陈湘鹏 文
1999年，萨子大学毕业，离开新疆来到北京宋庄。这个普通的北方农村是中国当代艺术的大本营。18年来，一位艺术院校的毕业生，变成了一位流浪艺术家。他的络腮胡和膝上有口袋的休闲裤，闪烁在宋庄村级柏油路边的小吃店和菜市场里，但他本人从未真正融于其中。他8年来不断被驱逐、搬家22次、他的行为艺术作品从未售卖过、他和妻子在贫困中离了婚，他的屋里只有一张床、一个柜子、一把椅子和半墙照片，没有普通家庭里的安全感。在一个行为艺术作品中，萨子为离开新疆的火车安排了奇异动人的一幕：在新疆的郊野里，旅客们在车窗里发现，铁轨一侧站着一排穿着白色婚纱的女青年，在同样环境中，铁轨一侧站着一排赤裸的男青年。人们感到好笑的同时，也感觉到这像是一个梦境，预示着来往北京的打工者的命运。
一棵树 A tree 国道2486 行为 2012
萨子的日常生活比大多数打工者更艰辛，他坚持每天走80里路，为一个更大的项目做好身体条件。2012年，他背起了一棵树，走出出租房，在晨风中越过温榆河，一路朝西，走回了新疆。
表情 Expression 行为 2006
西部人对事物的纯粹性有一种领悟。对大地、天空、一朵野花或过路人有一种质朴的热忱。这与充满流动性的现代社会有深刻的矛盾。他们与花草、牛羊、家庭、土地、天空、信仰的联系越厚重，就越难把握现代社会的精髓：消费。一种创造式的废弃。西部是一种生存状况，也是一种精神状况。他们的生命和人格，都成为资本主义时代里最后的贵族。
致完美世界 To the Perfect World 行为 2011
萨子难以真正回归新疆，他就像一棵行走的树，他在北京和新疆之间的流浪精神中扎根，在失去一切的遭遇中，做出了最诚挚的当代艺术。
萨子对普通人漂泊无定的命运，给予了庄重的致礼，甚至是庆祝。他召集七位艺术家，在宋庄艺术馆的8根旗杆上，把他们的普通的旧衣裳，升上了天空。这是萨子对这个时代奋力挣扎，终将淹没的普通人所做的一件温暖的作品。其中也包含有对自己艺术生涯，穷人的挫败感的缅怀，以及与盛世阵营的分裂。
致山花 To Mountain Flowers 行为 2011
行为艺术凌厉的社会学语义吸引了萨子，他在北京所接触的当代艺术，刷新了他在学院里的认识，以他质朴的品格，对当代艺术中混乱浮夸和造假的趋势也感到厌恶。在《致山花》中，他坐在艺术馆门外的一把椅子上，被尼龙绳捆扎在一起的双手中，捧着一株连泥土一起挖下的山花。从中午12点开始，一直坐到次日中午12点（24小时）。他坐在椅子上，手捧山花，不能放下，一夜里浑身上下被蚊虫咬满了疙瘩。这种肉体上近于受刑的创作，目的极为单纯地护持着一朵花的美好，在美术馆里的设计、巧思、虚假的大词和成功学套路中，犹如一声长啸。在冷漠和富于心机的现代人中，仍流淌着圣徒的热血，保持着原始人的高贵。
心咒·帖 Mantra - Copybook 行为 2016
日咒 Daily Incantation 行为 2016
这种赤诚被视为异类。萨子的行为艺术被视作威胁，8年里他不断被驱逐，有时被罚款，有时被以各种名目骚扰。然而最致密的威胁，还是前卫艺术与社会建制的对抗，以至于其发展无法得到经营，由艺术家来独自承担。这种孤立最终伤害了萨子的家庭生活。2006年，妻子无法忍受这种没有前路的生活，离开了他。此后在萨子的出租房里，留有一张妻子三岁时的照片，他把她当一个孩子来想念和珍爱。在那个时候，苦难还没有遮蔽生活，一切还可以憧憬。
归乡记 Going Home 行为 2007
2007年，萨子码起一摞砖头，一共91斤，他用帆布带扎起砖垛，背在背上，走出家门。91斤砖块是妻子小丽的体重。他像一个好丈夫一样，走遍宋庄的大街小巷，沉默不语心怀希望。尽管她已经离开，他仍可以承担一种无人认领，一厢情愿的爱。这种自我惩罚和自我温暖使一无所有的人，得到了平静。
日记-数米 Counting Rice 行为 2011
萨子对穷困生活有细腻的体悟，他对妻子和母亲生活在困苦中的内疚感，转化成了另一件作品《数米日记》：他买来一袋10公斤的封装大米，开封后，一粒一粒地数，10天数清了481386颗米粒。
北漂-宋庄之梦 行为
Dream in Songzhuang: Back and Forward 2016
由于政府部门干预，萨子已经不能在户外实施行为艺术，他的创作只能转移到室内。这种室内的、几乎没有观众、没有反馈的行为艺术，使他更像一个洞穴人，把生活献给了内省和纯净的语言。他走近一个废弃的房间里，裸身躺在一张勾勒着霓虹灯管的铁架床上，没有被褥，周围被荧光所环绕，在破败孤寂的房间里，霓虹床犹如航行在茫茫绝望中的飞船。（《北漂—宋庄之梦》）
日记-资本论 Diary: Capital 行为 2016
他花了三年，用圆珠笔把三本《资本论》一个字一个字涂成黑方块。从文字中还原清新自然的世界。他又用颜体书法，把描述当代社会现实的词汇写在卡纸上，溢出书桌，像蟑螂一样四周扩散，铺满房间。当代的低俗和往昔典雅混同一气，奇异地交织在一起，令人感知到这个文明的堕落面貌。揭穿一切语言的伪饰时，萨子怀恋那些日常生活中最谦卑最廉价事物的尊严，砖、树、床、旧衣服，这是资本主义世界中的破烂，一个被榨取的废墟世界。
精神的重量 The Weight of Spirit 行为 2004
萨子用生活中的一切交换了这个时代的问题。这是个矫揉做作、大话连篇、残酷无情的时代。他守着深情、质朴的一角，像草原上的最后一个骑士一样，与整个帝国为敌。他的代价高昂，在这个奇异的世道，他的深情没有获得任何回报，只让他充满泪水和怀疑，萨子忍受着这个宿命，他在宋庄的旗杆上升起了自己的旗帜。
殇曲日记-系列120×150cm 布面丙烯 绘画
Dairies-Portrait 2006-2017
他背上了一棵树，像圣人一样离开了北京，走过山川、河流、山西、陕西、走到了新疆。在变迁中的城市乡村，他就像一个疯子。人们送他一瓶矿泉水、送他一块哈密瓜、有些人送他走过村口，也有人劫走他的现金，林地里的狼越过铁轨，追踪他的足迹。这个混沌的世界无法理解这个人的清醒和高贵。
