Fathi Hassan. Crossing, 2016; acrylic and gauze on paper; 58.25 x 74.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Walking through Fathi Hassan: Edge of Memory at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, I felt the frustration, anguish, and urgency of Said’s claims circulating through the painterly and linguistic surface textures of Hassan’s works, as well as an acute awareness that the tensions of imperialism are not just of the 19th century, but distinctly of today. This timely exhibition asks us to engage with the historical legacies of imperial power alongside the representational possibilities, problems, and mutabilities inherent in visual and linguistic production to form connections between the lived experiences of colonialism and images of it.

Born in Cairo in 1957 to Sudanese and Egyptian parents of Nubian origins, Hassan engages with the history of colonialism through experimentation with ancient scripts and graphic forms of languages that have been upended by imperialism. For Hassan, these “interventions” into Nubian culture shift the historical and cultural memories of those who live at the seams between different accounts and consequences of history and occupation. The legacy of the Nubians, an ethnic group originating from modern-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, with a history dating back to dynastic Egypt, is a narrative peppered with outside conquest, displacement, economic strife, loss of traditional forms of writing and culture, and a fraught political relationship with the Egyptian state.[3]

Fathi Hassan. Angel, 2008; stone etching; 16.5 x 26 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Hassan’s engagement with the ancient forms and figures of his Nubian past presents a desire to unearth, rework, and revitalize the slow dissolution of this rich culture at the hands of Egyptian elites. Thus, like many artists living and working outside or displaced from their country of origin, Hassan registers the condition of cultural shift and migration conceptually as something liminal—between different spaces, times, perspectives, and memories—as well as precarious and fragile. Nowhere is this expressed more powerfully than in Crossing (2016), a painting rendered on tissue-thin paper, which works as a kind of fulcrum in the exhibition to turn viewers’ attention to the delicate nature of Nubian culture as it exists in an Arab world. Thrusting, ominous vectors of black-and-white layered figures cut into the force of other spaces and grounds built of repetitive calligraphic fragments of Nubian and Arabic languages—teetering between legibility and nonsense, and competing for domination. Bold and powerful despite its insecure foundation, Hassan’s work presents a battle for the survival of Nubian traditions.

Fathi Hassan. Container of Memory, 2000; mixed media with sand; 19 x 27.75 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

This struggle finds new form in Angel (2008), a soft, saturated work on paper of a camel progressing through the deep vastness of a desert environs, with an ominous, feathery vortex of bodily and organic fragments emanating out of the animal’s hump. The camel is set on mounds of Arabic-Nubian characters, while a jar sits precariously in the foreground, neither within nor on top of the mound. The desert, through Said’s eyes, is a place of Western imagination, fantasy, and exoticism. Hassan responds to these problematic projects of the Western gaze by presenting the desert and its noble beasts as a historical space of Nubians, who once dominated the deserts of Egypt in nomadic tribes—an account of the former mastery of a terrain they have since lost. The camel as an angel (of history in the Benjamin-ian sense, perhaps) is a monument to the history both alive and lost, walking out of or into the vast desert as a figure or mirage.

The symbol of the jar as a vessel of history and memory is rendered overt and recapitulated in Hassan’s Container of Memory (2000). The ancient utilitarian object often used in rituals, funerals, and ceremonies bears witness to religious rites as well as the activities of the everyday. The form of the jar is shaped from Nubian and Arabic characters that range in scale, from bold and chunky to thin and elegant, and it’s covered with a grainy, sandy texture. The piece points to the absurd logic of historical memory as something fully present and available within the stories and objects of a culture, but forever slipping out between the edges of one period and the next.

Fathi Hassan: Edge of Memory will be on view at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum in Atlanta, GA through May 26, 2017.

[1] I must extend my thanks to Dr. Maurita Poole, Director of the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, and curatorial assistant Diamond Mason for all of their help in the research and writing of this article. For in-text citations, see Edward Said, “Introduction,” in Orientalism (1978), New York: Vintage Books, 2013, pg. 9.

[2] Ibid. pg. 9.

[3] The most famous incident of Nubian oppression is the seizure of ancestral homelands during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s by the Egyptian government—a decision that has been an environmental and human-rights disaster for the Nubians (famine, erosion, flooding, and drought are just some of the consequences of this building project). See journalist Khaled Diab’s writing on Nubian history and culture for The Guardian; most recently, his contextualization of Nubian history in the aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution.

Fei Li. Entanglement: Trial 0, 2016; ink on paper; 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Li’s landscapes are fundamentally abstract, yet their linguistic evocations seem like conflations of written text and figurative image, despite being neither. Based on Li’s training in Chinese calligraphy from when she was two years old, the movement of her brushstrokes seems to call forth a visceral association with writing. They almost resemble metonymic Arabic calligraphy drawings, in which the word for a figure is written to stylistically resemble it. However, Li’s work refers not to a singular object or phrase but rather to a holistic sensation of movement and space. The result is a dynamic series of ink drawings that encourage a viewer to engage with a form of reading that precedes language, a paradoxical experience of translating without words. This is not to say that the work’s meaning is beyond words, but rather that it demonstrates the reciprocal relationship between words and meaning. Far from being unable to be articulated, Li’s landscapes feel like the beginnings of a new written language.

