Wang Qingsong is one of China’s leading contemporary artists. He creates daring and intricate photographic tableaus that blur the lines between reality and fiction. He deals with such themes as migration, globalization, consumerism and sexuality. Conscious perceptions of nudity and sexuality are changing a lot in China, and Wang assembles physical epics – his imagery at times involving hundreds of critical nudes.

View a gallery of his work

Q: We hear how China is growing economically and its social patterns are changing even more. How do you think perceptions of nudity and sexuality are changing in art contexts?
A: In Chinese traditions, nudity is a very much discussed topic, in novels and paintings in particular. We have seen a museum showing the traditional Chinese erotic gadgets from the past. However, up in the air, nudity and eroticism are a great taboo. Underneath, in less-controlled areas ... the countryside, dancing and singing in the clubs, bars, karaokes, bath houses ... provocative activities are very flourishing that provide hidden sexual trade.

In art contexts, perceptions of nudity and sexuality are also changing a lot. Talking about my employment of nude models, I can see a huge change in the acceptance of nudity and devaluation of nudity also. From the very beginning of using several nude art models costing several thousand yuan each, to the current when I invite over 200 nude models costing about 300 yuan each, people are becoming more careless about nudity. The flourishing market going on for nudity is very much visible in certain spheres.

¨Q: Earlier, you did some photo work in the context of a bath house. What inspired you to document models in this setting?
A: I remembered that when I was a child, I often went to public baths together with other boys because most families did not have such facilities in homes. Bath was the place where children played and had fun. I even swam in the bathtub. When I grew up, China experienced dramatic changes through opening up and modernization. People’s life has been improved. Many rich families installed bathroom and electric or gas water heater at home. The public bath houses have gradually disappeared from our life. However, they are reconstructed and decorated by people who have an eye to their commercial values. The past public bath houses reappear as bath centres where services of all varieties are offered, such as bath, footnail clipping, massage and dining, as well as karaoke and other forms of entertainment. They become a new spot for consumption. Rich guys even go there for discussing negotiations, signing contracts and having parties. Of course, bath houses are abused as places for sexual trade since it is the easiest way to make a huge amount of money. Such businesses go very faddish not only in the entertainment industry but also in fields such as urban construction, culture, etc. These phenomena seem to be very common. They are so weird and abnormal which exist in contemporary China. This is the reason and significance that I set up a spa setting and invite female models to shoot bath house.

¨Q: You went on to consider The Night Revels of Han Xizai, the 10th-century scroll. What do you think about the perception of intellectuals? Do you find curators and artists are visualized in certain ways?
A: What has been haunting in my mind is the position and destiny Chinese intellectuals experience in our history. In such an era that lacks ideals, people have cast doubt on the heroes and ideals of the past. I wanted to catch some scenes that describe such loss of hopes replaced with hoarding desire for money and power.

To compare the past and present, I appropriated the old and known masterpiece Night Revels of Han Xizai, which was the best piece of Chinese traditional figure painting. This old art piece reflected the then social life in the torrents of transformation, and depicted the life of a worried intellectual and high official in post–Tang Dynasty, Han Xizai. He was powerless to fulfill his ideals of reconstructing the country. To “cleanse” himself, he chose to evade and “indulge in” comfort.

After several centuries, even though the Chinese dynasties have changed frequently, the status of intellectuals in society has remained the same. With some thoughts on this question, I created Night Revels of Lao Li. It is a portrait of contemporary Chinese reality in this new century, portraying the situation of contemporary Chinese people, and of intellectuals in particular. I myself mimicked the artist from the ancient painter, showing myself observing, voyeurizing, reporting, etc.

¨Q: There are clusters of women in your photo Night Revels of Lao Li. They seem they could be courtesans, massaging intellectual men. How are actions like foot massage seen in China? What do you think about this depiction of a sort of hedonism in intellectual culture?
A: That is right. Foot massage in China is a great treat for all sorts of people, in particular, businessmen. They sometimes invite business partners, investors, friends, to massage places to talk about huge deals. In this relaxing environment, many things are easy to talk about. In the intellectual culture, hedonism is also very popular. People like to go to expensive brands shops to buy fashions, drive super cars, and have luxuries of all sorts in their life. I think nowadays people consider more the current pleasure than the future responsibilities.