萨子工作室 DHEN Sa Zi 2017
萨子 Sa zi
1975 生于新疆
2007 至今定居北京宋庄 自由艺术家
主要个展
2000 陌生人 天津
2004 长征途中 新疆
2009 夜咒 北京
2012 一棵树·归乡计划 文献展 北京
2015 日记·肖像 新加坡
2016 萨子精神 北京
主要群展
2004 以身观身 行为艺术展 澳门
2009 向个人致敬 当代影像展 新疆
2010 新疆青年艺术个案 新疆
2011 敏感地带 行为大展 北京
2013 未曾呈现的声音 威尼斯双年展 意大利
2014 中国行为艺术30年学术研讨会 湖北
2014 中国行为艺术文献展 意大利
2014 未知的路程 双年展 济南
2015 中国当代艺术年鉴2014展 北京
2016 沈阳国际行为音乐艺术节 沈阳
2016 中国行为三十年文献展 北京
2016 热雪行为艺术界 内蒙冷极
2017 GAN AND GAN 渼陂国际行为艺术展 江西
2017 假装在表演 国际行为艺术展 南昌
2014 中国行为艺术30年学术研讨会
萨子行为作品 一棵树·归乡计划
入选为中国行为三十年最受关注的30件作品
LOVER IN THE RUINS
DHEN Sa Zi 萨子工作室 2017
by CHEN Xiangpeng
In 1999, Sa Zi graduated from college and left Xinjiang to Songzhuang, Beijing, an ordinary countryside which is known as the “headquarter” of Chinese contemporary art. Now, 18 years has pasted, the boy who graduated from an art academy becomes a vagrant artist. Wearing whiskers and slacks, he is seen wandering in roadside snack bars and vegetable markets in Songzhuang. But he himself knows that he has never been assimilated. For 8 years, he has moved 22 times. No one has paid for his works. He and his wife divorced in poverty. There is only a bed, a cupboard, a chair and a wall of photos in his room which offers no sense of security as in ordinary families. In one of his performance artworks, Sa Zi arranged a strange but touching scene for the train about to leave Xinjiang: In the countryside, passengers found that on one side of the railroad stood a row of young women in white wedding dress and on the other side stood a row of naked young men. People laughed and some of them felt that the dreamlike scene indicated the fate of those passengers who were migrant workers heading to Beijing.
A’s life is harder than that of most migrant workers. He walks 80 miles every day to prepare for a larger project. In 2012, with a tree on his back, he started from his rental room, crossing the Wenyu river in the morning breeze, went back to Xinjiang.
People from western China have a deeper understanding on purity. They have an unaffected passion for the earth, the sky, wild flowers and passersby. That contradicts the modern society which is full of changes. The closer connection they have with flowers, cattle and sheep, family, land, sky, faith, the more difficult for them to grasp the essence of modern society: consumption. West China is the name of a living condition and a mental condition as well. They, with their life and personality, are the last aristocracies in this capitalist era.
