“Explain how Ah Xian’s and Guan Wei’s art practice explore cultural identity and challenges audiences’ perceptions.”
This essay will look deeper into the works of both Ah Xian, a Chinese-Australian contemporary artist and Guan Wei, who was born in China and acquired an international reputation as a contemporary artist. These men's works cross both cultural and political boundaries, including the cultures of their own and combining those of western civilisations, challenging society's thoughts and emotions. This essay will focus on the challenges that can be seen in the work of Guan Wei’s plastic surgery exploring difficulty fitting into a new society/culture and Echo looking at the contrast of Australia and China. Ah Xian’s bust collection…show more content… He has lived in Australia for 23 years but was born in Beijing, China but fled in 1990. Despite this he explores his native cultural identity and beliefs through particular works including the Metaphysica series (2007), demonstrating a juxtaposition between contemporary western mediums and architecture and traditional eastern concepts (dragons, Buddhism, mountainous areas, lily pads). The sculpture series Metaphysica is a sequence of bronze busts with the same motionless expression with each individual and features a custom object perched on the head. Bronze casting is an ancient craft historically used to make Buddha statues and Bodhisattva (a being featured with mandorla flames), Ah Xian has done a contemporary spin on this aspect replacing the flames with ordinary objects (like a fish, Buddha statue and a rabbit) but is also culturally significant. This technique is also significant as bronze is/was thought to possess religious and supernatural qualities in China along the 15-16th Century and Buddhism is a significant aspect of Chinese culture. It is commonly chosen to create precious religious sculptures in China. An important feature of Metaphysica are the objects on the head, they are here because, as quoted by the artist “The top of our head (brain) is always where our wishes, imaginations, and spiritual souls linger around . . . The skull is like a skylight to link our emotions and souls with the imaginative possibilities of the spirit.” In Metaphysica: Red Fish the bust sculpture is adorned with a fish, this is a symbol of abundance holding a pearl in its mouth this also represents charm and treasure. Each sculpture individually and together enables the audience to perceive these pieces to be irrelevant from one another but with further inspection are connected on a conceptual level and related by spiritual beliefs (particularly Buddhism). Overall Ah Xian’s sculptures Metaphysica
