Analysis

Following the demolition of Ai Weiwei’s Zuoyou Art District studio, we look at the future of art in China in light of the mainland’s urban redevelopment

The demolition of Ai Weiwei’s Beijing studio in the Zuoyou (‘Left Right’) Art District in August 2018 raised the level of overseas disquiet about what it and other such recent evictions and demolitions might mean for Beijing’s — and China’s — art scene. The studio lease had expired, so the demolition was expected, but its timing was without warning and earlier than had previously been given.

Even so, the demolition appears to be part of Beijing’s continuing urban redevelopment, rather than payback for Ai’s taunting of the mainland’s strict clampdown on freedom of expression under President Xi Jinping. Several factors are at play, including the recently announced population cap for Beijing. Such a seemingly arbitrary edict is usual in China’s top-down approach to economic and social planning, and an example of a bottom line that a centrally controlled demand economy can impose. But this type of sudden, broadly imposed policy can come as a surprise to foreigners, even those accustomed to doing business in China.

The concurrent imposition of stricter residency rules, especially by restricting the soughtafter hukou city residency permits, coincided with the demolition of unplanned ‘pop-up’ villages, settlements and buildings on Beijing’s fringes that were predominantly inhabited by immigrants from other provinces, many without a Beijing hukou. These foreigners usually work in low-wage service industries doing jobs shunned by Beijing residents but essential for the city to function. This latest sweep of gentrification targeting Beijing’s poorest has stirred outrage on mainland social media platforms.

Despite his self-imposed exile since 2015, Ai maintains another studio in the Caochangdi Art District. His studio has not been affected as of writing, but other nearby galleries were suddenly served eviction notices pending demolition around the same time as Ai’s Zuoyou studio. One was de Sarthe Gallery, which has had a location in Hong Kong since 2010 and opened its Beijing outpost in 2014. Towards the end of July, the Beijing gallery was served with an eviction notice and given one week to vacate. The actual property owner is unknown — a middleman acts on their behalf — but it’s rumoured that the land belongs to China’s railway corporation and/or is allocated for a fast-rail development project. Such opaque circumstances are not unusual in mainland land dealings.

Director of de Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong Willem Molesworth says that although the gallery was shocked by the suddenness of the eviction notice, they understood that it was also ‘the nature of doing business in Beijing’. He believes that Beijing authorities are unworried about the consequences of such evictions as they believe that Beijing will always have a strong art scene. Molesworth’s pragmatic acceptance of the gallery’s eviction is a typically stoic attitude that businesses have needed in order to bounce back from arbitrary mainland actions since China first allowed foreign businesses to open in the early 1990s. He says the gallery is now searching for a new location in which to reopen.

The shock of demolitions, then, is just one of many blips in China’s gradually evolving business and art environment. Perhaps the authorities are right to be confident: Beijing continues, undiminished, to host the presence of artists, galleries and overseas visitors, and is increasingly the main source for domestic art collectors. Of more immediate concern has been the possibility that Chinese art and antiques would be included in the Trump administration’s list of imports into the US subject to increased tariffs, but in MIDSEPTEMBER 2018, accompanied by a collective sigh of relief from dealers, it was announced that they were not on the list of 6,031 affected goods. For now, at least, the business of art on the mainland continues.