Hu Xiangqian is an iconic figure in contemporary Chinese performance art and is among the post-80s group of artists. Acting Out Artist was filmed during a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 2012. The film makes use of highly stylised cinematography and depicts the slow and tedious daily minutiae in the life of a farcical imaginary artist. In the film’s initial long shot, Hu Xiangqian goes against his own usual rugged image by dressing in an immaculate white suit, portraying himself almost as an Eastern Colonel Sanders type figure “to put on an act” in meticulously detailing the daily comings and goings of a satirical artist. The scenes transition as if taken from a diary, often in a self-satisfied and oleaginous manner. In one scene the artist can be seen lounging on a plush, luxurious bed, sluggishly leafing through an English book, and in another he can be seen enthusiastically lecturing an interested foreigner on his work. The work serves as a satire of the art world’s performative nature and the desperately hypocritical pursuit of cultural acknowledgement therein.

Acting Out Artist serves as a continuation of Hu Xiangqian’s criticism of the art world, whilst at the same time functioning as an introspective self-examination of himself as an artist. He seems to hint that he is not alone in“acting out”, with self-satisfied asides implicitly pointing to the hypocrisy of his own young generation, a hypocrisy found in the very core of their lives and behind their own cultural identity. The barefaced satire combined with the fantastical and absurd nature of Hu Xiangqian’s performance leaves viewers with ample food for thought long after the laughter has faded.

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)