Interview With Yulu Ge, Artist-in-Residence, SSIR China

(Illustration by Raffi Marhaba, The Dream Collective)

In 2013, artist Yulu Ge put a sign with his name on it alongside an unnamed street in Beijing. The idea was to explore what would happen when a private name is placed in a public space, examine the relationship between the two, explore possibilities, and embrace unanticipated reactions to them. To a person who doesn’t read Chinese, the characters could look like graffiti. On a persons head, they become a person’s name. On the side of a street, they become a street name.

The city eventually removed his sign and later named the street “Baiziwan South Road,” but the placement of the sign—part of a larger project titled, 葛宇路（“Ge Yu Lu”）—exemplifies the kind of art that Ge engages in. Through art, he draws attention to things society takes for granted, then reverses them, manipulates them, and subverts them.

A street sign with the artist’s name (upper-right) on the then-unnamed Baiziwan South Road in Beijing. (Photo by Gen Zhang)

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Ge took a similar approach with another project, Holiday Time, inspired by interactions with staff at Fei Arts, a gallery in Guangzhou. He observed that when funders (patrons, collectors, consortiums) and creators (artists, critics, curators) want to cut costs, gallery and printing house employees shoulder the pressure. The art world’s spotlight tends to shine on funders and creators, leaving those who support the exhibitions with little recognition and bargaining power. This creates a contradiction: The art world is supposed to promote innovation, equal rights, and creativity for all, but its established division of labor conflicts with these aims.

So, over four months in 2020, he took over the work of three members of staff, three weeks per person, while they took leave. When audiences came to the exhibition, they saw the paperwork Ge processed. They could also participate in behind-the-scenes work, including organizing leftover exhibition materials and tools in the gallery’s warehouses and repairing cracked artwork during workshops. By bringing these generally less appreciated tasks to the forefront and disrupting the status quo, Ge highlighted the industry’s contradictions and inequities and invited people’s scrutiny and reflection inside the gallery and beyond.

Artist Yulu Ge works at the gallery as part of his Holiday Time project. (Photo by @Livin广州)

Projects like these can play a meaningful role in social change, because the power of any social system, including its ability to perpetuate inequities related to things like race or gender, is intertwined with discourse and mindsets. Power dynamics shape our language and practices over time, and inform our perception of what people should do or be. The starting point for social change, then, is often in the expression of a new narrative, sometimes through art.

This is why SSIR China has been working with Ge as an artist-in-residence. We recently invited him to talk about his views on art, equity, and social innovation.

SSIR China: How do you define concepts like art and equity?

Yulu Ge: The artist’s job is to raise a question, to “activate” the problem with some examples. Sometimes our work is even to deliberately bypass solidified concepts and symbols, including concepts such as “equity” and “equality,” because if we abide by their precise definitions, we fall into the power dynamics embedded in them. My instinct is to look critically at the history these concepts inherited.

Do you believe there should be no division of labor in an organization or no difference in the amount of wealth each person possesses? What exactly is the “inequity” you object to?

Division of labor is a necessary model for modern production. People take on different responsibilities. Naturally, the distribution of resources and wealth will not be completely the same, and I respect that fact. However, the problem is that the inequality of wealth and resources leads to the objectification of some part of the population. This part of the population is taking on a lot of necessary work while not receiving the basic, minimum respect they deserve.

Take the example of Holiday Time. It started when I heard the cries of gallery employees. They chose their jobs and accepted a low wage to get access to art, to understand creativity, and to participate in a life of meaning. But the reality was that they were repeatedly denied creativity in their work. They worked overtime to execute many exhibitions and works under others’ names, but their own names weren’t included in the information about the exhibitions. This shocked me so much. I couldn’t carry on with my exhibitions while turning a blind eye to it, to this unreasonable structure. So I decided to expose the structural problem, taking it as the starting point of my new work.

Instead of doing something, I chose not to do something. I refused to create new works to increase their workload and pain, and instead tried to take over their work. There are so many artworks in this world; it doesn’t matter if there’s one more or less. But enabling the staff to rest during my exhibition and gain back a sense of meaning in whatever way they chose, for them individually, this mattered.

It may be an attempt to advance equity, it may be a privilege, but all in all, it can’t be generalized. I can’t ask all artists to let go of their work in this way. This work can only be an attempt at substitution, meant to present a possibility.

When you expose inequities and stir up some discussion, what difference does it make? What impact do projects like Holiday Time generate?

I did not even intend to go there, to pursue so-called “impact.” Actually, it’s not an easy thing to send the staff of a gallery on a holiday. I didn’t set a particularly grand goal of finding a systemic solution, because I was afraid that pushing it to a certain point may lead to some horrible results.

