CHINESE artist Cong Yunfeng has created two murals in London, the U.K., to respond to British Museum’s controversial exhibition, “China’s Hidden Century.” “When I visited the British Museum years ago, I always had mixed feelings as I saw a lot of artifacts from China in the crowded display, and this exhibition finally triggered long suppressed emotions,” he said. His feelings spurred thinking, engagement and action. One of his two murals, titled “Conversion of the Five Hundred Bandits,” is inspired by a Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes mural dating back to the Western Wei Dynasty (535-556). The original mural vividly depicted scenes of suppression, capture, interrogation, eye-gouging, exile and restoration of sight. As an artist, he shows an eclectic taste in painting, introducing metaphorical elements through the replacement of the facial features of the bandits with those of the characters from Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment.” Moreover, the work was divided into six parts, with the headline description taken from Buddhist scriptures and Western classical works and integrated into the artwork. Like the first part head, “Violence is the midwife of -everyone old society pregnant with a new one,” was taken from “Das Kapital.” Reflecting on history, Cong embarked on a period of contemplation to respond to the post-colonial era with the “Wall-facing Project.” “The project reflects the current state of multiculturalism in the context of globalization advocating for a cultural decentralization experiment,” he said. Through presenting cultural symbols from different civilizations in the form of murals and graffiti in public spaces within the framework of the Western contemporary visual system, he creates effects of convergence, collision and conflict among diverse cultures, reflecting on the impact of Western-led globalization on multiculturalism. Born in 1990, Cong graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He has been engaged in mural painting since 2013 and also studied at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in the U.K. from 2014 to 2016. He has always had a passion for murals and stressed that the wall, as a carrier, can be brought to life by interacting with people. Another mural, “Playing Pipa Behind the Back,” was inspired by a Tang Dynasty (618-907) mural at Dunhuang’s Mogao Grottoes. It is a relatively friendly artwork compared with “Conversion of the Five Hundred Bandits” as it conveys a sense of dialogue, with an echo between the dancers playing on the dome and the spontaneous dances of people of different races and ages dancing underneath the dome, Cong said. While the “Wall-facing Project” is underway, the “Wall-breaking Project” is also in preparation, giving the frescoes a shift in spatial and temporal dimensions and reconstructing its meaning. (Global Times) | 