{"id":1845,"date":"2023-05-08T10:31:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T02:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2023-05-08T10:31:14","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T02:31:14","slug":"xiyadies-cut-paper-art-intimately-records-his-experiences-as-a-gay-man-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/xiyadies-cut-paper-art-intimately-records-his-experiences-as-a-gay-man-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Xiyadie\u2019s Cut-Paper Art Intimately Records His Experiences as a Gay Man in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Xiyadie,\u00a0Gate (Tiananmen)<\/em>, 2016.<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Growing up in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, the artist known as\u00a0Xiyadie<\/a>\u00a0began making paper cuts because of the women in his village. \u201cMy mother is an expert at paper-cutting flowers,\u201d he told me recently over WeChat, writing in Mandarin. \u201cMy mother trained me, but I actually learned more about the art of paper cutting from my grandmother\u2019s generation.\u201d He was around 16 years old when he first took scissors to fine Xuan paper, developing his skills by depicting auspicious sayings and folk-art motifs.<\/p>\n

Now 59, Xiyadie is gaining international recognition for his cut-paper art, which has come to look immensely different from traditional forms intended to adorn windows. His works record his experiences as a gay man in China, often showing intimate, candid encounters with lovers that are set within vivid environments teeming with plants and animals. Occupying delicate sheets as large as nearly 5-feet-square, the dense but harmonious scenes demonstrate how Xiyadie has harnessed traditional skills to his own purposes. Many are brightened with water-based dyes and Chinese pigments that are enticingly flamboyant as cake icing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has this incredible technical dexterity,\u201d Rosario G\u00fciraldes, associate curator at New York\u2019s Drawing Center, said. \u201cAnd also this incredible way of subverting and estranging this ancient art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Drawing Center<\/a>\u00a0is currently hosting Xiyadie\u2019s first institutional exhibition in the US, which functions as a kind of mini-survey. Titled \u201cQueer Cut Utopias\u201d\u2014a nod to the scholar Jos\u00e9 Esteban Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s notion of queer utopias\u2014it examines four decades of Xiyadie\u2019s practice, featuring works from 1982 to 2021 spread across two floors of the gallery. The show, along with a documentary about Xiyadie by Anna Sophie Loewenberg and catalogue essays by G\u00fciraldes, Hera Chan, and Alvin Li, distances Xiyadie from the trope of the inscrutable and isolated outsider artist.<\/p>\n

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Xiyadie,\u00a0Sewn<\/em>, 1999.<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Xiyadie\u2019s biography might otherwise be easily fetishized, as is the case of many artists who have no formal art-school training. The artist, who is based in Shandong province, has rarely exhibited his works, in part because showing images of queer love in his home country risks government censorship. But he also made art covertly for years, for his eyes only, to express himself while hiding his identity from his wife and children.<\/p>\n

The large-scale work\u00a0Gate<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>(1992) alludes to his double life and its tensions. It shows the cross-section of a house, where, inside, beneath a blanket of flowers, a woman nuzzles a child; just beyond a door that appears to be ajar, a man performs oral sex on another man, their bodies sprouting plants whose vines climb toward the roof. In\u00a0Sewn<\/em>\u00a0(1999), a man confined by walls sits on a sword\u2019s edge, sewing up his penis while gazing at a portrait of another man. Such works convey the artist\u2019s \u201cfractured sense of self, or even the guilt that I think Xiyadie had for many years,\u201d G\u00fciraldes said. \u201cHe really did feel like something was wrong with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xiyadie is open about this past, sharing how his misery and helplessness led him to undergo evaluation at a hospital. \u201cThis confirmed that I am gay,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything I went through proves that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon that cannot be changed. After this, I know who I am and became confident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating his art is a liberating experience. \u201cWith scissors in my hand<\/a>,\u201d Xiyadie added, \u201cI immersed myself freely in my ideal world. I feel free and in harmony, expressing the highest sentiment in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in 1963 into a large farming family, Xiyadie has \u201cbeautiful memories of the spring\u201d from time spent in his grandfather\u2019s garden\u2014which was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, due to the Communist regime\u2019s forced redistribution of rural land. He knew he liked men from a young age, but it was only in the 1980s, when he moved to Xi\u2019an for work, that he began making art about his desires. He married a woman, and they had two children.<\/p>\n

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Xiyadie,\u00a0Joy (\u4e50)<\/em>, 1999.<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In 2005, seeking better opportunities to support his family, he relocated to Beijing, joining the swelling class of migrant workers moving to cities. In the capital, he discovered a new freedom as he began frequenting cruising spots like parks and bathhouses. He also gave himself a new pseudonym to protect his identity that means \u201cSiberian Butterfly\u201d\u2014embodying his hope for surviving and living without restraint amid harsh conditions.<\/p>\n

