Chinese Art

This is described as a photograph though it appears like a painting. It is by Zhang Peng, entitled Gui Fei. Executed in 2007, it is one of 3 highly contrived images of Chinese girls exploring the courtship of death. The image of the girls with plastic bags over their heads is for me the most disturbing. They appear to be just finding the plastic bags in the natural setting, a commentary on our voracious manufacture, consuming and pollution of the planet. Not only is the semblance of play highly disturbing, but also the uniform, both in the sense of what they wear but also the uniformity of action, finding, playing with and eventually placing the bag ovet their heads. There is a cycle of action and there is a horrifying inevitability about it. The pathetic foreboding sky and dull pallet of the image is nightmarish and hints at the dysfunctional unconscious of a humanity now well divorced from its nature. There is significance too in the gender of the children and the communist red scarf.