Fei Li. The Hidden Dimension and Other Observations No. 129, 2016; ink on paper; 60 x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Redolent with associations, Li’s landscapes almost become Rorschach tests for their viewers. Evoking a certain kind of delirium, the brushstrokes suggest Chinese calligraphy, then jungle undergrowth, then British tea garden. In Hidden Dimension No. 135 (2016), the loose horizontal strokes in the center ground lap against tight verticals, sketching out what might be a pool of water surrounded by thick vegetation. Small, deliberate strokes read like hidden messages within the ink forest. The riot of movement would almost be chaotic if it were not so tightly ordered. Like hand lettering, the image feels scalable, as if it would be legible rendered as either a sweeping mural on the side of a building or etched in delicate blue lines on porcelain. The result is a piece lush with meanings, continually asserting the tight relationship between sense and interpretation.

Fei Li. The Hidden Dimension and Other Observations No. 135, 2016; ink on paper; 96 x 120 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Though many of Li’s pieces could be imagined as decorations on vases or dinnerware, they exist at an amplified scale, and the lyrical tension of her strokes shifts as a viewer’s body does in relation to the works. Li’s powerful, large-scale paintings overwhelm the human body; when viewed from a distance, they take on an impressionistic quality that is just as engaging. In Hidden Dimension No. 101 (2016), a chaotic landscape curls around a gallery corner, enveloping any viewer within its expanse; up close, a viewer becomes entangled in the active, looping marks that sketch out a vast and varied environment. But when the work is viewed from farther away, what once appeared like dense undergrowth or rushing water now looks like clouds or drifting fog. As with Claude Monet’s largest paintings of water lilies, one’s relative distance from Hidden Dimension No. 101 changes the meaning of the work, creating a tense and precarious meditative experience.

Fei Li. The Hidden Dimension and Other Observations No. 101, 2016; ink on paper; 84 x 204 in.; installation view Courtesy of the Artist.

But in certain works, Li does not allow for this meditative distance. The mirrored panels on the floors of Li’s installations restrict a viewer’s movement and force constantly fragmented encounters with the reflections of the pieces. Here, Li forges a relationship between a viewer and her work that she calls “a battle between moving and being moved,” between inherent and iterative signs. This intensifies the fundamental premise of Li’s Hidden Dimension series: Reading and interpretation are active, bodily engagements in both language and landscape, with distance, boundaries, and meanings constantly being drawn and redrawn in relation to a viewer’s position. Li’s work refuses fixed interpretations of either meaning or environment, capturing the almost entropic dynamism of nature and culture.

Fei Li. The Hidden Dimension and Other Observations, 2016; ink on paper, mirrors; dimensions variable; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist.

Fei Li is a Chinese artist who lives and works in New York. She studied with Lon Clark at the San Francisco Studio School and moved to New York in 2012. Li’s works have been shown internationally in museums and galleries, including the New Britain Museum of American Art in the United States, the Museum of Abbaye de Léhon in France, the Asian Culture Center in South Korea, and the Chinese European Art Center in China. She was awarded a 2016 Queens Arts Fund New Works Grant, funded by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. She can be found on instagram: _fei_li_.

“We are not conceptual artists,” Zheng told me very firmly when we spoke (yes, over many cups of fragrant tea) at the gallery. Named after their hometown of Yangjiang, the group formed in 2002 with an anti-authoritarian and inclusive approach to art. Like Joseph Beuys, they believe that anyone is an artist, aiming to challenge the elitism and privilege that attaches to calligraphy in China—and to contemporary art. I asked the artists about their unique approach to calligraphy. Zheng Guogu responded to my questions with the help of a translator, while his two collaborators concentrated on refilling our teacups.

Yangjiang Group. Actions for Tomorrow, 2015; exhibition view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley.

Luise Guest: Traditional Chinese scholars liked to drink and gamble, as well as paint and write poetry. Are you following in the footsteps of the literati, or are you challenging those traditions?

Zheng Guogu: At first we wanted to try to experience that life, like the ancient artists. We found that when we were drunk, the calligraphy we made was very beautiful. We thought it had a special energy, so we adopted this kind of practice. Then we found out that when we were drunk we could forget lots of the rules of calligraphy. We discovered that the ancient scholars also had many rules, and by breaking them they could make their calligraphy more expressive. You need to follow traditions first and then break from those traditions.

LG: You have been described as iconoclastic calligraphers who throw thousands of years of Chinese tradition out the window—are you deliberately challenging China’s cultural heritage?