Beijing is also where Xiyadie first exhibited his works. He met the independent curator Yang Zi and the editor of\u00a0Gayspot<\/em>\u00a0magazine, Zhao Ke, who convinced Xiyadie to show his cuttings at\u00a0the Beijing LGBT Center in 2010. \u201cFor the first time,\u201d Xiyadie said, \u201cI felt very lucky to be in Beijing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the exhibition, which included works by other queer artists, was censored by law enforcement. \u201cMany artists\u2019 works were taken away by the police, but mine remained,\u201d he said. With a \u201chaha,\u201d he added, \u201cThe police mentioned that the paper cutting was very good. In fact, I don\u2019t think they fully understood my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In China, paper cutting is highly esteemed and widely seen. The medium, which has been named a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, is \u201csuch a legible vernacular art form in China, there\u2019s this sort of instant recognition of it,\u201d according to G\u00fciraldes.<\/p>\n

The nature of the medium, where cuts through one sheet of paper result in interconnected lines, also tends toward complex positive and negative shapes that can take time to parse. In Xiyadie\u2019s paper cuts, dynamic human figures are wholly entwined with plant life and ornate architectural motifs: tendrils sprout from toes, extending into blossom-filled trees; hair doubles as fecund soil from which flowers grow, their contours becoming those of fruit, birds, goats, roofs, the moon.<\/p>\n

This living environment indicates \u201ca harmony that is ecological,\u201d Hera Chan writes in her catalog essay. \u201cIt naturalizes queer love into built structures and further encapsulates all that into nature. These are images that show the unity of all lifeforms flourishing, deeply embedded with each other, an antidote to environmental extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of Xiyadie\u2019s earlier works, in particular, exist in their own blissful, verdant worlds. In\u00a0Flowerpot<\/em>\u00a0(1991), two men have sex at the center of a flowerpot, their limbs evoking roots and their heads, seeming to radiate with light, amid flowers and birds. The image is of seclusion and freedom.<\/p>\n

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Xiyadie,\u00a0Fish on a chopping board (Human suffering, depression and helplessness are like a beheaded fish on a chopping board, but at this very moment we are still happy)<\/em>, 2018.<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI am trying to search for a free and harmonious way to live,\u201d Xiyadie told me. \u201cIn my dream world, there is a simple house at the foot of a large mountain with endless pine trees. In front of the house, there is a tiny stream with flowing water that you can see through to the bottom, where little fish swim languidly and freely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every scene is based on Xiyadie\u2019s own real experiences. As he started showing his art, he seemed to increasingly situate acts of love in more specific locations.\u00a0Gate (Tiananmen)<\/em>, 2016, is an unabashed depiction of two men openly embracing at Tiananmen Square, the site where a government massacre had taken place 27 years earlier.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a voyeuristic aspect to it all\u2014a fact underlined by a 2018 domestic scene in which a man appears to lust after his electrician under the indifferent eye of a cat. Xiyadie put it simply: \u201cIt is a record of nature and man.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Drawing Center<\/a> exhibition\u2019s largest and most recent work\u2014measuring 4 \u00bd by nearly 10 feet\u2014demonstrates this sentiment with full force. Titled\u00a0Kaiyang<\/em>\u00a0(2021), it brims with dozens of figures of all scales performing sexual acts in gardens, outside temples, in a bathhouse. The panorama stands out for how it acknowledges Xiyadie\u2019s own desires while situating himself within a broader community he is gradually coming to know.<\/p>\n

Near the end of our conversation, he told me about an unforgettable experience he had while exhibiting in Sweden a decade ago. A man and his boyfriend were looking at his art and holding each other, weeping. \u201cSeeing that brought tears to my eyes,\u201d Xiyadie says. \u201cI am moved and feel alive by this response. Through my work they have come to\u00a0understand nature, including understanding and accepting my natural state!<\/p>\n

\u201cI am liberated, and I finally live to understand what and where I want to belong in my life. Truly, this is my motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xiyadie,\u00a0Gate (Tiananmen), 2016.COURTESY THE ARTIST Growing up in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, the artist known as\u00a0Xiyadie\u00a0began making paper cuts because of the women in his village. \u201cMy mother is an expert at paper-cutting flowers,\u201d he told me recently over WeChat, writing in Mandarin. \u201cMy mother trained me, but I actually learned more about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-artist","7":"category-auction","8":"category-events","9":"category-gallery","10":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nXiyadie\u2019s Cut-Paper Art Intimately Records His Experiences as a Gay Man in China - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Growing up in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, the artist known as\u00a0Xiyadie\u00a0began making paper cuts because of the women in his village.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/xiyadies-cut-paper-art-intimately-records-his-experiences-as-a-gay-man-in-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Xiyadie\u2019s Cut-Paper Art Intimately Records His Experiences as a Gay Man in China - 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