It was a very specific experience, applied in a very specific context, for me and for them. It was like casting a stone in the water: The first to be hit by this stone was us, and then some ripples reached the leadership team of the gallery and audiences of the exhibition. In fact, change happened. The following year, staff were able to initiate activities and curate some work. The ripples also reached some peers; some friends heard about Holiday Time and asked when I was going to do it in their galleries, so I suppose it resonated with them.

Further out, the project drew public attention, as it aligned with some social sentiment at the time and coincided with the rise of the buzzword “da gong ren,” which describes educated idealists who are drowning in everyday work but barely making a living. I still remember the title of one of the media stories saying that artists are trapped in the system, relating it to discussions at that time about gig workers being trapped in the system, controlled by algorithms of platforms. People who read these stories realized that anyone, regardless of their education level or division of labor, can be manipulated by hierarchically designed rules.

I’m not attributing
any social progress or positive change to my work—that would be obviously impossible. But as an artist, it’s really important to capture and be part of the social atmosphere of the time. If everyone participates and makes adjustments, then one step leads to another and some chains of change will form. I don’t think an artist has to aim to be influential; it’s enough to keep up with the pace of the times.

Do you feel your only responsibility is to analyze social problems and expose them, or do you also feel responsibility for proposing solutions and improving society?

I think I can only be responsible for myself, and I need to be responsible for myself. My works and my exhibitions have to be presented according to my values and attitudes. I could not accept my work becoming a cover for labor-management conflict at the gallery, another lie to erase the value of the staff’s labor.

As for solving the problem, it depends on how you define “problem” and how you evaluate the results. My work is obviously not about solving problems in a very rigorous sense. But it can adjust people’s attitudes toward problems. So when you talk about the boundary of responsibility, where the line is, I think it’s just words, a literal concept. There are no black-and-white answers to some problems, and once your attitude changes, sometimes there are no problems. Art gallery work is tiring and hard, but when your work is recognized, your name is praised, and you contribute to the formation of creativity, it can be worth it.

On the relationship between art and social innovation, because I get the sense that you refuse to define things conceptually, let me phrase it this way: What are you doing about social innovation now?

Yes, for me concepts don’t guide or lead actions. They are subsequent to what happened. Concepts restrict minds. Therefore, I don’t take social innovation as my goal or as an end. Many individuals in our society are ruled by a very similar standard of “success” and are therefore forced into a very one-dimensional competition to achieve it. If everyone follows the same path, then it’s overcrowded and the success rate is low. Moreover, unexamined belief in the value of “climbing the ladder” and meritocracy leads people to focus on being better than other people, without realizing the mechanisms that drive inequity.

Part of my ambition, maybe, is to unravel this norm of success. I would like to open up more space to explore whether there are diverse paths people can follow to unleash their talents, feel fulfilled, and have a decent life. I think this is very important for many people “in the middle”—those who are neither superelite nor struggling on the breadline. This is a contribution to society I would like to make.

Through the platform of Leping Foundation—an organization that also envisions a diverse, inclusive, and equitable society—I invite people who have stepped off the path they are “supposed” to follow to share their unique and inspiring practices. The more variety we have among speakers, topics, and settings, the more the project deconstructs a singular value system. My hope is that the stories they share, whether during in-person events held at Leping or podcasts I create, allow audiences to re-examine what they are pursuing.

For example, the stories of two well-educated individuals who worked as delivery people challenge a cultural norm that views people who receive university diplomas but then do physical work as failures. The two speakers shared fascinating experiences from their time as delivery workers and explained how those experiences enlightened their professional thinking. Without ignoring the challenging situations and structural limitations manual workers face, they shared some of the benefits that can come from operating outside the rigid hierarchy.

A ‘Non-Linear Generation’ on the Rise

Even after our conversation with Ge, the question persists, “Is drawing attention to a social issue a solution?” We believe it can be, in the sense that it can shift mindsets. Ge’s approach—which rejects pre-determined rules of the game, consciously explores alternatives, and embraces the uncertainties—bears similarities to “emergent strategy,” a non-linear approach to social innovation that allows those affected by a problem to experiment with and negotiate their own solutions, rather than establishing a set goal and imposing a method of getting there.

Could this non-linear approach become a trend, or even redefine a generation? How many people are practicing this art of opening up possibilities and, as a result, gaining a much broader view of life and society? If people with unorthodox practices contribute to society in their own way, will the world become a better and more equitable place? This is what we would like to find out by interacting with Ge and aspire to answer through his practices.

Read more stories by Ruijie Guo, Chengchang Liu & Lu Tian.