Gender, alterity and difference in the traceology performances of Zhang Qiang

This essay takes Zhang Qiang's series of Traceology performances with naked and semi-naked younger women as symptomatic of an alterity within Chinese contemporary art. Insisting upon the fundamental differences between genders, and upon an institutional specificity within Chinese calligraphy, Zhang maintains an irresolvable distance between his practice and the global similitude of contemporary art. A part of this distance lies in the reception of performance art in China and Western contexts. In the West, feminism has been a crucial part of the history of performance art, but its relative absence in the Chinese artworld means that Zhang's performative calligraphy can easily be interpreted as a renewal of the masculine literati in a contemporary art context. This essay argues, however, that Zhang uses this point of cultural difference to insist upon the irreconcilability of Chinese art with a global, contemporary art that is dominated by Western cultural forms.