Ni Weihua has long been an active contemprary artist in Shanghai. In the 1990s, his works attracted extensive attention at the moment they were born, such as his installation and performance artistic works entitled Diffusing Boxes series (1992) and Diffusing Posters (1993), his conception and installation works named Dividing Line-A Stack of Non-exhibits (1995) and Art: The Legal Existence of Words and Objects (1996), and his installation and performance artistic works entitled Linear City series (1997-2009, cooperated with Wang Jiahao). Even since then, they have been the DNA of his artistic practice, ie he keeps his eyes peeled for the visual facts in the urban space that reflect social changes, and visualize them with special techniques so as to express his personal views. He will, sometimes, transform those social facts into visual works with active employment of investigation methods in social science for works in the nature of research projects.
It has been noticed that photography is indispensable to the installation and publication of his works. Being aware of the possibility of photography as a recording means of documentaries, he has photographed spontaneously the artistic events he has created and the artistic performances he has implemented. His spontaneity of photography finds expression in the closer connection between his artistic practice and photography as an important technique, and finally in the sole reliance of photography as his means of creation. Ni Weihua's artistic practice by means of photography at the turn of the millennium will be discussed in the following paragraphs:
Since approximately the end of last century, he has started his creation of photography on China's social development and issues related to cities by shooting images in the city space with his camera while walking on the streets, which illustrates politics and consumption. Two series of his kind are Key Words-Development and Harmony series (1998-2012) and Landscape Wall series (2008-2012).
China's modern politics is characterized by public display of political slogans. Despite the prevailing trend of de-politics where economic development and consumption dominate, political slogans have flooded urban and rural public space at the request of the ruling party as a component of public landscape. Thanks to their huge size and conspicuous display location, they are very eye-catching in public. In spite of the fact that they are part of the landscape, they tend to be stains in public space due to the low public awareness of the people who put up the slogans and their abuse of pubic space. They definitely can not be ignored. However, people seem to take no notice of them. They have to co-exist with those slogans, but at the same time, turn a blind eye to them since they are busy with daily life. Those political slogans, as a special reflection of official ideology, have become Ni Weihua's so-called "linguistic events". Since their emergence and existence have become an "event", Ni Weihua, a photographer, regards it as his mission to record and disseminate them by means of photography.
In his series of Key Words-Development and Harmony, Ni Weihua has collected a huge number of political slogans, which contain the "key words", and display them on large size pictures. The key words, although being the target of public criticism, are part of long slogans and beautiful pictures for the sake of rhetoric. They might not appeal to people if they fail to stand out from the rest of the slogan in certain form. By cutting them out or framing them with dotted line, Ni Weihua makes them conspicuous. While the exceptional effect of cutting out can be achieved with photography.
When the ruling party pursues their ambition of advancing social development and expresses it in concise and simple key words, Ni Weihua's Key Words series is able to keep pace with the ambition elaborated by the political slogans, as the ruling party can do nothing better than updating their slogans for showing that they advance with the times. In some sense, his job never ceases if politics and society keep developing and changing. To shoot the key words is an effort to keep abreast of the changing times and the goals of the era, while photography has become his dream and means of keeping pace with the times as an artist.
In another series of Landscape Wall, Ni Weihua has presented a stark social class divide in his images by contrasting sharply the background of luxurious real estate advertisements in Shanghai or other cities in China, in costal cities in particular, and the workers at the bottom rung of the society living and working in Shanghai.
Officials around China living on fiscal revenue from land consider the real estate development of state-owned land under the control of the government a most effective way for economic growth, political legality, advancement and personal wealth. In this craze for real estate triggered by the officials, to invent catch phrases for advertisements, to create demand for touting real estate have been the priority of real estate developers and advertisers. Of course, those advertisements tend to be a pack of cleverly designed lies. Pompous and misleading advertisements keep cropping up. To appeal to the passers-by, readers and audience, great effort has to be made not only on fascinating advertising copywriting but also the image. It is the striking real estate advertisements, in particular, the billboards in city streets, have become the materials for Ni Weihua's series of Landscape Wall.
Basically, Ni Weihua packs the billboard and the passers-by in a hurry into one image, which, of course, needs patience. He is selective about the passers-by in the image, who have to be relevant to the ideas he would like to illustrate in the series. All the people in his series are passers-by, irrelevant to the magnificent mansions being built behind them. The only possible relevance that the passers-by bear to the mansions might be the fact that they are the construction workers. Therefore, occasionally workers in safety caps will be seen in his series. Nevertheless, the irrelevance between the two is most prominent. They are just construction workers. Never can they be the owners of the mansions. This is Ni Weihua's purpose, to emphasize stark social disparity and social class divide with the co-existence of mansions and construction workers. Citizens and migrant workers not on an equal footing with the former in his series of Landscape Wall are overwhelmed by the background of the advertisement once they are put in the same image, due to the overwhelming mass of the background and the snobbish contempt of the advertisement. Such a shape contrast between superiority and inferiority has rested much tension on this series, bringing the irreconcilable conflicts in reality into limelight.
