Tucked in a quaint corner in Haymarket’s bustling Chinatown just behind Sydney’s Capitol Theatre lies a modest gallery occupied by the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art featuring ‘The Year of the Dragon’: an exhibition curated by Con Gerakaris in celebration of the Dragon, the highly revered celestial creature in the Sinosphere’s Zodiac cycle.
Entering ‘The Year of the Dragon’ reveals Ye Funa’s TRANSFORM.ME featuring Smart or Shamate, an aesthetics focused on rebellious spiky hair reminiscent of a crossover between Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife and emo. Once dubbed in the 2010’s as China’s “most hated” subculture, the space is transformed into a cyberpunk salon centred around a short film narrating the journey of rural-to-urban migrant workers’ journey to the aesthetic. Through the story and pop-up salon, Ye shines a light on Smart’s fleeting yet enduring value as a point of nostalgia for a whole generation of young Chinese migrants making their mark in their new hypercapitalist environs.
Ascending the stairs leads to the main exhibition, where viewers are greeted with a series of paper stencils. The brainchild of Thirteen Feet Tattoo, a local tattoo studio, the stencils offer a window into a distant, mythological past inked onto the bodies of the present. Each stencil is accompanied by a whimsical representation of one of the twelve Chinese Zodiacs – think rabbits intertwined with a menacing, man-eating Jorōgumo or sakura blossoms gracing a humble mouse (鼠).
‘The One’ by Sin Wai Kin (2021).
The centre of the sleek, dark space is punctuated by a moving animation of Hong Kong-based Sin Wai Kin (單 慧 乾) submerged in profound meditation, surrounded by a vast blue sky that merges with their own azure drag persona, broken only by the Sun as a third eye. This is ‘The One’, deliberately manifesting “twisted figures of desire” through their own self. The only object that dares to move over the course of the short video is Sin’s mouth, an eroticisation that beckons onlookers to reflect on the value of Sin’s, and, by extension, our own identity as agents of change.
‘Early Spring’ by Yang Yongliang (2019) based on Guo Xi’s work of the same name (1072).
In another arresting display, Yang Yongliang’s (杨泳梁) ‘Early Spring’ and ‘Infinite Landscape’ reinterprets Guo Xi’s (郭熙) eleventh century magnum opus of the same name. At first glance, Yang’s ‘Early Spring’ invites viewers into a familiar scholarly, Taoist contemplation. However, this illusion is quickly dispelled on the grounds, created through a fusion of urban reality and the mystical, with sprawling everyday city life infusing life into a seemingly silent vista.
Meanwhile, its sister in ‘Infinite Landscape’ radically reimagines shanshui altogether through the medium of an animated video, constructing mystical karst limestone formations with dystopian high density apartment towers. Below these modern Leviathans lies the monotony of urban life with Yang substituting verdant forests with uncomfortable cranes and bustling highways.
Our own megacities reflect an endless pursuit of wealth where all needs and aspirations are met, yet they lock each of its inhabitants in a self-imposed capitalist amnesia that makes Guo Xi’s eleventh-century dream of scholarly quietude all but a modern myth.
Instead, yesterday’s modern scholars are destined to become the time-poor salaryman trudging his way through the perpetually changing black-and-white metropolis, armed with a lonely briefcase in hand.
It would be an injustice for the exhibition for Honi to delve further. As the Year of the Wood Dragon comes to the fore, this exhibition is a refreshing departure from the archetypal divine power embodied by the creature and family politics traditionally associated with Lunar New Year festivities. Visitors are invited to ground themselves in modernity and question the meaning of change in the background of the seemingly. It is this invitation to contemplate the nature of change that makes ‘Year of the Dragon’ more than worthy of a visit.
‘The Year of the Dragon’ forms part of a series of Lunar New Year festivities highlighting the visual arts with the University of Sydney’s ‘Chasing the Dragon + From Smart to Master’ panel discussion and lecture on Sunday 11 February 2024 delivered by WeiZen Ho, Jacquie Meng and Dongwang Fan together with Ye Funa on the exhibition. Entry is free and registration is essential.
‘Year of the Dragon’ is on display at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 181-187 Hay Street, Haymarket, Warrane/Sydney, NSW 2000, from 10 February to 31 March 2024. More information is available here.