Never a stranger has installed a contemporary work as close to the heart sealed in the China millennium. The british artist Anish Kapoor will present an exhibition in Beijing beginning this fall, divided between the central Academy of fine arts of China (CAFA) and the Temple of the ancestors, the imperial, located a few tens of meters from the south Gate of the forbidden City. “This will be the first large-scale exhibition of Anish Kapoor’s alone in China,” explains a press release from Lisson Gallery.
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On the form, no detail has yet been given by Anish Kapoor, and the specification chinese side is unknown. The press release informs that “this exhibition will create a dialogue with the contemporary art space of the museum of CAFA, as well as the grand historical space of the Temple of the ancestors imperial.”
The Temple of the ancestors of imperial date from 1420, and is located in the imperial City, the inner part of the city of Beijing surrounding the palaces of the forbidden City. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP
Anish Kapoor is a regular at exhibitions grandeur nature which destabilize the crowds. In Chicago, his “Bean” giant stainless steel, Cloud Gate , has seduced the locals and is now well installed in the landscape of the metropolis of united states. In France, the installation in 2015 of his work Dirty Corner , nicknamed “the vagina of the queen”, in the gardens of the château de Versailles, making a lot of noise. By its nature provoking, a trunk of rusted metal open towards the castle, Dirty Corner encounter so many oppositions defenders of the heritage. The work is also tagged entries of anti-semitism, left by the artist.
cool relations with China
The artist, born in Bombay in 1954, combines the diverse influences of its origins in his works, and was able to exhibit in the world. With China, the relations, however, remained cold enough. In 2015, a similar sculpture to its Cloud Gate and installed in the chinese city of Karamay, attracts his anger. In the same year, he is walking in the streets of London in favor of political refugees, in the company of the activist Ai Weiwei. And while the latter is excluded in 2016 Biennial Yinchuan, for political reasons, Anish Kapoor’s threat to boycott the event, before changing your mind.
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However, the installation of the British closer to the forbidden City than any european artist before him suggests that his relations with China have warmed. Impossible to know if Anish Kapoor will have a total freedom of creation when it is required to install a contemporary work in one of the highest places of the chinese history.