Real estate industry has changed the layout of cities, and, at the same time, altered the space landscape with advertisement images tailor-made for city space. Whenever real estate advertisement appears, its image has become part of city space landscape, exerting its influence with its overwhelming existence and changing people's perceptions of cities and life. Urban residents are overshadowed by such assertive images, deprived of their voice in this matter. Gigantic billboards, as a major form of advertising, are put up in and out of the real estate project for the exciting promotion of the project to be completed. It is beyond human capacity how many projects live up to their advertising promises.
The sensational advertising copywritings of real estate under the cloak of commercial advertisements are, in fact, another form of posters and slogans. But their agitation appears to be irrelevant to the ideology of the key words put forward by the ruling party.
But, interestingly, development and harmony advocated in the Key Words conflicts with superiority and dignity, the identity and social class awareness preached in the advertisements in Landscape Wall. Harmony aims to cover the real social divide; while real estate advertisements preach without scruple superiority catering to the needs of minority for identity and status. As a result, whenever superiority is upholding, harmony in the Key Words is abandoned without any doubt. But fundamentally, the pursuance of harmony and the emphasis on exclusiveness and dignity might be two sides of one coin. We will not be able to pierce the veil of the society nowadays without putting the two together.
Ni Weihua has made the image and words, a component of city space landscape, the background or the subject of his pictures, which have become a political existence in the city. The political existence, under the pretext of illusory consumption ideology, promotes the commercial appeal, or pacifies people with empty political slogans. Diverse as they are, one thing is certain: they are both ideology in nature. Hasn't the overwhelming ideological image formed an important aspect of today's political images? They are both presented in Ni Weihua's exhibition, a most self-evident presentation of a paradoxical society in China nowadays.
In terms of technique, the series of Key Words and Landscape Wall have one thing in common, ie images are snapshot. His works do not pursue light and shade or composition advocated by traditional photography, instead, they capture the theme directly, whose aesthetics interest differs widely from that of traditional photography. His two series created by photography might be deemed as conception photography. If we ponder over them, we might not reach such a superficial conclusion.
To put it simple, conception photography refers to the shooting of thought-provoking photos that gives top priority to conception. In this sense, Ni Weihua's two series belong to conception photography for sure. But for the exact presentation of the ideas in conception photography, directing and shooting techniques are employed to control the image effect. Therefore, conception photos are rather apt to be shot with directing techniques. From this perspective, the techniques do not apply to Ni Weihua's series. He often expresses his conceptions by means of snapshot, which is taken as inappropriate or even out-dated by traditional photography.
Traditional street photography, generally, reflects the combination of human, landscape and events in the eyes of photographers. Ni Weihua's Landscape Wall is also a combination of those three factors. But its landscape differs from the above-mentioned one in that it is the background of advertising images. Its combination of human and landscape is a two-phase combination of illusion and reality. The contrast of those images is much sharper than that of images in traditional street photography consisting of real human and landscape.
His street photography with his own conceptions have expanded the definition of street photography, a long existing presentation form of photography. To some degree, the works of such photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Daido Moriyama have embodied full-fledged presentation form of street photography, which focus on the interesting daily life on the street and image composition, a combination of documentary account with personal feelings. But it is inclined to focus on the non-social matters. While Ni Weihua's street photography distinguishes from that of the fore-mentioned photographers with his purpose and focus. Ni Weihua's works can be named street conception photography to the effect that he airs his views on some perspectives of the society with materials he has captured consciously from the street. Compared with the practice and specific views expressed in the photography of the said street photography masters, Ni Weihua's techniques and purpose are different and unprecedented to me. His street conception photography, as a clear presentation of his views on the society, has provoked our thoughts on the purpose of street photography and conception photography.
Perhaps we can only perceive his artistic works as photography between conception and documentary account. It might not be important nor imperative to determine the nature of his photography. We can find in Ni Weihua's works that the political slogans and commercial advertisements have one thing in common-empty promise. It is the contrast between aspiration and reality that has granted inherent power to his two series. If Key Words is the photography where he reflects political ideology, it is justifiable to regard his series of Landscape Wall as the photography where he reviews commercial ideology. This is the visual inspiration of images and political images drew from his photography.
Sept.8, 2012,Shanghai