Q: I find your work China Mansion startling, in terms of the range of models playing foreign guests. They’re variously mimicking the exposed bodily outlines from paintings by Manet, Gauguin, Rubens, etc. You later did an image of what looks like a nude model surrounded in a drawing class. How do you see traditions of Western art nudes affecting your work?
A: China Mansion summarizes my perception of Chinese social reality during the current stage of globalization. China has been very enthusiastic about inviting foreign experts in economy, technology, architecture and culture to give support and guidance to its modernization programs. These foreign specialists help to create economic opportunities and introduce alternative systems of thought to China.

However, the cultural clash creates social contradictions. This phenomenon triggered me to shoot and direct China Mansion. In the set-up, I invited models to play the parts of foreign guests, mimicking postures in paintings by Ingres, Courbet, Manet, Gauguin, Klein, Boucher, Rembrandt, Rubens, Man Ray, and several other artists. I wanted my models to communicate with each other across centuries and with Chinese culture, so as to create certain amiable relationships.

It seems my hope was in vain. It’s easy to see that I play the role of the confused host in this mansion, filled with both Chinese and Western antiquities. Obviously, the host is a conservative but also a fashionista. On the left of the photograph, the host wears a banner of welcome. But on the right, the armed guard – like a terracotta soldier – looks like a robber, preventing the honourable guests from free movement and forcing them to leave something valuable in the host’s mansion.

The Western nude paintings do not impact me a lot in my photographs. These Western art nudes are considered as human beings, as honourable guests easy to be identified only here in my photographs. In MOMA Studio, I posed one male and one female model in the pose of Russian-style painting (which we were taught a lot in art academies) simply to show the provocative spread of education as a business to make money in China. Children who are less capable of going to universities due to higher grades are given the opportunity to pay a lot of money to go to art schools. So how to make these children pass exams to art schools is a huge industry. This is what I am critical about.

¨Q: How did you consider what particular nudes you would present in your photographic scroll? Do you find each of the forms communicates something of what you feel is happening in Chinese social and sexual reality?
A: I seldom choose nice-looking girls, simply because I think normal nude girls are more ordinary and common, representing the questions I am throwing at in the pictures. Their fat or thin bodies all deliver the message of banal daily life.

Q: In Romantique, you’re also employing models to embody nude figures in works by Botticelli, Raphael, Matisse and others. How did you go about constructing this complex pastoral, fantasy image?
A: In Romantique, one seems to walk into a land that is half the heaven of Western religion and half a pastoral Chinese garden. There are cheap plastic leaves, fruits, flowers and decorations. The little ponds in this paradise emit a light smoke created from dry ice. Viewers can imagine false happiness in this fabricated, beautiful paradise. Models act out the figures in Western masterpieces by Massaccio, Velàzquez, Botticelli, Raphael and Matisse. There’s a Chinese golden Buddha, beautiful princesses and livestock. There’s a Western girl and a Chinese man and his little girl, highlighting the potential conflicts of this complicated international dialogue. These people are very happy, peaceful and without desire. Like China Mansion, the communication in Romantique is also forced, manufactured, chaotic and confusing in fabricated happiness in this man-made utopia. For me such fabricated ideal is like a daydream, a bubble.

I have a blueprint for the setting produced in Photoshop. Then I ask artisans to make the setting for me. On the date of shooting, I invited the models and dress them up before letting them pose for the Western art paintings’ girls. I also have a crew of lighting who helped me set up the required light effect.

¨Q: There seems a sort of manufactured quality to this group of figures, with the light smoke, the flowers. Do you think certain Western constructions of romance are also affecting Chinese culture?
A: I think maybe both Chinese and Western style of romantic garden affect my staging. I have been to many Western countries and visited parks, museums and private homes. So I might be influenced by the antique and modern architecture and pictures of gardens which I apply in my photo-shooting. Also the Chinese-tradition architecture and culture have influenced me a lot. These influences come from the memories. The weird situation happening in China is we have Western paintings reproduced in hotels, restaurants, parks, and Roman-style pillars are erected in many huge apartment buildings and gardens. You see them not fit in with each other. That is the inspiration for Romantique.¨

Q: How do you see your images, like Floating Heaven, where the figures seem suspended in some sort of ecological medium?
A: Yes, some of my photos describe heavenly super-pure images. I like to describe the heavenly peace and manly hedonism together in contrast against each other. In Chinese culture, we all dream of a better future if we can make ourselves useful in this current times. So we hope to be uplifted to heaven where we fulfill our ideals and dreams. That is why heaven always is endowed with white colours, clouds, purity and serenity, which I describe in my photos too.¨

Q: As you’ve incorporating Western nudes in your work, how do you see the place of nudity, when it involves Chinese models and Chinese culture?
A: This nudity in the body of Chinese models is simply showing the mixture of different cultures, or, in other words, the simple emulation of Chinese people, economy, culture, for the Western superpowers. This is the happening in China where we learn from the West and want to surpass the West. So in my photographs, I often use Chinese models to emulate poses from Western nude paintings.

