Danwen Xing, Wo-men: A Personal Diary Of Chinese Avant Garde In The 1990s: Photographs, 1993-1998

Danwen Xing was born 1967 in Xi‘an, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In 1989, she moved to Bejing to study at the Central Academy of Fine Art. Soon, she immersed herself in the Bejing underground art scene and started to document it with her camera. The 1990s were a transforming moment for the Chinese art scene: artists who worked as painters suddenly took off their clothes, and performed naked in public. They revolutionized traditional Chinese art, searching for ever more radical ways of expression. "Conceptually, my idea was to create a body of work on the generation born in the 1960s, which is about, and related to, myself. Many of the photographs were taken because the artist invited me personally to document their action; and others were photographed for European magazine publications. (...) ‘Wo-Men’ are two separate Chinese characters. ‘Wo’ means ‘I,’ ‘Men’ means ‘We.’ So this book is about the artists and me." More than 250 photographs tell the story of Xing’s participation in the art scene and explore the generation born in the 1960s in China. In an accompanying essay, she tells of her personal explorations and struggles at the time, and describes the artists, their lives, the social situation, and the political background. "I wish this book was not only a unique publication on Chinese contemporary art with both photographs and art history, but also an honest portrait of myself in my twenties."Violent and tender, beautiful and disturbing, these photographs convey an urgency and passion hard to comeby in contemporary Western art circles. This book received the best publishing project award at the 2003 Arles International Photo Festival.