OurGirl: Inept Spirit Guide

Sent a letter on a long summer day; Made of silver, not of clay; Ive been runnin down this dusty road; Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin; I dont know where Ill be tomorrow; Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin —Wheel in the Sky, Journey

so i'll be your spirit guide for these next two posts and then morgie will take on our big 100 post. buckle up, bette, its gonna be a bumpy ride.

art by li wei. visit www.liwei.com

i have a subscription to the Morning Newletter and i heartily encourage all to visit their gallery, in particular. they feature contemporary work and give an interview with the artists. i've mentioned a few of the artists before in this blog—but li wei's work takes my breath away. When i first saw his work i had flash backs to 9/11 and thought, no, no—this is just too soon. but i was struck by the image's terrible beauty and wanted to see more and understand more of this contemporary artist. i realize i see the art—and life— through my very human, very venial perspective first—and then i come to a larger understanding.

sort of like my friend, tony's video art of his real life struggle with cancer:


so, not knowing too many van morrison's songs (i get him mixed up with boz scaggs), i check into Tony's blog, see his video through my venial lens—here, put on my glasses: these are terrible images. cancer is no joke. its scary and its painful. tony is brave and i dig his sense of humor. so what i see is these terrible images juxtaposed against what sounds to my uneducated ear like hospital elevator music. so i think this is tony being brave and funny and i laugh in appreciation at what i perceive to be his black humor while my husband just shakes his head at me.

then i read more about li wei. and i listen further and carefully to lyrics in tony's video music.

did ye get healed? van morrison.
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
Did you get it down in your soul?
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
And did the feelin' grow?

Sometimes, when the spirit moves me
I can do many wondrous things
I wanna know when the spirit moves you
Did ye get healed?

wow. yes, i realize i'm a terrible bonehead. and i'm sure tony gets that, too. but the larger view is that a shift in perspective happened. take a look at something. then look at it from another angle. so this is how li wei sees how westerners perceive his work:

For Li Wei, 2003 was a prolific year, It was above all the first year that I managed to maintain myself as an artist, thanks to a number of exhibitions in Asia and the West, which increased the number of buyers~,. Before the last cup of tea melts, I point out that there is a kind of expectation in the art world of the West, an expectation that something new will happen and that the "new wave" will be from Asia, in particular China. Westerners are not acquainted with eastern culture and perhaps that's why you expect all sorts from us. Then, when they look at our works, even when they say they know ' China, if they don't see some "Chinese" element then they turn their noses up at theme http://www.liweiart.com/ART/liwei/Review.htm/200505PROTAGONISTI.htm

wei, i never saw anything 'chinese' in your art. i saw a familiar danger. i felt a wave of familiar sickening horror. then when i dug deeper into the series i felt relief at the photos of you returning to safety, and hope in the panicky face of the woman that embraces your return back to the building. because i'm american. and i love happy endings, right? and how many times are there happy endings in real life? in my western mind, i felt he's expressing that moment of panicky fleeing from whatever. but this is what he was expressing:

"The piece expresses a yearning for a happier and freer space of existence," Li offers, but he's dispensing with the backstory. His choice of location for the piece is significant. In 2003, the Jianwai SOHO tower from which he dangles was the latest in a series of real estate projects bankrolled by Pan Shiyi, the Donald of Beijing(almost literally-he was recently invited by Trump to takeover the boardroom chair in a proposed Asian edition of The Apprentice, but after negotiations, declined). Pan, who is generally credited with igniting the real estate frenzy that has resulted in today's Central Business District, is to many a visionary. His vertically-oriented, mixed-use micro-cities have become de rigueur for Beijing's property developers, ushering in a new era for Beijing's urban landscape and identity. In much the same way that Li seeks to alert us to the construction of reality by toying with the fantastic, Pan's efforts show us how not just dreams, but the basic structures of daily life-how we circulate and interact within social space-can be re-imagined and made real, The "freer space of existence" that Li speaks of can be viewed as an awareness of these social constructions and of their mutability.

a change in perspective, another letter in clay, not silver. please feel free to move about the country. amen.