Wuming Art - a visual critique of revolutionary modernity

Abstract

This paper studies an underground art group active in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, named Wuming (meaning No Name). It breaks with the analytical discourse of “dissidents”, “victims”, and Chinese “modernity”. Instead, it treats Wuming art as a visual critique of that modernity – of industrialization, the destruction of traditional culture and communities, alienation, the exploitation of nature, the formation of mass society, disenchantment and loss of meaning, and the cult of progress in continued revolution. The paper explores three promises of the Wuming case. As a history, it challenges the master narrative of the Cultural Revolution depicting subjects as brainwashed victims and mobs, by disclosing creative agents and self-inventing subjectivity. As a community, it reveals novel social forms and forces from the grassroots, and new kinds of social identity. And as art, it critiques revolutionary modernity, creating other visions, other images, and other projections of modernity.