Zhang Yimou, Lao She's The Teahouse, natural scenery paintings all spring to mind when thinking of Chinese contemporary art. They are veritable institutions, images that best represent mainland art to most people. But to gauge current mainland trends, there is a relatively new genre: video art.
In fact, camcorder-wielding artists have been prowling Beijing hutongs since the beginning of the 1990s; it is just that the results have been overlooked. Without a free distribution channel and few screening opportunities, their work has remained unknown - until now.
With Sovereignty & Beyond, video showings from both mainland and local artists, the Museum of Site (MOST) aims to bring some gems to the attention of Hong Kong's mainstream audience next month.
'Venues for screenings of the works are basically non-existent on the mainland,' said Andrew Lam Hon-kin, MOST chairman and the festival's curatorial director. 'At best the artists show each other their work at a gathering in somebody's studio in Dongchuan [an artist's commune in Beijing]. The public never realised the existence of such an art form.' Arts education on the mainland contains nothing about video art, so people lack a language to discuss it, let alone try their hand at it, he said.
The lack of facilities is so drastic, according to Mr Lam, that even the omnipotent government censors have rarely been a problem. 'You can't get places to show videos. Censorship is not the major issue at hand.' But apolitical the artists surely are not - and Mr Lam believes they are much more socially conscious than their Hong Kong counterparts. 'When they sit down and have a chat, they don't talk about aesthetics - they talk about political and social problems there,' he said.
Mainland video artists' concerns and frustrations manifest themselves in different ways, he added - instead of visual messages aimed at the authorities, the artists articulate their dismay in more subtle language.
Their films revolve around documenting the everyday or celebrating the banal. Li Yungbin's Face is a 24-minute piece about cleaning his face; Chinese Landscape, by Zhou Yibin, is exactly about what the title suggests; and Good Morning Beijing is Zhao Liang's reaction to everyday life in the capital.