Dialogue

What forces continue to oppress and restrain women artists in contemporary China? Some powerful answers are provided in this fictional memoir of Xiao Lu, who played an important role in the avant-garde cultural scene during the tumultuous early months of 1989. The acclaimed "China/AvantGarde" exhibition organized by Gao Minglu at the National Art Museum in Beijing was shut down after about three hours from its opening Feb. 5 1989, when Xiao Lu shot live bullets into her mock-up of two telephone booths, turning an edgy installation work into an over-the-edge performance piece and an icon of the modern Chinese art movement. Many questions were left unanswered from where she got the gun to what she meant by all this. As it turns out, the man and the woman pictured in these two phone booths were specific people, and she was one of them the daughter of the director of a provincial art academy. Her father helped her get into the Central Academy in Beijing, where she was abused in various ways. In the 1989 exhibition, symbolically, she shot her nemesis, then went outside to a public telephone, called him, and told him what she had done. These events are naturally at the center of her memoir, but in describing the events and their aftermath, she offers remarkably candid views on the difficulties facing women in contemporary art circles and the way cultural power is exercised in China.Xiao Lu studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She currently lives in Beijing."This is a genuine confessional but it rings true. Xiao Lu does not put on airs or spare herself at all. Her vulnerability is put on display for all to see and explained for all to understand, which is essential but also brave and heartbreaking. This text offers an unusual look at a significant Chinese artist's innermost thoughts. No doubt about it, this work will shock many readers shock and enlighten." -Jerome Silbergeld, Princeton University