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PROFILE
Mao Xuhui was born in Chongqing, Sichuan in 1956. He graduated from the Yunnan Art Academy in 1982 and started teaching at the Yunnan University Art Department in 2001. Mao has participated in various international art exhibitions including, "CHINA's New Art: Post 1989" (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1993; US tour until 1997); "CHINA!" (Kunstmuseum, Bonn, 1995) and "Inside Out: New Chinese Art" (Asia Society Galleries, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 1998; toured until 2000), etc.
INSTRUMENTS OF POWER, THE SCISSORS SERIES
CHANG TSONG-ZUNG
Mao Xuhui began to take "power" as a theme in 1989 with the Parents series of paintings. In 1992 he completed the Vocabulary of Power series. It was from the image of the "parent" that the "scissors" was developed. The "parent" is an iconic yet shapeless shadow seated on an overwhelming altar-like throne. It is aloof and awe-inspiring, like a religious icon. The stylised shape of the "parent" resembles a pair of scissors, and it gradually becomes one which, in the Scissors series, presides over domestic settings as the "parent" would sit upon the altar. The menacing presence of the scissors is compounded as an instrument of the everyday; as such it is a domestic as well as "democratic" symbol, carrying associated powers by being visually suggestive of the anthropomorphic god-like "parent" icon.
As symbols that have accompanied the artist on his creative journey, the "parent" seat of power and the scissors are ../images Mao Xuhui refers to in his artistic meditation. Religious meditations seek ../images to focus on, be it a god image, an instrument of spiritual power or an everyday object. The object accrues real power from being worshipped, and develops into a symbol of power. The significance of an image (an icon) does not depend so much on the richness of symbolic connotations as on the introspective depth it can guide the meditative mind. Therefore, the appropriateness of the artistic image has everything to do with its configuration, its shape, rather than with symbolic meaning. The "scissors" is such an icon for Mao Xuhui, and it has compelled the artist to a decade of obsessive work, producing for us a rich body of mesemerising art.
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