"Four large squares of black linen hung from the ceiling of a rectangular space at the centre of the Guandong Museum of Art’s exhibition hall, the Triennial’s main venue. Designed by Chilean artist Felipe Mujica, they are partitions, curtains and flags, architecture and exhibit all in one (No State, 2008). They are embroidered with white lines based on linocuts made by Alexander Rodchenko in 1921, the year when, as a ‘state artist’ who stood by the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he took a radical ideological step away from creating artworks concerning formal experiments with lines, colours and structures to focus almost exclusively on applied arts and art in the service of social change. The tension between creative production and socio-economic productivity – Maharaj paraphrases from Karl Marx’s Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy, 1857–8): ‘Who is the real worker: piano maker or piano player?’ – is presented by Mujica using means which themselves oscillate between applied and fine art."
Saskia Draxler, Frieze Magazine, Issue 119 Nov-Dec 2008
Guangzhou Triennal website:
http://www.gdmoa.org/zhanlan/threeyear/4/24/
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