A Chinese scroll painting like a scene from an action movie: a horseman shoots a warrior galloping in front of him with bow and arrow. The Chinese-German Paper Tiger Theater has been inspired by the scroll painting in the collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. In their dance-video-installation-performance the artists span an arc from the Chinese imperial wars and their celebration in the imperial palace to the colonial plundering of Beijing in the so-called Boxer War in 1900 to the China of today. Three dancers meet a contemporary witness of Honecker’s China trip, a skateboarder meets a drummer, video art meets costumes for all.
We see the deadly moment of an act of war: hit by an arrow and painfully bent, a Dzungarian horseman flees at full gallop. Behind him, also on horseback, a Manchurian officer of the imperial army, Machang, bow in hand, is about to send another arrow after the fleeing man. The scroll “Machang Breaking Through the Enemy Ranks” was painted in Beijing in 1759 and is part of a large-scale propaganda program commissioned by Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795) from his court painter Lang Shining alias Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) after the conclusion of the victorious campaign against the Dzungars (today Xinjiang). It was intended to glorify his expansionist policies in the northwest and south of the empire. The Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione had lived in Beijing since 1714. Although he was unable to pursue his missionary activities there as originally planned, he became a court painter who was highly esteemed by the emperor. In 1914, the painting arrived in Berlin either via the international art trade, probably as a result of looting during the “Boxer War” in 1900/1901 from Beijing or, as a result of the turmoil during the 1911 revolution, from Shenyang. It is now part of the collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in the Humboldt Forum. Its provenance, along with other works from the Imperial Palace in German museums, is currently being researched.
Combining the realist tradition in European painting with Chinese aesthetics, Castiglione, together with painters from his workshop, created an early form of transcultural exchange, staged, as it were, in the situation of pursuer and fugitive. This concrete scene as well as the complex history of the painting form the starting point for a performative-installative research in the historical and contemporary contexts of colonization and revolution. In doing so, Paper Tiger understands the painting as a probe for exploring the present. As an object that has traversed times and spaces, at the interface between artist and emperor, between human and animal, between imperial power and impotent resistance, it asks us fundamental questions.
Idea and direction: Tian Gebing
Language: German, English, Mandarin
Tickets: 8–16 €
Picture: Copyright: Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Image: David von Becker