Bio

Formerly of Pace/MacGill Gallery and A.I.R. Gallery, Alissa Schoenfeld has been the Director of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, for three years. She received her BA in Humanities from San Francisco State University and her MA in the History, Criticism and Theory of Contemporary Art from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Interview with Liu Zheng

Alissa Schoenfeld: Have your observations about China and its people changed since you completed "The Chinese" 2002? If you were to take photographs of people and places in China today and add them to "The Chinese" series, how would they be different in spirit from the photographs you took between 1994-2002?

Liu Zheng: Undoubtedly, the present China is under an onrush with tremendous changes. This is an era full of excitement, imbroglio, restlessness, anxiety, floundering and panic. Tradition and modernization, eastern and western, they are struggling and tearing at each other at every minute. All of this has become a part of our Chinese contemporary culture. Every thing and every one is changing in everyday life. However, there is a quality existing in Chinese people, a certain feeling that belongs to Chinese people that never changes. If you gather ten Asians together, or even ten people from different provincial cities of China, I can precisely tell where each of them comes from.

Alissa Schoenfeld: In the essay for your book "The Chinese", you stated that the Chinese people are both the subjects and audience for your work. How do you imagine those of us outside of China relate to your work and what would you hope we would learn about the country and its people?

Liu Zheng: People who feel something about my work always have their own understandings, which I respect, even though it is misunderstanding sometimes. National character has its own distinctness, while human nature is universal.

Alissa Schoenfeld: Would you be kind enough to please describe the project you are currently working on?

Liu Zheng: I am trying to resume the historic truth of the last century of China. For China, the last century is too important, too bumpy and too abundant. Between the history that we can see and we cannot see, there is a profound absurdness. I am trying to record the true Chinese of the last century.

Links

Alissa Schoenfeld is the Director of Yossi Milo Gallery in New York
www.yossimilogallery.com