Xuefeng Chen and relational art

One of the most notable developments regarding the relationship between the People's Republic of China and France over the last 60 years concerns the migration of well-known Chinese artists to the Hexagon from the late-1980s and their subsequent integration into transnational, or global, art. It was during the subsequent decade that Chinese contemporary art, once it was situated within significant ‘centres’ of the West, came to the attention of the international art world. This, as Chang (1998: 67) points out, was mainly due to group exhibitions of Chinese artists and the inclusion of Chinese in international shows and biennials, like those of Venice in 1993 and 1995 and of Sao Paulo in 1994 and 1996. Initially, these events were curated by Westerners, with Chinese artists being invited to participate, such as Jean-Hubert Martin's ‘Les magiciens de la terre’ exhibition in 1989 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Within a few years, though, exhibitions began to be conceived by, and involve, at least one Chinese curator: ‘Fragmented Memory: The Chinese Avant-Garde in Exile’ at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, organised by Gao Minglu and Julia F. Andrews in 1993, is a notable example and the first North American show dedicated to expatriate artists from China's ‘85 New Movement’. Using techniques familiar to western audiences, they produced unexpected and, usually, ‘exotic’ results that appealed to an art scene (and market) seeking fresh ideas and alternative modernities. Thus, Chinese art ‘became a valid voice in contemporary international discourse’ (Chang, 1998: 67) and was able to dialogue with other cultures on a level playing field.

Around the same time, Nicolas Bourriaud put forward a theory of art in Esthétique relationnelle (1998) ¹ which arose out of his curatorial and critical involvement with artists of the 1990s, especially while working at the Palais de Tokyo, a centre for contemporary art in Paris focusing on emerging French and international art which was named after its location on the Quai de Tokio, now Avenue de New York, rather than after any specific championing of Asian art. Bourriaud observed that their works operated in ‘la sphère des rapports interhumains’ by setting up ‘les modes d’échange sociaux, l’interactivité avec le regardeur à l’intérieur de l’expérience esthétique qu’il se voit proposer, et les processus de communication, dans leur dimension concrète d’outils servant à relier des individus et des groupes humains entre eux’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 45). Bourriaud not only identified a new movement in contemporary art, ² but also proposed a critical language and aesthetic criteria with which to discuss this development. ³ Focusing on the new modes of sociability and interactivity produced by a range of mostly European artists, ⁴ his study did not feature any Chinese artists, presumably because none had come to his attention whose works included the necessary ‘critère de coexistence’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 114). ⁵

Given that Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics still has salience today and that he continued to apply its principles in subsequent publications, as noted by Martin (2007: 369), this article uses his framework to analyse five projects undertaken by the Chinese-born artist Xuefeng Chen who settled in France 5 years after the publication of Esthétique relationnelle. Since then, she has created works focusing on the transmission of knowledge about nature and art to others, primarily children, regularly involving them in the processes of production and/or reception. The study investigates whether her artworks correspond to Bourriaud's (1998: 117) definition of relational art: ‘[un e]nsemble de pratiques artistiques qui prennent comme point de départ théorique et pratique l’ensemble des relations humaines et leur contexte social, plutôt qu’un espace autonome et privatif’. Does her artistic mission to connect nature, audience and personal history enable us to answer affirmatively Bourriaud's (1998: 114) key question, ‘cette oeuvre m’autorise-t-elle au dialogue?’. To explore these ideas, Chen's artistic practice and philosophy will be considered and then the key principles of Bourriaud's theory as they relate to a selection of Chen's sculptures and installations. Thirdly, the study will draw on Félix Guattari's conceptualisation of artistic practice as an ethical-political articulation between the environment, the social and subjectivity, itself mentioned by Bourriaud (1998: 83–109), to understand Chen's approach in terms of a possible ecosophy. Ultimately, this article aims to direct critical attention to a francophone Chinese artist whose works are entering the international stage and, by doing so, it will expand the, hitherto, primarily Eurocentric scope of discussions about relational art. The case study will, then, have important consequences for our understanding of Bourriaud's theory concerning its limitations in terms of applicability, adaptability and geographical scope. Does it work across cultures, and especially when the Global South comes into contact with the Global North? In other words, is his theory universally applicable? If it is found that Chen, as a non-Western practitioner, does not adopt it completely but assimilates it only in part, then this raises questions about the international functioning of art and aesthetic theory.

