Ren Hang’s Photographic Wonderland: An Analysis of His Genderless Visual Language

Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20), 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 Copyright © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License. Colaboracións REN HANG’S PHOTOGRAPHIC WONDERLAND: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE Maite Luengo Aguirre Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU and Université Bordeaux Montaigne, España [email protected] Recibido: 04/02/2021; Aceptado: 28/05/2021 Abstract The work of the Chinese photographer and poet Ren Hang (1987-2017) was received internationally by emphasising the sexual content and revolutionary character of the use of naked bodies. Nonetheless, the recent years after his death have led to a diversiication of investigations in reference to his polysemic photography. This article aims to contribute to the pluralization of the readings around his work, having developed an investigation on the visual genderless treatment of the people posing for him. For this purpose, irstly, the article departs from the revision of the European reception of his work, followed by the study of the signiicance of nakedness and gender. Then, the identiication and investigation of the speciic elements within the work of the artist that contribute to a possible genderless reading is undertaken. Keywords: Ren Hang; photography; body; nude; gender. Resumen La obra del fotógrafo y poeta chino Ren Hang (1987-2017) fue recibida en el contexto internacional destacando su contenido sexual y el carácter revolucionario del uso de cuerpos desnudos. Sin embargo, los recientes años póstumos han dado paso a la diversiicación de investigaciones referentes a su polisémica fotograía. Este artículo propone una contribución al actual proceso de pluralización de aproximaciones, habiendo desarrollado una investigación en torno al tratamiento visual sin género de las personas que posaban para él. Para ello, primeramente, se parte de la revisión de la recepción europea de su obra, acompañada del estudio del signiicado de la desnudez y del género. A continuación, se realiza la identiicación e investigación de los elementos concretos hallados dentro de su obra que contribuyen a una posible lectura sin género. Palabras clave: Ren Hang; fotograía; cuerpo; desnudo; género. Luengo Aguirre Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 2 INTRODUCTION The photographer and poet Ren Hang (Changchun, 1987 – Beijing, 2017) left a vast legacy of more than a thousand images showing naked models in a variety of postures. His work has continued to be exhibited in Europe after his decease, as his popularity continued to increase. Unfortunately, within this context, his complex images have been frequently reduced to a reading based on their potential sexual content. Because of his short as well as intense career, there have not been yet much research regarding his art. Nevertheless, in the recent years researchers are showing an increasing interest towards his work, creating new readings emerging from a variety of disciplines. A sign of this new turn was the inal project by an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies student. Indeed, Xu Jiachen analysed the relation between queer bodies and the non-humans in Ren Hang’s photography. She departed from a sociological approach emphasising the links between the queer of colour and the non-human element (2018). More recently, Nicholas Gamso wrote a publication for the journal of the Asia Art Archive, where he discussed the relationship of the photographer’s work with the city, focusing on queer body politics (2019). Likewise, young researcher Ada Quondamatteo from the University of Bologna wrote about the psychological aspects of the poetry by Ren such as depression, the experience of loneliness and self-perception (2020). Indeed, if anything, Ren’s work can have many different readings, as people that worked with him and his photographs acknowledge. In an interview, even the model Ke Xin, who posed for Ren Hang, talked about the mix of dirtiness and purity that the images had to her (VICE Japan 2013)1. This variety of depictions offers the chance to make different readings that may even one contradict the other. But it is there where the richness of his work lies, endless readings arising from it, as curator Thomas Dukes has indicated2. In this article, I intend to contribute to this diversiication tendencies, as they seem to be the best tool to understanding the polysemic work of the photographer. Thus, I propose redirecting the discussion towards the genderless aspect of his work, since his photographs can be valuable contributions to the development of queer aesthetics. This practice of challenging and relecting on gender norms through renewed aesthetics, as well as experimenting with the lesh, has some precedents within contemporary photography. Concerning the Western artistic creations, I would like to mention two artistic couples and romantic partners, which were inluenced by surrealism. In the 1920s and 1930s, Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe (better known as Marcel Moore), created works mainly consisting of portraits and