Brief aan
In de rubriek Brief aan wordt een persoon uit de (inter)nationale kunstwereld gevraagd een open brief te schrijven aan een of meerder personen, bestaand of niet, om een kwestie aan te kaarten die hem of haar raakt. Hu Fang, schrijver, dichter en curator van Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, schrijft een brief aan de Nederlandse curator, leraar en kunsthandelaar Hans van Dijk (1946-2002), een belangrijke voorvechter van de Chinese kunst, aan wiens baanbrekende werk een dubbele tentoonstelling is gewijd in UCCA Beijing en Witte de With Rotterdam (4 september t/m 4 januari). Deze brief is geschreven in opdracht van het Chinese tijdschrift Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art en wordt met hun toestemming ook hier gepubliceerd (vertaling Andrew Maerkle).
Facing the light you could not see directly
To Hans van Dijk
Then, you
smiled
slyly, bashfully,
dropped the hand with the cigarette
and turned
In the gaze of your youth
A windblown vessel
Calmly plying the ocean’s plane
elegant as a piece of Ming furniture
almost casually
bore you to China
in that dream the small, black cat, wide-eyed,
always accompanied you
if winter in Beijing is too harsh
(the suburbs, dead branches stretching like ink washes,
remind you of a long-past trip to Germany)
then you are welcome in the warm South
where at the food stalls friends excitedly discuss
Sartre and Teresa Teng,
post-colonialism, sex and the war in Bosnia
the humid climate may relieve
your longing for Amsterdam’s waterways
you stare at the tabletop
the beer glass spilling foam
and a pack of the “Dubaos” (??) the artists always smoke
is it
the delicacies of the South that are so intoxicating
while the frozen dumplings, sole contents of your northern icebox, alert you
to focus
on not letting your space get consumed by things
there, faint shadows
thrown upon the white wall at daybreak
disappear
with the sun’s rising
so, in the first light
from a cup of coffee
and a copy of the China Daily, you start
to enter
the dialogue with
those times and momentous times and trivial
times and times of serenity and of turbulence
-no matter what
Following some Mondrian-like order, the world
gives everything its corresponding destiny
and no one has the luxury of exception
just like night
allows countless naked gasps to simultaneously resist
the pull of history
and eastern rays flatten the rushing pedestrians
into silhouettes
turn concrete architectural pastiches
into historical documents
facing the light
you could not see directly
are the details of life
we cannot overlook
you brought us together
made us become us
with the infinite firecrackers
about to set off the New Year
friends invite you back South
you gracefully decline, as though to say,
“I have yet to become
The person I envisioned”
The photographs you took in your youth
now sealed forever in a metal box
you watch the dead, fallen leaves
and one by one the names cross your mind
there, the sea is still calm,
the coffee in the pot, too, stays calm
P.S. Oh, yes
The Zhao Shou you were seeking,
we found it
it was many years later, at an exhibition
called “Mystical Wildness”
catching our breath, we saw 1930’s Violent Waves (??)
Hu Fang, Zhang Wei
Guangzhou, Easter 2014
Hu Fang