Xuefeng Chen's artistic practice and philosophy

Xuefeng Chen was born in 1975 near Kunming, Yunnan province, in southwestern China. She graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts, Kunming, in 2000 and taught art in Suzhou before leaving China a year later. After staying in Germany, she moved to France in 2003 and studied at l’École supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg. Having graduated in 2006, she settled in Lyon where she still lives and works, although her exhibitions have taken her further afield recently to Dubai (UAE), Istanbul (Turkey), New York (USA), Montreal (Canada), Lijiang (China) and Shenzhen (China). ⁶ This last solo exhibition (July to October 2024, at the Fisher Art Agency) saw her transition to a more official footing as an international artist thanks to the involvement of Jean-Hubert Martin, who provided a supportive foreword and interview to accompany the exhibition, and whose influence has launched the careers of other aspiring Chinese artists abroad. Alongside this, she has been described in the media as ‘une artiste plasticienne de renommée mondiale’ (La voix du nord, 2018), has held a residency at Usine Utopik, one of the top five, highly competitive, residences in Europe, and participated in ‘Trames’, an exhibition of artworks – organised jointly by the Nouvel Institut Franco-Chinois and Yishu8 (Maison des Arts de Pékin) for the Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon (23 September to 24 December 2024) – showing only five artists of Chinese heritage who were selected because they epitomise contemporary intercultural art. In academia, Chen is on the cusp of discovery, with two scholars so far researching into her artworks. Guillaume Thouroude (2024) explored her early sculptures and embroideries, created either prior to her move to France or during her first few years in Lyon when she exhibited at the Galerie Françoise Besson, while my own article (Silvester, 2022) focused on her ‘jardin imaginaire’, an ongoing project made up of a collection of installations featuring human-animal-vegetal hybrids in an open-air centre for art in Burgundy.

What Chen's exhibitions have in common, and what the scholarly articles published to date focus on, is her strong connection to her childhood in a rural village and her commitment to both the idea and practice of transmission, whether from one generation to the next, from one culture to another, or from nonhumans to humans. Growing up, she witnessed and learned about ancestral and artisanal practices, became familiar with the cults passed on by shamans and healers, ⁷ and was in constant contact with nature as she explored the local countryside and played with animals and insects. Her works ‘bring to life totemic figures, deities, chimeras and hybrid beings of various sorts by means of mixed techniques’ (Asen, 2022) which comprise installations, sculptures, ceramics, embroidery, paper cuttings and drawings. She still relies on ancestral rituals, traditional crafts and mythical narratives to create works of art that, nevertheless, are able to find a place in the modern world and that represent her thoughts about the relationships between different species (animal, vegetal and human), realms (imagination and reality; the spiritual and the physical) and states of being (life and death). While she is committed to the preservation of nature, she is also interested in the metamorphoses that allow new forms to evolve whose bright colours both attract attention and convey the playfulness of her artistic vision. If this vivacity and iconography derive from the folk art she grew up with, they also recall the naivety and boldness of western art brut. Likewise, where her embroideries and paper cuttings evoke the primitive arts, her sculptures, using resins, plaster and plastic, show the influence of contemporary artistic techniques. If we recall the avant-garde tendency to look upon artists like Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp as shamans and spirit mediums, it could be argued that she has more affinities with western artists than with the fine artists in China who were considered to be intellectuals whose work carried important social and cultural implications. Her artworks are full of such contradictions and tensions: they convey materially and symbolically the coexistence of her two cultural selves, constructing ‘un monde qui lui ressemble’ (Crespy, 2015) and demonstrating the harmony and freedom she has found.

This situation of transforming the opposition between the East and the West, as formerly described by Edward Said, into ‘a kind of interactive “in-betweenness”’ is typical of overseas Chinese artists, according to Gao Minglu (1998: 184), a well-known Chinese curator. In a published conversation with another respected curator, Hou Hanru, Gao and Hou both refer to Homi Bhabha's concept of the third space to describe the openings and negotiations with contemporary cultural reality that necessarily arise when Chinese artists move to live in the West. ⁸ Gao and Hou (1998: 184) consider that these artists are aware of ‘the antagonism between eastern and western aspects of China's modern and contemporary culture’ over the course of the twentieth century and that they wish to find a way to act and work effectively in this third space. This involves developing a cultural strategy by which their own Chinese cultural experiences are made into ‘efficient languages to intervene in the new social reality’ (Gao and Hou, 1998: 184). Hou (Gao and Hou, 1998: 184) even goes so far as to call it a ‘strategy of survival’, which may include the preservation of Chinese characteristics to establish their own place abroad. Xuefeng Chen, too, practices an artistic language that expresses the interconnections and transmutations of transnational reality, rather than the presentation of cultural differences. Having emigrated from China to Europe, she embodies the transnational experience of dislocation that Hou (Gao and Hou, 1998: 189) evokes when he states that ‘[i]f there is an “aesthetics” of the 1990s, then it is an aesthetics of space’.