selfportraits playfully combining female and male elements, thus, exploring gender luidity. Then, Hans Bellmer and Unica Zürn are to be named. In a series of images known as Untitled (Unica Bound) (1958), Zürn was photographed by her husband, while she was tied with a cord that deformed her female body in a disturbing manner. Furthermore, there has also been relevant photographic work developed in the Chinese context relecting on gender and bodies, especially in the 90s. During this period of time, Xing Danwen created I am a woman (1994-1996), a series of photographs she took of other women without clothes, in representation of her inner questions. Similarly, related with femininity but erasing borders with masculinity, performance artist Ma Liuming created an alter ego named Fen Ma REN HANG’S PHOTOGRAPHIC WONDERLAND: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 3 Liuming. In the image Fen Ma Liuming’s Lunch (1994), we can identify the ambiguous identity he created by utilising his feminine facial traits in combination with his nude cisgender male body. This lack of clarity in gender classiication is also present in the work by two artists who approached bodies associated with nature in a non-binary way. Firstly, Cang Xin in collaboration with Zhang Huan created the work To Add One Metre to an Anonymous Mountain (1995) in which naked bodies appeared piled on top of a mountain, adding an additional metre heigh with their lesh, with no gender distinction. Secondly, in the early 21st century, Liu Wei captured nether parts of bent bodies It looks like a landscape (2004) creating a renewed landscape simulating traditional Chinese ink drawing. Once previous cases have been presented, I will proceed to the analysis of the work by Ren Hang. In order to study the genderless aesthetic contribution that Ren made to contemporary art, I begin by examining the European reception, focusing on the curatorial selections regarding both photobooks and exhibitions. Then, I present the approach that the artist had towards nudity and gender. Finally, I identify and study the visual elements of his photographic corpus, in order to develop a new reading of his work. THE EUROPEAN RECEPTION AND BEYOND In order to understand the general vision of the artist’s work developing in Europe, I will present some of the milestones from the beginning. There are two important igures at the start of his international career: Ai Weiwei and Pierre Bessard. First contacts with the Old Continent came thanks to Ai Weiwei, who invited Ren Hang to participate in the exhibition FUCK OFF 2 in 2013 at the Museum of Groningen3. A year later, the French publishing house specialised on photography Éditions Bessard, printed a limited edition of 500 photobook of the artist titled: The Brightest Light Runs Too Fast. The artist used to work with fanzines back in China, which were of humbler dissemination by nature. So, this publication in collaboration with the French editor was an essential impulse in his career because it succeeded in reaching a broader public. Another important milestone is the extensive photobook edited by the well-known publishing house Taschen in 2016. Up until now, this is the biggest photobook publication of his work available to the public. Now his website has disappeared; this book is an important tool to understand the narrative provided in this broad edition available to readers. The selection of the images was mostly composed of those showing the genitalia and sexuality in a quite straightforward manner (Ren and Hanson 2016). This accounts for one part of Ren’s work, which underlines the hypersexual. However, it may create dificulties for the audience in having a complete comprehension of Ren’s body of work. Luengo Aguirre Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 4 Fig. 1. Ren Hang, 2012. Image courtesy of Ren Hang/ Galerie Paris-Beijing. Another point to be considered, is that the images showing naked bodies are not pornographic by themselves, but they become so in the viewer’s mind. Thus, seeing pornographically could be deined as staring at something for sexual excitement. Indeed, Stephen Mumford argues that the pornographic element comes in the gaze of the observer and that two different people can see the same thing in two very different ways. He even suggested that people may see things differently, depending on their gender (2013). In relation to the gaze and pleasure, researcher Chen Shuxia has maintained that in Ren’s photographs, there is a voyeuristic relationship between the viewer and the bodies due to nakedness, youth and the fantastical compositions (2018). Moreover, Brad Feuerhelm even argued that “there is almost a voyeuristic tourism involved by the Western eye bound to the boom of his career” (2015). Consequently, not only does gender affect the viewing experience, but also the socio-cultural background; probably, the reception in Europe has been largely affected by this way of seeing as well. Also, the fact that the models were asked to pose hiding their face, may have facilitated this voyeuristic practice, as it can be seen in the image below (ig. 1).4 There are yet other assumptions that have been made when describing the work by Ren Hang, which