 Fredric Jameson,“Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,” in The Cultures of Globalization (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 56-57.

11 Christophe W. Mao, ed., Chopsticks (New York: Chambers Fine Art, 2002), 70.

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