However, one aspect of her artistic theory and practice that differs from the overseas Chinese artists discussed by Gao and Hou concerns the formers’ interest and engagement in avant-garde activities, absent from Chen's trajectory, which informed their artworks from the mid- to late-1980s:

In the eighties, artists seeking modernity undertook three major tasks. First, the avant-garde artists saw themselves as cultural pioneers whose task was to enlighten the masses, fight for social reform, and rebel against the past. Second, they criticized the previous state-dominated ideology, which had long suppressed individuality. Third, avant-garde artists made the creation of art part of a cultural enlightenment program rather than a formalist activity, a social activity rather than the representation of an illusory reality. (Gao, 1998a: 20)

Following the easing of restrictions and new exposure to foreign art when the Cultural Revolution came to an end, the first graduates from art colleges appeared in the early 1980s and formed their own groups, like the Star group, the ‘85 Movement, and Xiamen Dada, which included Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan who later emigrated to France. Even if these collectives preceded her years of formative training, Chen did not participate either in any of the experimental associations of the post-Tiananmen 1990s, such as Political Pop ⁹ or Cynical Realism. ¹⁰ In fact, she seems to have taken an independent stance in regard to national movements, instead staying aligned with the artistic and ancient traditions of southwest China, a minority culture, and adapting them into a more contemporary aesthetic. It is probable, moreover, that Yunnan province's proximity to southwest Asia, bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, is a significant reason why the artistic trends in China's northern or eastern cities were far removed from her everyday life and concerns. Given that Chen did not affiliate with the key artistic groups that influenced other overseas Chinese artists, it is worthwhile exploring her engagement with relational art to gauge the extent to which this significant current of western practice is present in the conception and production of her works after her move to France. Thus, by shifting the analysis of her art from a predominantly Chinese perspective to one focused on French aesthetics, this article advances current scholarship on Xuefeng Chen, reframes it, and responds to one of the most common questions asked about contemporary franco-Chinese art: what is French about it?

Interactivity

Bourriaud's (1998: 9) discussion of the relational aesthetics of contemporary artworks interrogated whether it is still possible to generate relationships with the world, or models of sociability, in the practical field of art history which has traditionally been given over to their representation. He thus questioned the indirect experience of human relations, characteristic of the ‘société du spectacle’ described by Guy Debord and transmitted by the informational networks of global capitalism. Emphasising the importance of interactivity in art, he described it as the new turn (‘nouveau tour’), after the era of relations between humankind and deity, then between humankind and the object (Bourriaud, 1998: 28). Commentators, such as Baker (2004: 50), have called this a move to a new service economy: ‘art abandons its prior (industrial) object forms and shifts to the immaterial form of services, a proliferation of event-based manipulations directly shaping the sphere of “inter-human relations”’. Art, then, becomes a social space for dialogue and exchange because its substrate is formed by inter-subjectivity and ‘l’être-ensemble’ is its central theme. Such a reciprocal encounter is evident in Xuefeng Chen's Ǒrigǒ, part of the Locus solus exhibition held at the Arter Museum in Istanbul from May 2022 to January 2023. While some Covid-19 restrictions were still in place at the museum, such as wearing face masks, the sculptures nevertheless managed to elicit a common reaction from the visitors – amusement – and interaction. They appealed to the sense of curiosity and fun in both adults and youngsters, no doubt because they evoked ‘the colourful, imaginative universe of childhood’, as may be seen in Figures 1 and 2 (Asen, 2022). Reinforcing this, a video of the installation shows a child skipping happily around some of the sculptures, as if in a playground (Video of Ǒrigǒ, 2023). The involvement of children extended to a workshop on 29 October 2022 at which Chen invited those between the ages of 6 and 12 to explore the ties between art, nature and people and to learn about the harmony of nature, ‘a unifying force for humanity throughout history’ (A Seed – A Work, 2022). The children were asked to look carefully at seeds and then produce drawings and sketches, thus activating both their senses and creativity. They could either take away these works or display them in a room adjacent to the exhibition space so that a direct relationship was set up between the participants and the artist and between the drawings and sculptures. In Bourriaud’s (1998: 15) words, out of ‘la “rencontre” entre regardeur et tableau’ emerges ‘l’élaboration collective du sens’.

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Figure 1.

Ǒrigǒ (2022). ^© Jean-Luc Petit.

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Figure 2.

Ǒrigǒ (2022). ^© Jean-Luc Petit.

This idea of co-creating meaning is further exemplified by considering the literal and figurative significance of seeds, constituting the genesis of life in Chen's collection, since its title derives from the Latin word ‘origo’ meaning ‘beginning’, ‘source’ or ‘origin’. The 12 sculptures were intended as imaginative embodiments of ancestral myths and tales, remembered from Chen's own childhood, and evoked the origin of species, those minute, imperceptible signs of life, like spores, cells and veins of a leaf. They represented an invented species that is not entirely human, animal or vegetal and urged reflection on the possibility of new entities that cross nature's boundaries, raising fundamental questions about beginnings and beings. However, these sculptures acquired another denotation when experienced by the visitors, echoing Bourriaud's opinion that the meaning of an artwork is not fixed but is created through the interactions between viewers and the work itself. They became colourful play objects, forms that invited both adults and children to interact with each other (by waving across or through them, for instance) or with the pieces themselves (by moving around or underneath them).

