Hua biao 1999
Installation comprising inflatable nylon columns, fans, motors, video, mixed media
Dimensions variable
Collection: The artists

Hua Biao Chinese Pillars, Totems Poles Apart

Sang Ye and Geremie Barmé’s collaborative work, Hua biao (Totems poles apart), refers to the original marble Hua Biao of Beijing. Situated at Tiananmen Square, these pillars have been witness to the past five hundred years of Chinese history. The artists’ work however, comprises two inflatable Hua Biao from Wang Fu Jing, ‘the mercantile centre of Beijing’. The artists’ red Hua (decorated) Biao (columns) are located in the forecourt, outside the Gallery entrance. Inside the Gallery, a mock-museum exhibit illustrates the symbolic history of the Hua Biao. A video features interviews with people passing by the original Hua Biao in Beijing, combined with historical footage. Barmé says: ‘The Hua Biao inflation is a limited-edition object, a one-off copy of an imperial artifact with socialist associations. We have plundered through purchase, and positioned this plinth with purpose at the Queensland Art Gallery as a playful observation on, and observer of, the commerce in art and culture with which the Asia-Pacific Triennial engages.’

Artist's statement:

At century's end we reflect on the end of the last century, 1899. At the fin de millennium, 999, itself a fin de siècle.

The Hua Biao of Beijing, situated at Tiananmen Square, have been witness to the past five hundred years of history. They were erected there as the empire of Ming China closed itself to the world; meanwhile through trade, exploration and warfare, the West made the rest of the world open up to itself.

The Hua Biao is a silent caretaker, a witness to China's many ends: the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, the Republic .... The survival of the Hua Biao is a very Chinese form of resilience; in its own way this endurance is an art, artful while also full of artifice. In this sense immobility is also action. With this, our Hua Biao inflation, we present not lofty carved white imperial marble shafts, but our objects trouvés that are brash red commercial columns. Through them we offer a meditation on completion and possibility, the very theme of this Asia-Pacific Triennial: surpassing the future.

Totems Poles Apart consists of two inflatable Hua Biao from Wang Fu Jing, the shopping epicentre of Beijing. A mock-museum exhibit illustrates the symbolic history of the Hua Biao, while a CD-Rom and interviews with witnesses to the Hua Biao both in Beijing and Brisbane are our way of constructing a dialogue with these silent and silenced icons.