It’s difficult for Sa Zi to really “return” to Xinjiang. Like a walking tree, he roots in the wandering spirit, presenting us the most sincere contemporary art though he has nothing.
Sa Zi solemnly salutes the fate of ordinary people—he holds a celebration. He summoned seven artists, put their ordinary old clothes in 8 flagpoles of Songzhuang Art Museum, and raised them high. This is a work for those ordinary people who are struggling in this era and will eventually drown. It also contains his reflection of his artistic career, his frustration of being poor, and the rupture between him and the prosperous society.
The sociological semantics of performance art fascinates Sa Zi. The modern art he was exposed to in Beijing has updated his original knowledge gained from college. With his unaffected personality, he detests the trend of being pompous and phony that prevails in modern art. In his work “To Mountain Flowers”, he sat in a chair outside the gate of a gallery, with his hands tied together by a nylon rope while holding a mountain flower with dirt which was just dug up in his hands. From 12’o clock at noon, he sat there for 24 hours without leaving the chair. Sitting in the chair, he carried that mountain flower. As a result, he got mosquito bites all over his body. Such a torture-like performance which focuses on protecting the beauty of a flower, is a like a shout piercing the air in the gallery which is filled with exquisite designs and ornate stereotypes. Among the indifferent and cunning modern people, he still has the nobility of primitive men with warm blood in his vessel.
Sa Zi is regarded as an oddball for his sincerity. His artworks are also seen as a threat. In the past 8 years, he has been frequently driven out, fined and even harassed. But the fatal threat lies in the confrontation between avant-garde art and social system, rendering the art hard to develop. Artists then have to take the consequences. Sa Zi’s family life is damaged. Unable to endure a life which has no future, Sa Zi’s wife resolutely divorced him in 2006. But he still has a picture of his wife which was taken when she was three years old and loves her as if she were a child. At that time, sufferings did not ruin his life, and he believed that there is a hope.
In 2007, Sa Zi stacked some bricks, amounting to 45.5 kilograms. He bundled up those bricks with a canvas strap and carried them on his back. His wife, Xiao Li, weighs 45.5 kilograms. Like a good husband, he silently walked around the streets of Songzhuang with hope. Although she has divorced him, he still loves her. This kind of self-punishment and self-warmness pacify this man.
Sa Zi has a delicate understanding of poor life. He melted his guilt of making his wife and mother live in poverty into a piece of work named 'A Diary of Counting Rice': He bought a bag of rice weighing 10 kilograms and started counting them one by one. After 10 days, he announced that that bag or rice has 481386 grains in total.
Later, Sa Zi was banned from performing outdoors. He can only perform in rooms then. This kind of indoor performance, which has no audience, no feedback, makes him more like a caveman who dedicates his life to introspection and pure language--art. In an abandoned room, he was naked on a bed surrounded by neon lights. In fluorescence, the neon bed is like an airship sailing in the vast desperate. ('North Drift--Songzhuang Dream')
He spent three years painting all words in three “Das Kapital” black with a ballpoint, aiming to reconstructing the pure natural world. He then wrote the words describing contemporary social reality on cardboard in Yan Zhenqing’s style. The cardboard filled the room just like cockroaches. Contemporary vulgarity and elegance of the past mixed together, conveying the degeneration of this civilization. When the disguise of all the language is exposed, Sa Zi was nostalgic for the dignity of the most humble and innocent things in everyday life, such as bricks, trees, beds, and old clothes. These are the junk of the capitalist world, a squeezed world in ruins.
A has disclosed problems of this age at the expense of his own life. This is an era in which affectation, bragging and cold-bloodedness dominate everything. Like a knight from the plain, he clings to humaneness and simpleness, fighting against the whole empire. The price is high. His humaneness has not yet gained any reward in this strange world. Tears stream down his cheeks. Suffering from the life, Sa Zi raised the flag of his own in Songzhuang.
With a tree on his back, he left Beijing like a saint. Aftering crossing mountains, rivers, Shanxi province, Shaanxi province, he arrived at Xinjiang. In the changing cities and villages, he was like a madman. Some people gave him bottles of purified water, a piece of melon; some people sent him to the edge of their villages; and some people robbed him. The wolf in the woods ran crossed the tracks and followed his footprints. This chaotic world can not understand his consciousness and nobleness.
聚荟艺术 PARTY ART
中国·宋庄-创意空间.以推出最具时代创造精神的艺术家和别具一格的文化创新为己任.以不定期的艺术聚会.建立起创意空间和艺术家与收藏家.画廊.博物馆之间的互通桥梁.它既是艺术家与文化鉴赏者精神饕餮的乐园.也是当代优 秀艺术品创生与收藏的最佳平台
China·Song Zhuang - Creative Space
Party art aims to scout for creative artists and individual creations and establish a bridge between creative spaces, artists, collectors, galleries and museums through unscheduled artistic gatherings. It’s a paradise for artists and appreciators as well as a stage for excellent artworks.
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