Twentieth anniversary events of the 1989 ‘China/Avant-Garde’ exhibition

Qiu Zhijie’s solo exhibition, ‘Breaking Through the Ice’, at UCCA, Beijing

Nie Mu’s solo exhibition, ‘Memoire’, at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing

Tracey Snelling’s solo exhibition, ‘Where Mr. Wong Sent me’, at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing

China will mark a few politically sensitive anniversaries in 2009. On 5th February, only a few days into the new lunar year, the events commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 ‘China/Avant-Garde’ exhibition took place in various venues throughout the city. An exhibition that had foreshadowed political unrest twenty years ago has once again contested the government’s tolerance of freedom, while evoking sentiment and spirit from its artists and curators.

Meanwhile, the first exhibitions kicked off with a bang in the artists’ hubs of 798 and Caochangdi, despite the hovering uncertainties of the economic downturn. Remarkably, the impressive scale of Qiu Zhijie’s solo exhibition at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art showcases its second largest exhibition by a single artist. Qiu’s exhibition unveils his third project developed around the Nanjing Bridge – China’s first architectural landmark, also known as a site for suicide – in probing the paradox of the human ambition to build gigantic structures under the nation’s drive for modernization and its effect on human life.