Measure of Success?

How do one come about in measuring the success of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale?  I feel that the questions is not one that needs to be answered but through looking at the critiques on the different units of measurement, it shines several interesting spotlights on the biennale.

 10th Shanghai Biennale - 2014

From the Open-Door Policy's point of view, if the goal was economic success and cultural reputation, than with the boom of the contemporary arts in China and the nation's rising power - the answer is clear.  Though the 2000 Shanghai Biennale was a "cautious experiment rather than a blockbuster showcase" (Barrett) that tested the possibilities of the model, since then with the "unconditional government support", the contemporary art market in China is an established global brand of easy political art (Wang 158).

Once art has being commercialized (profit orientated) the work has a new or added purpose to that of an iconic, easily recognizable, or branded quality for smooth entry into market (Velthuis).  Wang argues that since the officialization of contemporary art, the original meaning and significance is lost; the binary (unofficial juxtaposed with the official) is lost.  Of course such shifts is not specific to China but there is a global movement towards marketization through the stimulation of globalization.  As the market grows bigger and the exhibitions grow bigger (in frequency and quantity), the money involved grows with it.  Li Xiating (artist) discussed in Wang's writing that as the international world is more interested in the unofficial artists, those who are being "persecuted, there is a development of pseudo avant-garde artists who boast they have being raided, their works destroyed by the government, when they have not to claim international sympathy (12-15).  Is this global performance for acclaim or financial gain an ethical sacrifice for success?

Li Xu being interviewed on the 2000 Shanghai Biennale

For the curators, it was acknowledged that there were numerous compromises made during the process of the 3rd Shanghai Biennale and it was the Beijing Cultural Ministry that had the final say (Tung).  Li Xu stated that it was "significant that the biennale even took place"; is that his measure of success?

Hou Hanru

Hou Hanru was dubbed the star curator for the 2000 biennale as a Chinese born curator based in France.  His role was significant in representing the "nomadic spirit of China" (Barret quoting one of the opening biennale statements) as many artist were born in China but chose to be educated abroad.  Hanru's identity ties in many paradoxes on the effects of globalization; Shanghai's (China's) interest in the Western as an ideal due to the restrictions of the local and how that interaction in turn changes the identity of both the global and the local.  As Niru Ratnam discuessed in "State of the Art", "the global aesthetic is a Western construct"; it is not a collective identity but that of the West projected (or readily received) to the "other" - an ideological colonialism through models such as the biennale.

But as Okwui Enwezor explored on topics of postcolonialism, the use of these Western constructed models can also give the constructed "other" a chance to speak in the same language.  He states that "globalization bring to nearness the distance of the objectified other", that through globalization, the distance to the other is shortened, the other now has the power to speak and not be objectified (57). 

On that note, the 2000 Shanghai Biennale was viewed (according to New York and LA Times) to be lacking on international standards but significant to China's first steps onto the global stage despite its political difficulties.  I feel such measure of success can become dangerous in its view point of a superior to that of a hatchling; bias towards the Western standards.

Locally however, many critics "questioned the identity of the [2000] Shanghai Biennale and saw it as a product of Western hegemony" (Wang 214).  They felt that the biennale "failed to realize its promise to create an international biennial of China's own format and to seek a balance between the "international" and the "Chinese" (215).  One critic even likened it to a "market stall in China for Western Hegemonism" (215).  Such different perspective from the global (West) and the local heighten the contradictory nature of the 3rd Shanghai Biennale and its contribution to the on-going global dialogue on globalization.