¨Q: You seem to find an expressiveness with nudes in a number of your works, building more complexity alongside these forms over time. Can you tell us about the exposed figures in your image Night Patrol? There are figures of authority in the image and the forms seem as if they’re squatting. Does the image evoke routines of strip-searching?
A: Yes, you are right in saying that my work’s rich in exposed bodily forms build up complexity over time. In Night Patrol, it is not strip-searching. It is actually searching the fact whether sex trade is being done like red-light district.

I put on the guys some clothes/costumes which look like general/commander overcoats. It is very funny in China that similar coats like police coats, commander coats are dressed by normal people. In many hotels and restaurants, both waiters and waitresses are really dressed very funnily. It is a bad joke on emulation of fashions.

¨Q: I find one of your most striking images is Dormitory, where a large number of exposed figures seem to be organized and shelved in a sort of grid architecture. It’s a moving image to me, as it seems there’s some relations between the forms, some intimacies in such an imposing frame. What do you think of the figurations in this image and their spatial settings?
A: In this work, as also in another work Dormitory, I like to express the pursuit for dream and opportunities in this bigger city. In Beijing, movie studio I built up a three-storey building. At first glance, this building is like Chinese-style architecture. But upon closer look, one finds it combines the former Soviet Union architecture as well as European architecture in addition to the Chinese traditional civil house making. We can see the past brilliance and the potential danger of this combined architecture. I also create a dirty moist land in front of the building to make hints at the hardships of living in cities and fulfilling dreams. I tone down the colours to create a very disappointing scenario. The general feeling of this work will aim to achieve the mixture of the floating population and their dreams which is in conflict with reality. One can find from the different parts of this photograph the varieties of unsettled feelings I hope to achieve. ¨

Q: You took a photo at Fotofest – a gathering where Chinese photographers were invited to shoot beauty and nature. You captured some nude figures surrounded by a mass of people. How are they posing?
A: Actually, in China, each year professional photographers are invited to shoot nude girls, mostly Russians, in exotic places like mountain, river, chateau, park, etc. They are paying an amount fee or membership fee to shoot foreign nude girls. It is very strange for me to see such an abnormal situation in China. So I am making jokes of this strange event.

¨Q: What do you think of nude modelling and processes of voyeurism?
A: I think it is more the intuition of every one of us who like to spy into the privacy of other people. During the nude modelling, even models themselves look at each other and make fun of each other’s bodies. So for me, it is very interesting to find out the nudity to be so much accepted by the general public which used to be such a taboo.¨¨

Q: How do you think processes of commercialization and advertising are affecting bodily surfaces and aspirations in China?¨A: That is right. Advertising and fashions change a lot people’s habit to look at nudity. On the T-platforms, models can dress very naturally to satisfy the voyeurism of each one of us. Commercialization makes it very public for all products attached to nudity, including private products for married couples, films, website news for pop stars, etc.

Q: You’ve worked with a lot of nude models at times. Your work differs greatly from commercial imagery using desirable bodies. Do you find the models are interested in what you’re doing?
A: I have worked with nude models for quite a long time, over 10 years. From the beginning of using one model who was asking for a lot of money to the time when I can invite both male and female together to shoot group nudity, I found out money changes everything, that commercialism erodes into people’s mind. However, there seems no barrier to stop this trend, in China and also in the world. ¨

Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now, I am still working on photographs, short films, video works, sculptures and project-based commissioned artworks.

More photographs from Wang Qingsong: www.wangqingsong.com

Louise Bak is a poet, with books including Tulpa and Gingko Kitchen. She co-hosts Sex City, Toronto’s only radio show focused on relations between sexuality and culture (CIUT 89.5 FM). Her performance work has appeared in numerous spaces and in video collaborations such as Partial Selves and Crimes of the Heart.