Soul as screw:
"A man's usefulness to the revolutionary cause is like a screw in a machine. It is only by the many, many interconnected and fixed screws that the machine can move freely, increasing its enormous work power."
-The Diary of Lei Feng.
Contemporary art is an effective medium for alternative visions and criticism of the established order. It works that way in China. Oblique messages are more likely to be missed by the censors than direct, written dissent on websites and blogs. There's also a double message in contemporary Chinese art that throws the censors off.
In general of course Chinese art is something the Center wishes to promote. The powerful frequently want to be surrounded by art. The rich want it on their walls at home; banks want it in their lobbies--even if they don't "get it." Art tends to confer--and confirm--elite status. Hu Jie's film Red Art was able to escape the censors initially because it conveyed one message on the surface, that Cultural Revolution "art" was worthy. To further this surface message Hu interviewed that art's "creators" and supporters, who spoke at length in the film. But nested in the film, in comments made by Hu during interviews, in brief flashes of imagery, was the second, "real" message of critical irony. The powerful, whether rich Westerners and bankers or red censors, are more likely to miss irony.
Maleonn's photographs convey this same double message: they are "indigenous" art; they are ascetically pleasing to view; they contain photographs from the Cultural Revolution with no surface criticism. They are art "of the people, by the people, for the people" and the People's Republic likes that. The sub-surface messages though are (1) individual expression (2) of themes: memory of suffering, and of a painful period, that the Center doesn't want expressed.
