Xi Jian Jun was a rebel who attracted public attention in 1999 when he jumped on Tracey Emin’s installation, My Bed, at the Tate Modern. Sixteen years later, the artist and Hoxton resident frequently collaborates with major galleries as his role as chairman of the UK Chinese Arts Association: an organization that aims to “encourage cultural exchange between China and the UK.” It seems that his days of dissent are long behind him. Except maybe they aren’t. Having grown up in the Cultural Revolution, under the rule of Colonel Mao, Xi Jian Jun explains that he’ll always be a “Revolution Boy…”
It is quite hard to know what to expect when meeting someone who has stewed a human penis in alcohol and then drunk the result. Yet, Xi is a man who has done just that, and he did it all in the name of art. On the day we meet he is polite and smartly dressed. We sit down together and share some, thankfully, penis-free Chinese tea.
Around the millennium, Xi and his partner Cai Yuan received a fair amount of media attention for their scandalous performances, which included urinating on Marcel Duchamp’s work Fountain, situated in the Tate Modern. Xi says that the urinal, signed by the surrealist artist, was asking for it.
Emin called the artists ‘gimmicky’ after they had stripped to their underpants and jumped around on Emin’s work My Bed and started a pillow fight. The Tate issued a very curt statement expressing frustration with the pair.
However, now Xi says that they have a good relationship with the institution. “I think that they were all misunderstandings. They thought we were anarchists, or not serious. But once we demonstrated that we were consistently working as professional artists, they were more accepting.”
It would seem they are extremely accepting. So much so that in his role as Chairman of the UK Arts Association, Xi is often engaged in meetings with the Tate, in addition to directors of other prominent galleries like Iwona Blazwick of the Whitechapel Gallery.
Xi is keen to emphasize the collaborative efforts of the UK Chinese Arts Association (UKCAA), an organisation that was formed from a group of twenty or so Chinese artists based Shoreditch and the West End. Launched in June last year, the main purpose of the organisation is to unite Chinese artists, including and establish a dialogue with British galleries.
He talks of another event he is coordinating in Tate Modern’s on the 26thApril, the same day as the London marathon. The Artist’s Marathon hopes to attract artists from all nationalities to run back and forth in the Turbine Hall. Xi says that in doing this the artists end their “traditional way of exhibiting”. They will be involved in a joint performance rather than presenting paintings or sculptures that are, Xi claims, “curated by hierarchies who have too much power over the artists”. It is becoming apparent that the Tate might not yet know about the event.
He goes on: “We’re all working with organizations and institutions, but for our own projects we do them our own way… this marathon at the Tate, regardless of whether they agree or not, we will do it… the people’s Tate, not somebody’s private property.”
Xi came to Britain when he was 25 years old. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution began when he was just four. He says that his defiant outlook has been heavily influenced by his experiences under the dictator, who was responsible for the deaths of many millions. “I’ve had a revolutionary spirit since I was young, planted in my mind in early childhood. I was a wild boy in a wild time. We never slept in a home we slept in the street. Fighting something not for something” he explains.
Yet despite this obviously harrowing history, Xi talks of Mao as a father figure. “I’m Mao’s child,” Xi says. “Mao used the words: ‘Revolution is great’. If you’re anti- something, you free your spirits.” It seems that under the dictator, Xi found a form of liberation.
Xi is about to go to Sydney, where he will perform The Empire. Xi will be sleeping inside a sculpture of the White House whilst the presence of CCTV cameras looms overhead. He will also be holding Chinese New Year celebrations in Charlton House, London on the 20th February.
a few pressing words 