Sui Jianguo

Sui Jianguo, professor and ex-chairman of the Department of Sculpture in Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, is a contemporary Chinese artist.

Sui was born in Qingdao, China in 1956.

Both of his parents were factory workers and were largely absent during his early childhood due to the workload imposed on them by the Mao government.

Growing up, Sui witnessed the harsh realities of the Mao years.

During this time Maoist socialist realism became the approved art style.

This style generally portrayed Maoist ideals in a romantic positive light.

These images were used to create a cult of personality for Mao.

At the age of ten, schools were closed as part of the Cultural Revolution, and Sui began to work in the factories with his parents.

In an interview he stated that he was “transfixed in the age of Mao worship, when Mao was virtually a God at home”.

Painting was not a career option for Sui until the age of eighteen when he broke his arm, which took him away from factory work.

According to Sui, during this period he contemplated his “spiritual” life and what he wanted to do with his future.

Soon after, and with the permission and guidance of his father, he began studying painting at night under the cover of darkness.

Upon his return to the factory Sui painted propaganda posters of Mao in the socialist realist fashion.

His studies and practice gave fruit to his first true work: a traditional Chinese landscape painting, which he completed in 1976 after the death of Mao.

After his death, the Chinese government loosened its grip on the population, and educational reforms were quick to follow.

Sui took advantage of the new freedoms, and moved to Jinan and then Shandong, where he received his major in sculpture.

A few years later he earned his master's degree in Arts at the central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

According to Sui, by the time he had enrolled in college, he had decided he wanted to do sculpture, inspired by his years in the factories, where people would tell him he had “skill in using his hands”.

After gaining his master's degree, Sui travelled to the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, and other places to display his art.

He also worked as a guest professor or speaker at several universities outside of China.

Finally, Sui returned to become chairman of the department of sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Sui became internationally prominent through the use of “naturalistic sculptures” that made use of rocks, boulders, and steel.

These early sculptures brought him into the international scene.

Among his known works in the early 1990s are Land Depression, in which he entwines huge boulders in nets made from steel ropes, and Sealed Memory, a closely welded cabinet of thick steel sheets, which gives an oppressive sense of weight and blockage.

Memory is a wall made out of old railroad ties.

The ties have been ground down just as humans are ground down by life, and they become part of a dividing wall, a boundary.

Many of Sui's early works reflect his personal experiences and explore, to a lesser or greater extent, and his anxieties and feelings of imprisonment.

His true acclaim came in 1997 when he crafted his first Mao suit, a sculpture that imitated Chairman Mao's communist jacket.

His jackets interested famous collectors such as Uli Sigg, and helped him gain international recognition.

Sui has been an active artist on the stage of modern and contemporary art in China.

He has had numerous solo and joint exhibitions in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, and most recently in the United States, in addition to his active schedules in China, and several high-profile exhibitions worldwide.

He likes to work with hard and heavy materials such as granite and metals.

His techniques of sealing, binding, tying and hammering created a relationship of association and confrontation between his materials, which resonate with his perception of life and his internal conflicts.

He began his Mao Suit series in 1997.

This series can be regarded as the conclusion of an important stage in his self-exploration.

He draws on the powerful image of the Mao suit, not as an element of revolutionary attire but as a symbol of restriction and limitation.

Sui suggests that none of the Chinese have truly taken off their Mao suits even though the revolutionary era is over.

Sometimes Sui makes the Mao suits resemble Buddhas and at other times he turns them into hard shells.

Recently, Sui has made fairly humorous, soft and almost transparent Mao suits.

The Mao suit is perhaps coming to represent to the artist an object of fun.