Wenda Gu
United Nations: The Bable of the Millennium, 1999, human hair, 75 x 34 feet, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The interview was conducted by Ilana Stanger of TheArtBiz.com.

Can you walk me through the history of your work?

I was born in Shanghai, and I graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1981. My career began with ink paintings. I created new Chinese characters, which was the beginning of the contemporary art movement in China. My first show opened in Xiangzhou, but it was closed because it was seen as potentially subversive, since the characters were unreadable. Eventually it was reopened, but only to professionals. The fear was that there was a political message in the calligraphy, but there wasn't--I was just questioning the whole philosophy of language. This was later referred to as the "earthquake" of Chinese painting.

What is art training like in China?

I trained as a landscape painter and a calligrapher. It's very different than American programs--you study for four years, and three of those are spent imitating masterpieces from each dynasty. You receive a very solid, traditional training in the style of Soviet realism. When I was in school I rebelled against this type of training--I felt it was stagnant and I wanted to do something new. Now that I'm older I see it gave me a solid background.

At what point did you move from painting to installation? What was the impetus for this change?

I started to do installation work in the early 80s. The Cultural Revolution ended and the "Open Door" policy began, and there was suddenly so much information. Before that, I'd learned about Western philosophy but I hadn't been able to practice it. Now I started to practice contemporary art, as in the West.

You moved to the US in 1987. Why did you leave China?

I left China for two reasons. First, China was restrained. There was no place to show work, and work wasn't appreciated. You had to be an underground artist. Second, I've always been amazed by other cultures. New York has the highest concentration of different races and cultures, and it is the capital of the art world. In China you can't do contemporary art. In the West you have a certain freedom, though you are bound there by commercial success.

Can you tell me a bit about your United Nations project? Is this still ongoing?

This is a project I couldn't have done without being in New York. I began it in 1993, and plan to finish in another three to five years. So far there have been twenty subprojects, each of which I call a national monument. I collect hair from people in each country [Wenda Gu currently has 1/2 million hair samples], and then design the project around that country's history and culture. The work is informed by post-colonial theory--in one way I am like a cultural ambassador.

For the United Nations project you are constantly putting on shows all over the world. How do you establish contact with global galleries?

It's difficult. When I began in 1993 I was unknown, I had no contacts. But I had the idea, so I knew I had to do it no matter how difficult it might be. At first I had to collect all the hair myself. For America I took hair from shops on Park Avenue, Harlem, and Chinatown--I even went to an Indian reservation in Minnesota for hair. Now so many countries want me to come, it's like a campaign. I have to decline offers because there are too many.

What else are you currently working on?

I have two studios in China and one in New York. Some work has to be done in China to retain authenticity. For instance, right now I'm working on a project titled "Forest Stone Tablets." It is engraved text on 50 stone tablets, and each tablet weighs one and a half tons. China has professional calligraphy carvers, and the specific stone that I need, and the labor is cheaper there. I have 10 assistants working on this piece; I only handle the contracts and the design, and I write proposals and articles.

What is this work about?

The content of the work is trans-cultural. The text is from the Chinese/Asian Tang Dynasty poems. They were translated into English in the 1940s, but when they translated the poems they translated for the meaning but not the sounds. What I've done is to re-translate the English version into Chinese based on the sound of English. The poems are still readable, but they're contemporary.

How do you support yourself on your work?

I never apply for grants. I've been lucky; I've never worked another job. In the beginning when I didn't have a lot of money I lived very basically, and I never took vacations. Now I do better because museums collect a lot of my work. Some private collectors buy it too, but mostly museums.

What advice would you give to emerging artists?

My suggestion is to have commitment and sacrifice, especially at the beginning. When you have nothing, you need to have a strong belief. You also need to be clever to sense the future of art and to be in that frontier.

I don't think having a gallery is necessary. The gallery helps with finances and promotion, but it's the work that really matters.

What is your current career goal?

I don't think so much of the goal as the experience, but I'd say my goal is to transcend cultures, to make my art inclusive. I also want to take my own Chinese/Asian art background and to link it to the contemporary world, the "biological century." I've recently started to make Chinese ink out of powdered human hair. Now I can paint traditionally, and my paint contains DNA, the genetic sequence. This is why I work with human materials like hair. I am linking the traditional with the latest science.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.