Interactivity and the production of sociability were also the outcome of Xuefeng Chen's Hundun, created during her residency at the Centre D’Art Contemporain, Usine Utopik (in Tessy-sur-Vire, France) in 2015. Although there was no external participation from members of the public during the process of production, at the display stage the visitors were encouraged to interact with the sculpture, a large, white, ‘monster’ made out of plaster and overlaid with silk which was painted green in places. Around the figure, green, red and white threads hung down from the metal framework surrounding it. ¹² In keeping with the artist's intention, visitors walked through and among the threads, which were also displaced by currents of air, both actions creating ‘un mouvement éphémère’ (Chen, 18 September 2024, personal email). Given the relatively confined space (8 × 8 × 4 m), they were able to mingle and get close to the figure to better see the details of its composition, construction and materials (See Figures 3 and 4). Indeed, as the audience moved around the piece, it created what Bourriaud calls in Esthétique relationelle a ‘halo-effect’ that draws people towards it. In a sense, then, this impromptu micro-community becomes part of the display, rather than separate from the sculpture itself:

De plus en plus, le public se voit d’emblée pris en compte. Comme si désormais, cette ‘unique apparition d’un lointain’ qu’est l’aura artistique se voyait fournie par lui : comme si la micro-communauté qui se regroupe devant l’image devenait la source même de l’aura, le ‘lointain’ apparaissant ponctuellement pour auréoler l’œuvre, qui lui délègue ses pouvoirs. L’aura de l’art ne se trouve plus dans l’arrière-monde représenté par l’œuvre, ni dans la forme elle-même, mais devant elle, au sein de la forme collective temporaire qu’elle produit en s’exposant. (Bourriaud, 1998: 62)

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Figure 3.

Hundun (2015) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ¹¹

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Figure 4.

Hundun (2015) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ¹³

Chen observed how the audience became part of the installation as they took the figurative form of ‘un énorme nuage coloré, vivant’ (Chen, 18 September 2024, personal email). Moreover, the conversations between those inside the installation and between those outside it created a double dialogue across the ‘espace flou’, as if ‘on est fondu dans l’œuvre’ (Chen, 18 September 2024, personal email). The work gained an extra dimension of meaning due to the viewers being physically present, alongside each other in a communal situation. They were not passive or disengaged but were engrossed in active, optical contemplation and circulating in the free space around the sculpture. Hundun therefore demonstrates well Bourriaud's (1998: 59) belief that at the foundation of art is ‘la coprésence des regardeurs devant l’œuvre, que celle-ci soit effective ou symbolique’ (italics in original). The installation acknowledges ‘la possibilité d’exister en face d’elle’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 59) because it does not deny the subjectivity of the onlooker and actually takes him/her into account in its structure. ¹⁴ As well as highlighting the contingencies of this relationship between her installation and the audience, Chen is interested in how it may be viewed as an aesthetic object in its own right, representing a Chinese creation myth. Emperor Hundun (or Hun T’un), meaning chaos, ‘was only partly formed, lacking the seven orifices for hearing, seeing, scenting, and tasting’ (Walters, 1992: 85). Emperor Hu and Emperor Shu, when visiting him, ‘decided to repay their host's hospitality by boring the required orifices, one each day’ (Walters, 1992: 85). As a result, Hundun died on the seventh day and the Earth was created. The time span is significant because it not only mirrors the Christian account in the Book of Genesis of the time it took to create the world, but also points to another overlapping of Eastern and Western traditions in Xuefeng Chen's art.

Social bonds

When exploring the relationship between art and audience in Ǒrigǒ and Hundun, Xuefeng Chen aimed to generate shared experiences among participants which, in turn, gave rise to ‘collectivités instantanées’ in the two different ‘domaine[s] d’échanges’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 17), including the challenging context of the pandemic. Another of her installations, Silhouettes, goes even further towards creating social bonds and contributes to a sense of community and collective engagement. As Bourriaud (1998: 15) explains, one of the virtual properties of the image is ‘son pouvoir de reliance, pour reprendre le terme de Michel Maffesoli’, since flags, logos, icons and signs all produce empathy and sharing and all ‘génèrent du lien’ (italics in original). He goes on to claim that art is particularly suitable when it comes to expressing our current civilisation because ‘il resserre l’espace des relations’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 15, italics in original). In other words, ‘[l]’art est le lieu de production d’une socialité spécifique’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 16). In 2017 and then again in 2023, as part of the Festival on the Roc at La Karrière (Villars-Fontaine, Burgundy), Chen produced a series of plaster statues that were displayed in the basin of the disused quarry. 150 volunteers came on site to be covered with a papier mâché-style plaster to create moulds that were then modified to produce ‘une [sic] forêt de personnages imaginaires’. (Festival Vill’art, no date). (See Figures 5 and 6). In keeping with the colour of the original plaster, white, the figures appeared like ghostly silhouettes in hybrid forms. Their distinctly humanoid features (bellies, breasts, ribcage) combined with nonhuman appendages, such as curved horns, or box-shaped heads, or antennae sprouting from shoulders, turning them into other-worldly creatures inhabiting the rocky landscape. Figures 7 and 8 show that some of their poses mimicked natural positions – standing with hands on hips or arms down the sides – while others had more rigid stances – hands stretched out, taut backs, arms crossed. Also, some figures were touching – sitting back-to-back, an adult holding a child in the air – or facing the audience, in a way that evoked the relative ‘transparence sociale’ of the installation from an internal perspective (Bourriaud, 1998: 43). Chen did not produce these figures on her own but worked alongside two other visual artists, Myriam Martinez and Christel Pouthier, and was assisted by a group of student plasterers. This enabled a rich exchange of knowledge and practice regarding both the creative process and plastering techniques. It also demonstrated the presence of Bourriaud's micro-community, ‘une collectivité instantanée de regardeurs-participants’ (1998: 60), during the working process and then at the exhibition. Also recognising the role played by the audience as a community, the art scholar Claire Bishop (2004, 54) confirms that ‘relational art sets up situations in which viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social entity, but are actually given the wherewithal to create a community, however temporary or utopian this may be’. ¹⁸

