Culture and Globalisation in Wang Qingsong’s Photography

Abstract

n 2003 Wang Qingsong commented on one of his work in this way: “China Mansion summarizes my perception of Chinese social reality during the current stage of globalisation. China has been very enthusiastic about inviting foreign experts in economy, technology, architecture, and culture to give support and guidance to its modernisation programs. These foreign specialists help to create economic opportunities and introduce alternative systems of thought to China. However, the cultural clash creates social contradictions”.1) This paper concerns artworks by the aforementioned artist, who was born in 1966 in Daqing (Heilongjiang Province). As he said in the previously quoted sentence, his art depicts a reflection on the relation between culture and globalisation, as well as the impact of globalisation on culture, especially Chinese. Globalisation is the abolition of the spatial distance and the introduction of the world into a state of mobility, as described by Grzegorz Dziamski – Polish art critic and historian. Mobility is the ethnical, technological, financial, ideological and media including images providing different narratives.2) But how has the artist illustrated his attitude? What kind of artistic strategy has he used? At first, he adopted an aesthetic of “camp”, which was described by Susan Sontag in “Notes on Camp” (1964) as a kind of sensitivity, features of which are artificiality, theatricality, irony, distance, exaggeration, extravagance, and