Hao Jingban
Opus One
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Hao Jingban
b. 1985 in Shanxi province, China
Hao Jingban (b. 1985, Shanxi Province, China) works with film and video to investigate the historical distance between the present viewer and a certain era in the past. In her research-based practice, Hao conducts historical investigation, archival research, field study, personal interviews, and live performances. Her works are presented as observational documentaries, entangling individual stories with collective histories. From the ballroom dancing in Beijing before and after the Cultural Revolution, to the films of North-eastern China from the 1930s, Hao weaves together complex historical narratives, social movements, and cultural commentary against the ambivalence and silence of the bygone era. In recent works, Hao scrutinises and reflects on contemporary socio-political conditions, particularly the psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Hao’s solo exhibitions include “Hao Jingban: Opus One” (Matadero Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 2020);“Silent Speech” (OCAT Xi’an, Xi’an, China, 2019); “New Directions: Hao Jingban” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 2016); and “Over-Romanticism” (Taikang Space, Beijing, China, 2016). Her works have been exhibited in institutions and biennales, including Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2019); Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2018 & 2019); Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017 & 2019); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 2018); “FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art” (Cleveland, 2018); 11thShanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2016); Kuandu Museum of Fine Art (Taipei, 2016); Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima, 2016); Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing, 2015); and Jewish Museum (New York, 2014).
Prizes and awards include the Huayu Youth Award Grand Jury Prize (2016), the Young Artist of the Year award at the 11thAward of Art China (2017), the International Critics’ Prize at the 63rdInternationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (2017), and the Han Nefkens Foundation – ArcoMadrid Video Art Award (2019). Hao’s works are in the collection of the M+ (Hong Kong), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) and the Power Station of Art (Shanghai, China). In 2020, the artist will be based in Berlin for the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency programme.
Hao currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
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I Understand / 2020
Moving to Berlin in the beginning of 2020 for the year-long DAAD residency, Hao Jingban reflects on the racial discrimination she experienced as a Chinese as the pandemic hit the city in I understand (2020). With the virus in full force, many social political factors were triggered. Class and racial differences became immensely apparent. Amid the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protest movement erupted. As the crisis tore many apart, she became aware of the significance of understanding another’s reality, and how most of us all too readily believe we understand another’s pain. As Hao attends the BLM protests, she realises that the movement also served as an emotional pillar for the discriminatory angst she felt during the past months.
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Opus One / 2020
Opus One comes from the obsession with the swing dance culture of the African Americans in the 1930s and 50s, a young Chinese couple go to great lengths to search for and study any material they could find on the period. They scrupulously observe the minute details in the dancers’ movement, and immersed themselves in the legends of icons, masters and halls of fame in the background. This process deeply exceeds what one would do simply to learn how to dance. One might not fathom why the protagonists are so touched by swing dance, but one could resonate with their realization of the insurmountable gap between different races and cultures. This unbreachable gap also manifests in the unnegotiable distance between past and present, imagination and reality. Repeat the Lindy Hop, or go to Harlem. These movements remain formalist, and one could never arrive at the destination of one’s quest. Only by grasping the essence of something and refusing its rigid categorization could one inch closer to the goal of one’s journey.
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Manchukuo Film project / 2018
Using the Manchukuo of the 1930s-40s as background, Hao Jingban conducts historical investigation, archival research, field study and personal interviews, tracing back to the propaganda, drama and documentary films, as well as related figures, from the period of the Manchukuo Film Association. By weaving real and fictional narratives in video, reenactments and live performances, Hao explores the politicalness of visual language and the subjectivity of interpretation, revealing the power dynamics, border geopolitics and conflicting identities behind these performative mediums.
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Slow Motion / 2018
On November 18, 2017, a tragic fire raged in a Beijing apartment building inhabited by migrant workers, killing 19 people. What followed was just as sudden: a mass eviction of residents and migrant workers living in countless ‘unsafe’ buildings across the capital in the dead of a winter night. In response to images of the newly homeless that soon spread across social media, which were then censored, the artist urgently went to the eviction sites and documented footages of displaced censored, the artist urgently went to the eviction sites and documented footages of displaced citizens gathering their scattered belongings. For the artist, Slow Motion is a personal response: “these slowed down moments that you cannot see retain a potency that surpasses far beyond the imagination.”
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Beijing Ballroom Project / 2012-2016
Since 2012, Hao Jingban has been conducting research and filming for her Beijing Ballroom project. She traces the present ballrooms in Beijing to the two waves of ballroom dancing in the early 1950s and the post-Cultural Revolution era in late 1970s. During the three years of filming, Hao attempts different video languages to explore these interweaving historical narratives. Five works are produced from the Beijing Ballroom project: Little Dance (2012), An Afternoon Ball (2013), I Can’t Dance (2015) and Off Takes (2016) and Over-Romanticism (2016). In 2016, Hao won the Huayu Youth Award Grand Jury Prize in Art Sanya 2016 with An Afternoon Ball and Off Takes from the project.
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Factory Project / 2016
Themed on factories and the working class, the artist gathered all sort of moving images documenting the production processes, from archives, interviews, investigations and on-site filming. Intercutting the old and the new with a voiceover narrative, the artist portrays the social and economic progress of modern China from the Great Leap Forward to the present day.
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