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Figure 5.

Making plaster moulds for Silhouettes (2017). ^© Association La Karrière. Photographer: Zia Linotte. ¹⁵

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Figure 6.

Making plaster moulds for Silhouettes (2023). ^© Xuefeng Chen.

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Figure 7.

Silhouettes (2017) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ¹⁶

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Figure 8.

Silhouettes (2017) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ¹⁷

Everyday life

If, as Bourriaud (1998: 89) contends, ‘la pratique artistique est toujours rapport à l’autre, en même temps qu’elle constitue un rapport au monde’, then we would expect relational art to draw inspiration from everyday life. Indeed, he confirms that the aesthetic object produces, first and foremost, relationships between people and the world (Bourriaud, 1998: 45). In the project Jardin sur toit (2019), Xuefeng Chen aimed to connect the history of the former inhabitants of the houses of La Cité des Électriciens, a town constructed by la Compagnie des mines de Bruay between 1856 and 1861 to accommodate the families of miners working at pit n°1, with the site's current visitors and renters. When mining ceased in 1979, the town began to depopulate and became devoid of inhabitants by 2008. Ten houses were then preserved and redecorated to reflect their original state, while others were gradually repurposed as gîtes. Gardens were reinstated, an information centre about the history of the Cité was built, and spaces were made available for artistic projects carried out by different companies and collectives. Chen was one of the first artists in residence, staying for a total of 3 months over the period from October 2018 up until the opening of the exhibition at the end of May 2019. Initially, five sculptures were planned but, due to site restrictions, only three were made and installed. Two of these, partly inspired by nature and partly invented, sit on top of houses: a yellow mermaid with multicoloured scales (Figure 9) and a white spherical creature with red horns and mouth (Figure 10). Chen held workshops during October that gave members of the public access to her work in progress. The third sculpture, a fountain, was built over an existing well in the grounds. Chen (29 September 2024, personal email) was keen to draw attention to this source of water that nourished the locals in the past, and that Isabelle Mauchin (no date), the manager of the Cité, calls ‘[la] source de vie et de magie’. The creation of the fountain was a collaborative act, involving people from the surroundings – school children, college students, retirees, even prisoners – who fashioned mini bricks out of clay that they then decorated with engravings inspired by nature (See Figure 11). Nearly 500 bricks were fired, varnished and assembled into a dome-like structure that contained the traces of the local inhabitants, aged from 5 to 70 years old (Figure 12).

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Figure 9.

Jardin sur toit (2019) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ¹⁹

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Figure 10.

Jardin sur toit (2019) ^© Xuefeng Chen. ²⁰

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Figure 11.

Creating the mini bricks for the fountain, Jardin sur toit (2019) © Xuefeng Chen.

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Figure 12.

Construction of the fountain, Jardin sur toit (2019) © Xuefeng Chen.

The sculptures represent the possibility of incorporating ordinary activities and social contexts through make-believe creations, echoing Bourriaud's (1998: 59) idea that ‘l’art ne transcende pas les préoccupations quotidiennes, il nous confronte à la réalité à travers la singularité d’un rapport au monde, à travers une fiction’. Chen's ‘formes magiques’ were inspired by the legends of her native village in Yunnan and the belief that dwellings continue to contain the spirit of their former inhabitants (Mauchin, no date). The creatures on the rooftops, then, symbolise the protective presence of these workers and their families, acting like guardians for future generations. Chen recalls her mother, a shaman, performing various rituals in order to pay homage to the house spirit that protected their home: ‘Ma mère brûlait souvent de l’herbe parfumée, disposait des fruits sauvages, collait des jiama [image gravée sur bois] colorés à côté du four dans lequel elle disait qu’un yeye [un esprit] habitait’ (Mauchin, no date). What may appear at first to be purely fantastic objects, ‘des réalités imaginaires ou utopiques’, are then understood to constitute, instead, ‘des modes d’existence ou des modèles d’action à l’intérieur du réel existant’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 13). Chen has created an installation that blurs the boundaries between art and daily life and, at the same time, encourages dialogue between the past and present. It connects her background in China with her work in a mining town in the Pas-de-Calais, also a relic of the past, and contributes to its rebirth. As Mauchin (La renaissance de la Cité des électriciens, no date) comments, it is a living space that continues to evolve, from ‘une patrimoine ouvrière’ to an UNESCO world heritage site and artistic centre.

