Everyone’s Life is an Artwork
An unnamed Cambodian girl.
Born in Beijing in 1951 to a family of intellectual Communists, Qu Lei Lei was just 15 when the serrated iron wheels of Mao Tse Tung's Cultural Revolution began turning. His parents had risen to elevated positions in the Party, and had brought up their children to believe absolutely in the regime and in Mao as leader, but even such devotion could not save them from the brutal effects of the reforms implemented to further the 'Four Great Leaps'.
Angry at the break up of his family, Lei Lei demonstrated against the oppression and was himself badly beaten by government agents.
Though he had attended art school as a child, learning the ancient techniques of calligraphy, the Cultural Revolution forbade any visual art beyond posters celebrating the 'Dear Leader', and whilst serving in the army the young Qui was often forced to sneak out into the fields to sketch on whatever fragments of paper he could find, often, ironically, in the margins of government propaganda newspapers.
Following the death of Mao in 1976, and the ensuing relaxation of censorship, Lei Lei became a leading member of the Stars group of artists, who famously hung their work on the railings outside the Chinese National Gallery. In 1979, in protest at being banned from exhibiting inside. Now resident in London, Lei Lei's work still bears the scars of his upbringing.
In works such as ‘Cambodian Girl, name unknown’, in which a small girl stares from behind barbed wire we can find an explicit criticism of the brutal actualities of Communism. However, the background of terror and repression seems to have left Lei Lei with an ardent faith in the power of the individual, and the portraits in this small exhibition carry an ultimately positive message.
Lei Lei mixes familiar Western painting methods with traditional Chinese brushwork, and in some cases calligraphy and collage for the series of portraits, depicting Chinese and English subjects, ranging from ballerinas and beggars to diplomats and Chelsea pensioners. The paintings are large, about five by three feet, and in each case depict the face of the subject monochromatically, framed by muted primary colours.
We are given no information about the sitters save in their name and occupation, though crucially in most cases each has contributed his or her own handwritten message to their portrait. Most of these take the form of affirmative, sometimes stoical ‘life slogans’, for want of a much better phrase. Xiao Xuan, a Chinese businessman writes ‘I do my best, I accept my fate’. Andy, a homeless Londoner has written ‘You're never a failure until you stop trying’.
Spick, a Chelsea Pensioner simply ‘Soldiering has been my life’. These epigrams could seem platitudinous, were it not for the astonishing clarity and honesty of both artist and subject. In the most direct of the portraits Lei Lei takes as his subject a victim of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, painting her portrait at the centre of a collage of newspaper images of the collapse of the twin towers.
In doing so he extracts from the political the personal, and shows with unapologetic boldness how in the aftermath of the attacks we have focused on the political and religious implications, often to the exclusion of the thousands of individual personal tragedies. But for the most part viewing this collection of portraits is reminiscent of finding a collection of old photographs on a market stall, in that we have no idea who the subjects are, or what stories they have to tell.
The exhibition will excite anyone who enjoys such discoveries.
28th Apr 2005