has to do with supericiality, together with ideas related to the revolutionary. An example of the combination of these elements, is the solo exhibition Love, Ren Hang. This major display of 150 images at the European House of Photography in Paris was held from March 2019 to May 2019, in which the “naked revolutionary” idea was underlined. The curatorial approach was mostly organized in a chromatic and stylistic way, gathering images that were aesthetically matching, which could have been completed with some insight into the different narratives. This exhibition was later displayed at C/O Berlin Foundation with the same title, from December 2019 to February 2020. Due to the large number of artworks shown in these exhibitions, I consider them together with Taschen publication as the most inluential towards the public, consequently creating a supericial narrative around his work. REN HANG’S PHOTOGRAPHIC WONDERLAND: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 5 Fortunately, there are other alternative readings that have been done, such as the exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The display invited the audience to relect on Ren Hang’s photography from another perspective: thinking about the affectivity, as it was part of the collective exhibition Wake Up Together displayed along with Robin Hammond and held between 2018 and 2019. It was organized in the context of Homotopia Festival 2018, an art and heritage festival dedicated to the LGBT+ community. In this direction, we ind the exhibition held in Italy at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci from June to August 2020. An exhibition that in the website introduction already underlined the variety of perspectives approaching Ren’s work, by even mentioning the lack of importance of gender that I argue in this article. Nevertheless, one may argue that the supericiality of the curating style in some of the exhibitions, may correspond to the supposed frivolity of Ren Hang’s work. It is certainly a reading that may arise. This supericiality was signaled by Ai Weiwei, while defending the existence of deep meanings in Ren’s work. Indeed, Ai referred to the late images by Ren Hang as “poetic and full of sadness” (Genova 2017). A contradictory interpretation that can be understood regarding the complexity of his work. Curator Zhang Yuli, who co-curated the exhibition at Shanghai’s Modern Art Base between July and August 2017, argued that there was an unavoidable contrast in the work of Ren: while the images may result as visually bright, they have a dark side (Liang 2017). The artists himself stated that there was no symbolism behind the work, that it was just for fun. But photography is not objective, as it is a way of seeing the reality that has been captured. So consciously or unconsciously, conventions, desires and beliefs are projected into the artwork (Elkins 2007). In the interview with Ren’s French editor, Pierre Bessard, he told me that even if he did not consider there to be a hidden meaning in the elements, he acknowledged the artist had a very developed poetic language, in which clear inluences from Lin Zhipeng could be appreciated5. These could range from the use of the naked body, to including lowers and animals, and even similar backgrounds. Then, as Ren’s work developed, it differed more from the artist that pioneered the concept of private photography in China. It seems that discrepancy around Ren’s work is to be understood as a constituting part of itself. ON THE LIMITS OF NUDITY In Europe, we are used to consider nakedness being part of our artistic heritage. Since Ancient Greece, nudes in the artistic practices have been common in order to explore the concept of beauty. However, this has not been a genre in traditional or early contemporary Chinese art. Nakedness in China has traditionally been linked with a lack of morality in terms of exhibiting what should be part of privacy and, hence, was not particularly popular within the artistic practice back in the 80s (Kristof 1989). In relation to contemporary Chinese history, nudity was oficially banned since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Nevertheless, in the 80s, there was a slight change of attitude towards the nude. In 1984, nude models were oficially admitted again into the art schools, in order to explore the beauty of the body (The Economist 1989). In 1989 the irst exhibition of nudes opened at the Beijing Art Gallery. The 1990s were a time when extreme performances happened and the bodies were more closely related to suffering and violence, rather than they were to beauty. Consequently, later in 2001, the government responded to this kind of practice with a decision dictated by the Ministry of Culture of China, announcing the “Resolution to Cease All Performances and Bloody, Brutal Displays of Luengo Aguirre Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 6 Obscenity in the Name of Art”, making some forms of nudity undesirable, and showing that it was still quite a taboo in Chinese society (Wu and Wang 2010, 277). This event conirmed that the display of nudity remains a subject of discussion. Nonetheless, artists using naked bodies do not necessarily do it in a dissident way