Democratic participation

Another facet of Xuefeng Chen's contract with the local authority of Béthune-Bruay concerned the co-creation of cultural projects with children and youths in two primary schools, one médiathèque and nine secondary schools to explore the theme of nature (Chen, 18 September 2024, personal email). In line with Bourriaud's theory, she is thus committed to a democratic approach to art, where everyone has the potential to contribute to the creation and meaning of the artwork. As Todd (2022: 342) points out, ‘Bourriaud views the modern political era as ushering in new possibilities for aesthetics linked to emancipation and freedom on individuals and peoples’. This contrasts with the hierarchical structures often associated with traditional art production. Chen's ‘mission artistique’, from 15 January to May 2018, involved two meetings with each group to set up the activities and then she followed their progress over the period. Inviting the young participants to invent and experiment, she helped them to learn about the process of artistic creation and the links between themselves and their local environment. She believes that all forms of nature, from tiny seeds to large oceans, occupy an essential place in human ecology or, as she calls it, ‘l’arbre de vie’, living in us, inspiring and nourishing us (Chen, 25 August 2024, personal email). They not only evoke the origin of life, but also provide a rich source for creation from ‘la nuit des temps à l’art contemporain aujourd’hui’ (Chen, 25 August 2024, personal email). The children were tasked with, firstly, observing a natural form, such as a leaf, eyes, or hands, and sketching it (see Figure 13). Then, using their five senses, they were asked to think about which emotion it evoked and which colours they would use to represent it. The next step was to introduce them to different materials – cloth, plants, wood, string, metal, soil, etc. – and to encourage them to use any of these to develop their initial observations into a work of art (see Figure 14). After this, the children exchanged ideas about their creations and discussed how they, as human beings, fitted into the natural environment. Thus, dialogue, ‘cette forme de négociation interhumaine’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 43), became the last step of the aesthetic process which reshaped it from a singular experience to a collective one. These acts of reflection not only brought the children together, emphasising ‘[l’]effet communautaire dans l’art contemporain’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 63), but also helped them to understand the connections between themselves, art, and the world around them. It was only by breaking down this quasi-metaphysical topic into small, creative stages that art achieved ‘de modestes branchements’, opened ‘quelques passages obstrués’ and put the children in contact with ‘des niveaux de réalité tenus éloignés les uns des autres’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 8). By emphasising practice and doing, the artistic project gave them a new way of engaging with the world, while broadening their intellectual and imaginary horizons.

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Figure 13.

‘Mission artistique’. Initial sketch. ^© Xuefeng Chen . ²¹

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Figure 14.

‘Mission artistique’. Final work of art. ^© Xuefeng Chen. ²²

The limitations of relational aesthetics

While Xuefeng Chen's projects have so far revealed several key characteristics of relational art, namely interactivity, the creation of social bonds, the connection to everyday life and democratic participation, we cannot apply the theory in a wholesale way because her practice in two other significant respects is at odds with it. Firstly, she assumes the conventional role of the artist by planning to produce an artwork, sometimes involving others and sometimes not, and having a precise meaning or message in mind when she sets out on her creative path. In contrast, the central idea of Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics is to shift the emphasis in art from traditional, object-based forms to the relationships and interactions that art generates among people. He thus goes against the long-established Cartesian model, which relies on objectification in order to achieve subjectification and mastery over what is surveyed, and heads towards a ‘microtopian’ view of art in the present which is free from commodification. Instead, ‘[l]’art est un état de rencontre’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 18), a social exchange, and, while it is not entirely formless, his studies show that it does not take the form of conventional artworks such as sculptures or paintings. This is reinforced by Bourriaud when he writes that ‘[l]a forme de l’œuvre contemporaine s’étend au-delà de sa forme matérielle : elle est élément reliant, un principe d’agglutination dynamique’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 21, italics in original). Indeed, he prefers the word ‘formation’ instead of ‘form’ because it signals the opposite of stasis and singularity: ‘à l’opposé d’un objet clos sur lui-même par l’entremise d’un style et d’une signature, l’art actuel montre qu’il n’est de forme que dans la rencontre, dans la relation dynamique qu’entretient une proposition artistique avec d’autres formations, artistiques ou non’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 21). This citation also points to an important caveat to his anti-object stance: if the meeting between different formations from different fields includes a move to the ‘outer’ public realm and results in the creation of an artwork, it may be considered as relational art. For example, Bourriaud mentions Mark Dion in his discussion about recent art emulating professional procedures from non-art fields that gives rise to a certain ambiguity between ‘la fonction utilitaire et la fonction esthétique des objets qu’il présente’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 36). Dion and 25 collaborators conducted archaeological digs at two sites on the Thames and displayed the objects found collectively in a large double-sided cabinet at, firstly, the old Tate, then at the Tate Modern. ²³ Similarly, certain practitioners, critics and theorists of art, like Landi Raubenheimer, argue that objects crossing the boundaries between daily life and art as a result of social interactivities and formations are part of the relational system. ²⁴ Chen's work is often in keeping with this relational approach: she relies on objects from the natural world as the starting point for all her projects and brings them into an artistic space. On the other hand, she does not necessarily become a facilitator or organiser of a project. Bourriaud emphasised how the artist should create the conditions for social interaction rather than producing a fixed work of art within his/her private symbolic space. Chen, however, is constantly preoccupied with imposing a specific, personal (even didactic) narrative: her artistic mission is to convey the importance of nature as the source of both creation and creativity. In other words, setting the stage for relational experiences is not always her primary concern. She thus resists the decentring of the artist and disseminates her philosophy of art both semiotically and materially. Her authorial autonomy remains intact so that her artworks function as artworks and do not lapse into purely social phenomena.