ZG: Yes, we challenge the old rules because each new generation has radicals who must break with tradition.

Yangjiang Group. Actions for Tomorrow, installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

LG: Is your mural, which includes the words, “God is Dead, Long Live the RMB!” satirizing art as a commodity of international exchange or the loss of culture and tradition in China in a headlong rush toward ever greater wealth?

ZG: You are not meant to interpret any meaning. You should not use twentieth-century rules to view this exhibition; you should use a new way to see this. It’s not conceptual art; it has nothing to do with the symbols. Last century when you went to a gallery and saw an artwork, you would be guessing the meaning behind it. But now, with this work, it’s about how your body reacts—it’s an immediate response, an instinctive and emotional response.

LG: By choosing to work with calligraphy, you are positioning yourselves in a continuing Chinese cultural tradition. By subverting it, you are critiquing Chinese culture. Are some of your works  political statements? Here you have written, “God is Dead, Long Live the RMB,” for example…

ZG: No. It’s not art of the head—it’s art of the body and the heart. When you enter into this social space you feel the energy and increase your spirit. It’s not about the meaning.

Yangjiang Group. Final Days, 2015; installation view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, wax and modified clothing installation, dimensions variable. Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley

LG: Okay, but in Fuck Off the Rules [1], you appeared to be challenging the very nature and value of art. What do you think is the importance of art in today’s world?

ZG: Lots of artists today are just fake. Real artists should break the traditional rules. Forget what the form is—then you can create real art. Previous generations of artists are not on the opposite side to us, we are one line of artists. We are all like the gods.

LG: There seem to be two things that are very important to you—language and what you call “the spirit.” How is spirituality important in your work? And are these two things connected?

ZG: To write you need spirit—or qi. [2] You use one breath to write one character, so the spirit is important. Some of the ancient calligraphers also practiced kung fu, so they needed to have great energy. This refers to the spirit and the breath. When you are writing, your brush strokes follow your breath. When you see calligraphy, you see the writer’s ‘qi‘. This has a relationship with the universe, the earth rotating and orbiting the sun—the same as the systems in your body. Writing calligraphy follows these rules.

Yangjiang Group. Final Days, 2015; installation view, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, wax and modified clothing installation, dimensions variable. Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. Photo: Zan Wimberley

LG: How did you three meet, and how did the group start?

ZG: Before 2002, I was working in photography, and then I transferred to writing texts…. In ancient times words had some spirit or energy inside, related to their nature, as well as something to do with the symbol and the sounds. So I think that words are not 2-D they are 3-D. They are alive. I changed my own name to ‘Guogu’ so that it would be a unique creation. Then I created my persona, my identity. When somebody calls your name there is some vibration in the air, in the universe. If you have a negative name the vibration will be negative. Although I think that words have very strong vibrations, I am not trained in calligraphy, but Chen Zaiyan is a professionally trained calligrapher, trained in Hangzhou. Sun Qinglin is from Yangjiang. I invited him because I saw his drunk calligraphy and it had a special energy. So we formed this little group.

Yangjiang Group, Das Kapital Football (still), 2009, ink on Xuan paper calligraphy, action, documentation, installation (two-channel video: DV widescreen anamorphic, color, with sound, ink on Xuan paper carpet). Courtesy the artists and Vitamin Creative Space.

LG: When people think of Chinese contemporary art, they think of the major art centers of Beijing and Shanghai—perhaps not of Yangjiang! What makes you stay?

ZG: Lots of people ask this! A previous generation needed to go to the art centers like Beijing, escaping from small towns, but the real inspiration for an artist is equally from small places. There is no reason to think there is less inspiration from a small town, or more inspiration from a big city…. In a small town people are living their normal lives, and our work is closer to ordinary people. I find that the most essential thing is to stay in one place and to pay attention. It’s like art meditation. In a big city there are too many distractions and you cannot concentrate. A real artist has to find real life.

LG: The Yangjiang Group has blurred the boundaries between art and life. In the past you have made works documenting gambling, drinking, football, gardening…. Some people might say, “Is that really art? Is that not just life?” What would you tell them?

ZG: The purpose of art is to make people live better. That explains everything we do.

The concluding event of Yangjiang’s Sydney sojourn is the Twilight Garden Party in the Chinese Garden of Friendship on February 14; Actions for Tomorrow is on view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney through March 7, 2015.

[1] Yangjiang’s 2014 exhibition at Shanghai’s Minsheng Museum, Fuck Off the Rules, was a not-so-subtle reference to Ai Weiwei’s notorious Fuck Off exhibition and an illustration of their anarchic anti-art approach to the veneration of calligraphy in Chinese culture.

[2] The literal translation is “air” or “breath.” It is the underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and the practice of martial art forms. It refers to the life force and the flow of energy through the body.