appartment art

Xiao Lu firing the gun in her performance piece "Dialogue" (1989)

Artists who participated in the Apartment Art movement include Xiao Lu, Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen, and Qiu Zhijie.

Acclaimed curator and founder of Apartment Art, Gao Minglu, says the movement was made up of “art that responded to the moment, the condition of making art in the early 1990s in China.”^[1] What began with artists transforming their apartments and homes into private galleries to compensate for the lack of commercial gallery support, resulted in a full-blown underground art movement. In addition to restricted space, artists were limited to the materials readily available to them. What resulted was a “Dada-influenced movement” that “relied on ready-made objects, performances and Zen Buddhism.”^[2]

Because of the limitation of space and materials, these apartment-confined works of art were small in scale, as well as audience. The small audience that was involved, consisting of primarily the artists themselves, spread news of “exhibitions” via postcard announcements, sent only to those involved in the Apartment Art scene. 

(link via appartment art )