Xuefeng Chen differs from relational artists, secondly, in her belief in the permanency of the art object: her sculptures and installations do not change over time and they continue to exist even when there is no audience. Relational artworks, on the other hand, are often temporary and evolve as participants engage with them. This transience not only challenges the traditional notion of the art object, but also highlights the dynamic nature of social interactions. So, rather than simply occupying a space in a gallery or museum, relational art involves a temporal dimension that allows for further transformation and dialogue: ‘on ne peut plus considérer l’œuvre contemporaine comme un espace à parcourir […]. Elle se présente désormais comme une durée à éprouver, comme une ouverture vers la discussion illimitée’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 15). Chen's works, conversely, are long-lasting, completed objects rather than work-in-progress, that travel with her as she exhibits in different countries. Her embroideries, paper cuttings and early sculptures, which Bourriaud would classify as the outcome of her private experiences with art rather than resulting from a social encounter, have moved from China to Europe and sometimes back again, without changing their form or meaning. As for her more recent creations, discussed above, no new conversations about the sculptures for Jardin sur toit can take place because they may only be fully understood when attached to the houses of La Cité des Électriciens, and the figures comprising Silhouettes belong together against the backdrop of the quarry and thus resist transformation elsewhere. Likewise, the presentation of Hundun allowed for one type of interaction, albeit with different members of the public who came and went during the exhibition, and the creative works produced by the children at the 12 schools and libraries were not discussed or worked on further after being displayed.

Towards an ecosophy

The above distinction between form and formation is central to Bourriaud’s (1998: 90–109) exploration of Félix Guattari's conceptualisation of the active process of subjectification in his section titled ‘Le paradigme esthétique (Félix Guattari et l’art)’. Bourriaud (1998: 90) notes that Guattari has written very little about art, strictly speaking, though has always given an important place to the ‘paradigme esthétique’ in a range of writings. Consequently, Bourriaud (1998: 91) grafts the philosopher's thinking, mainly drawn from his texts Choasmose and Les trois écologies, onto the domain of contemporary art to achieve ‘un “enlacement polyphonique” riche de possibilités’. This statement in itself echoes Guattari’s (2005: 12) understanding of the subjective self as changeable, ‘plurielle et polyphonique’. Building on a post-structuralist notion of the decentred subject, his formulation of subjectivity recognises the interaction between individuals, societies and institutions. This extends to the possibility of forming a collective or group subjectivity: ‘[la subjectivité] n’existe que sur le mode du couplage: association avec “des groupes humains, des machines socioéconomiques, des machines informationnelles”’ (Bourriaud, 1998: 94, italics in original). As Davis (2011: 120) explains, ‘[t]his alterity is “the other” against which we define ourselves, that against which we constitute our own existence’. In Bourriaud’s (1998: 94) words, ‘la subjectivité ne saurait être définie que par la présence d’une seconde subjectivité: elle ne constitue un “territoire” qu’à partir des autres territoires qu’elle rencontre’. This other, moreover, does not have to be human or individual, but could consist of technological agents, cultural phenomena and collectives, for instance. Guattari (1989: 31) refers to the interdependence of these elements in terms of an ecological subjectivity, or ecosophy, an inseparable amalgam of the mental, the social and the environmental. It is the central position that Guattari assigns to subjectivity within this ecosophy that, according to Bourriaud (1998: 92), ‘détermine de bout en bout sa conception de l’art, et la valeur de celui-ci’. New modes of subjectivization may be created in the same way that ‘un plasticien crée de nouvelles formes à partir de la palette dont il dispose’ (Guattari, 2005: 19).