towards the government, but rather as a way of mere exploration of nakedness. Outside of China, artists that are being censored seem to have a certain aura that emphasizes the effect of their work, which sometimes overshadows one’s understanding of the other aspects of their artistic production. On top of that, in the particular case of Ren, the fact that he decided to end his life in 2017 has probably still added ghoulish fascination towards his work, understanding his work from a romanticized approach. Fig. 2. Ren Hang, 2012. Image courtesy of Ren Hang/ Galerie Paris-Beijing. Still, Ren himself stated that he did not consider his work as ground-breaking or revolutionary, arguing that nudity is the most natural state of the human being. Ren Hang had a down-to-Earth approach in his photographic practice. In an interview with the British Journal of Photography, he argued that he used nudity so that he could feel more realism and sense of presence (2020). Ren felt that when taking pictures of people who were wearing clothes, they tried hard to present a certain image, so portraying them nude enabled a more direct and honest depiction of them. We can better understand his approach by reading an answer he gave in an interview with the magazine Medium: “We were born nude. So, talking about revolution, I don’t think there’s anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution” (Ren and Bernhardsson 2017). REN HANG’S PHOTOGRAPHIC WONDERLAND: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 7 This naturalization of the naked body is specially underlined in the pictures taken outdoors in the wild nature, where models seemed to remind us of the animal condition of the human, hiding the models for example in between the trees (ig. 2). Also, in the same interview, in reaction to the fact that there is a tendency to directly equate the naked body with sex and pornography, he afirmed: “I don´t like the word “erotica”, I prefer “pornographic” I think it´s more direct […] I don´t need to make it classy by calling it erotica. I don´t think there is nothing wrong with low-class” (Ren and Bernhardsson 2017). Nevertheless, even if Ren was comfortable with his photographs being identiied as low-class, this chameleonic artist was also related to high fashion. The photographer collaborated with brands such as Gucci as well as fashion magazines, contributing to the idea that the images have nothing to do with the ordinary nor the vulgar (Anglès 2019). Yet, these depictions have also been described as low-class, comparing them with artist Yang Yong’s series Fancy in Tunnel (20012003) consisting of images of prostitutes in Shenzhen (Chen, 2018). There seems to be a thin line between the vulgar and the high-class, as his work has been approached from both. Still a point that reminds us of the debatable nature of his images, which remain exposed to new interpretations. GENDER, LAW AND PRESENCE Once Ren Hang’s work reception and his own position has been explained, I aim to focus on gender and its apparent absence. For this purpose, in this section I combine the theoretical perspective on gender of some researchers, together with a poem by the artist himself. When considering gender, convention has an important impact on its display. Judith Butler already suggested that the gendered position arises from being subjected to regulation, which leads to the naturalization of femininity and masculinity in each culture. This is a normativity from which gender is constructed and maintained, as Judith Butler asked: Is there a gender that pre-exists its regulation, or is it the case that, in being subject to regulation, the gendered subject emerges, produced in and through that particular form of subjection? Is subjection not the process by which regulations produce gender? (Butler 2004, 41). This question triggers the reader to relect on the link between gender and regulation, trying to guess who came irst, as the chicken-and-egg dilemma. The reader can implicitly understand the essential role of regulation and following those rules that create gender. In the case of Ren, he made short poems which were mostly about sexual intercourses but there were also some that talked about other topics such as “law”. In the very short poem Hide-and-Seek, we can read as it follows: Where there is no law, I will hide there. (Ren 2011)6 The artist used the name of the “Hide-and-Seek” children game to relect on law and hiding from it. A playfulness that could metaphorically be related to the way he also approached his artistic work as a shared cheerful moment, where law and gender were nowhere to be found. A playful tendency of hiding and omitting that was very common in his work, as it is shown for instance in an image where a model is trying to hide inside a suitcase (ig. 3). Luengo Aguirre Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 8 Going back to the gendered concern, this was visible even in some of Ren Hang’s early works, where characteristics of gender luidity could be identiied, in terms of gender performativity related to clothing and make up. Ren’s early works used to show people who were almost naked, in which the characteristics applied to normative binary genders were switched