Sophia Kidd

DOI: 10.64212/ITWX1081

Abstract
This review of Global Painting exhibition, recently opened at Museum M.A.R.T. in Rovereto, Italy, addresses the ways in which this exhibition is situated within a Chinese arts ecology, being then presented outside of China, for non-Chinese audiences. Through an ‘emic’ lens, we describe these artworks in the context of China’s internal elements, looking at how paintings function within a Chinese ecosystem of forces. Developing an affective geography approach to analyzing art, this paper explores the Chinese notions of situatedness (qingjing, 情景) through the lens of the “idea-image (yixiang, 意象)” and “emotional ontology (qinggan benti, 情感本體)”, arriving at a better understanding of “situated emotions (qingjing jiaorong, 情景交融)”. Exploration focuses upon two of Global Painting’s artists, Zhang Zhaoying and Meng Yangyang, at the ways their subject, artistic praxis, and exegisis situate their work within a Chinese arts ecology, situating emotions and idea images within Chinese tradition and contemporaneity.

Key Words
Global Painting, Chinese arts ecology, affective geography, idea-image, emotional ontology, Zhang Zhaoying, Meng Yangyang, Lu Peng