As one such visual artist, Chen also accentuates the social aspects of situations in which subjectivities engage in the creation of aesthetic meaning. She conceives of existence as a network of interdependent factors stemming from a unifying ecology that links nature, human beings and their environment. In other words, she is interested in the encounter between subjectivities in spectator-orientated artworks that take into account how and where they are situated in relation to others, society and institutions, similar to Guattari. Her belief in the connection between individuals (of any age) and nature (in all its forms) is a constant and, through institutions such as schools, libraries and cultural or historical organisations, she reaches new audiences and involves them in artistic activities. Sometimes this entails the creation of artworks, as in Silhouettes and the outreach projects and workshops with children, the elderly and prisoners, that reflect the collective space of meaning-making common to Bourriaud's relational art. At other times, the audience are an integral part of the reception of the artwork, in the cases of Ǒrigǒ and Hundun, for example, which emphasise the subjective experience of individual observers and their interactions with the pieces and each other. Occasionally, other ways of living and being (human or nonhuman) are the inspiration, such as Jardin sur toit. Always, her art puts us into a dialogue with the environment, reminding us how nature is fundamental to our very being and daily lives. In other words, her art brings together cultural and natural systems in a field of practice that recalls Guattari's resistance to the dualistic separation evident in traditional environmentalist perspectives. Chen's installations demonstrate the plurality of ecologies, environments and habitats that, rather than being detached and outside us, define us and that we persistently define and reconfigure in a network of relations. They convey, in short, her ecosophic aesthetics: the diverse, imaginative ways of conveying the intricate interconnections between subjectivity, the environment and social relations.

Conclusion

While Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics has helped deepen our understanding of Xuefeng Chen's artistic practice – particularly by foregrounding the social dimensions within the intricate interplay between art and nature – it has also shed light on the shortcomings of his framework when applied to non-Western or transnational contexts. In attempting not to gloss over the complexities of his theory, this article not only elucidates aspects of Chen's installations but also explores the cultural and conceptual limitations of Bourriaud's own thinking. Specifically, it demonstrates how relational aesthetics, though compelling in its attention to interactivity and viewer engagement, may falter when faced with cultural paradigms that diverge from its European, postmodern origins.

This dual function – of both utilising and interrogating Bourriaud's theory – is not unprecedented. Claire Bishop, in her 2004 critique of relational aesthetics, employed a similar strategy in examining the work of Rirkrit Tiravanija. Tiravanija, a transnational artist born in Argentina and raised in Thailand, Ethiopia and Canada by Thai parents, created participatory artworks where audiences were invited to cook, eat, and converse in re-creations of domestic settings. These works epitomised Bourriaud's ideal of open-ended, convivial experiences in which art emerges through social interaction. Blurring the boundary between artist and viewer, they collapsed the gallery into a kind of experimental ‘laboratory’ for shared meaning-making. Yet Bishop (2004: 79) pointed out that while these works celebrated harmony and collectivity, they also relied on an idealised notion of the subject as whole, socially integrated and culturally fluent. In her view, this ignored the fragmented, uneven, and often uncomfortable experiences that many audiences encounter within such seemingly inclusive frameworks and overlooked the divided subjects ‘of partial identifications open to constant flux’ (Bishop, 2004: 79). She thus proposed relational antagonism as an alternative: a mode of art-making that reveals the frictions, disidentifications, and exclusions masked by the illusion of social cohesion. By surfacing these qualities, relational antagonism acknowledges that collective experience is often fraught and unstable, rather than inherently utopian.

This critical perspective is useful in analysing Chen's work, but it also raises further questions regarding artists from marginalised or diasporic backgrounds. Chen, like Tiravanija, creates spaces of encounter that encourage warmth, hospitality, and shared experience – yet her installations are underpinned by subtle cultural dissonances that prevent full assimilation into a universal framework of conviviality. Audiences are often made aware of their partial understanding of Chinese or Yunnanese cultural traditions, creating a quiet but persistent sense of estrangement. Unlike the confrontational politics of European artists like Santiago Sierra or Thomas Hirschhorn ²⁵ – who, in Bishop's reading, illustrate relational antagonism (2004: 70–79) – Chen does not foreground rupture or protest. Instead, she seeks a kind of rapprochement, using the natural world as a universal medium through which mutual understanding might be approached artistically, if not fully achieved.

This poses a challenge to Bourriaud's and Bishop's frameworks alike. Chen's work suggests that cultural hybridity and transnational identity are not reducible to either utopian harmony (as in Bourriaud) or overt antagonism (as in Bishop). Instead, they operate through a quieter negotiation of difference where nature and art serve as both a shared ground and a site of translation. For relational aesthetics to remain a viable interpretive tool in an increasingly globalised art world, this study argues that it must evolve to recognise the nuanced ways in which ‘minority’, migrant and transnational artists articulate belonging, dislocation and exchange. Rather than imposing Western-derived models of collectivity or dissent, critics and theorists must remain attentive to the specific cultural dynamics and affective textures that shape relationality across different contexts.