or combined in further exploration of oneself. Afterwards, ornaments disappeared, and the bodies were left naked. This naked factor underlined the bodily presence and its materiality, which is to be understood as a ground to be problematised in relation to gender (Butler 1993: 30). While it may be unsettling, it opened new possibilities for the material understanding of the body and its dynamic with gender. Fig. 3. Ren Hang, 2011. Image courtesy of Ren Hang/ Galerie Paris-Beijing. Related to this subject, Basia Sliwinska made a very interesting parallelism when comparing the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with gender. She suggested that representation is not only luid but also happens between the presence and the absence, as it is not always there (Sliwinska 2016). In this way, by completely undressing and liberating the body from socially acquired artiices, elements of gender performativity are left out of the visual discourse. Also, the strangeness of the bodies makes it dificult to label them in relation to any gender, as Stephanie H. Tung previously suggested (2017). Therefore, Ren’s work may propose a challenging alternative to the Western case of male subject/ gaze and female object dichotomy. In the classical Ways of Seeing, John Berger suggested that, especially in European oil paintings, men act, and women appear. To the extent that in looking to an oil painting, even if the viewer is a woman, she will probably have a socially male way of looking at the artwork (1972, 42). Indeed, Western aesthetic tradition has identiied men with the reason, mind and spirit, women have been linked to the body, senses and desires, which is considered to be a lower category. On the contrary, Chinese aesthetic tradition was about balance between body and mind. A harmonious balance derived and reinterpreted from the Confucian aesthetic experience, that can REN HANG’S PHOTOGRAPHIC WONDERLAND: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE Quintana: revista do Departamento de Historia da Arte, (20): 1-14. 2021. ISSN-e: 2340-0005 https://doi.org/10.15304/quintana.20.7471 9 be useful for feminist aesthetics as Eva Kit-Wah Man suggests (2015). The close position behind the camera that Ren Hang once occupied, is now the place of the viewer. The subjects are so near to the camera, that it gives a very tactile feeling, as Thomas Dukes proposed in the interview, calling the viewer’s body to experience the artwork, with no discrimination of the senses or gender in comparison with rationality 7. TOWARDS A GENDERLESS VISUAL LANGUAGE The influence of advertising aesthetics The treatment of the images responds also to a uniform aesthetic, that contribute to a potential genderless appreciation. Ren Hang received educated in the ield of advertisement; thus, his visual language was probably inluenced by his background. Indeed, I argue that the atemporality, uniformity and body fragmentation shown in his photographs (common in marketing), lead to a genderless reading. Firstly, I would like to comment on the creation of atemporality through the use of lash, lack of decorations and centered composition. Ren’s photographs had the capacity to stop the passage of time, which contrasts with the usual depictions of the body in Chinese art, where presence is perceived as rapidly coming and already passing away (Wiseman 2011, 131). The use of lash can be considered a contradictory signiier of the concept of atemporality, while at the same time being linked to instantaneity. The lack of any decorations in the images may give the feeling of an experimental laboratory, contributing to the non-gender-related nature of the spaces. In the same way, there is an important tendency to put the body in the center of the camera. These kinds of images may recall fashion magazines or advertisement techniques that put the focus on the product and avoid any potentially distracting elements, unless they add any signiicance on purpose. When recalling Ren’s photography, there is also a homogeneous type of bodies that may cross one’s mind. This is to say young and gracefully thin bodies, generally showing clear skin and corresponding to Chinese people. The uniformity of the type of bodies may seem like a lack of diversity. It is important to acknowledge the fact that most of them were his friends, around %70 he said in an interview (Berhardson 2012) or fans that wanted to pose for him and probably the youngest generation was more ready to pose naked for a photography. I suggest that this tendency to the depiction of homogeneous bodies contributes to genderless aesthetics, as projecting prejudices becomes more complicated with little possibility for comparison to be made. Between the years 2010 and 2011, some of his early images used to capture mannequins. This may have been a sign towards the tendency of homogeneous body types used to create later compositions. The mannequins were photographed in a variety of quite visually aggressive ways: from lying on the street surrounded with litter and watermelons that seemed to almost be human lesh, to burning while wearing short hair wigs. The inexpressive mannequins may likewise share some resemblance with the later models facial expression.