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Ode to the Divine Ms. P. and "Metropolis"

September 20, 2009

The Divine Ms. Phillippa

GeesoHead is here giving some big props to Phillippa Hughes. Now let’s first be honest and admit we’re all just a teench jealous of the Divine Ms. P; she does great things, she goes great places, she organizes art/rock and roll events in this stodgy old town, at the speed of light, she built the Pink Line Project into a presence that seems it’s always been here and, worst of all, she always looks fecking gorgeous. Having said all that, you gotta love Ms. P - she does it all with a sweet smile and a kind of touching air of surprise that she’s brought it off.

Anne Corbett and Sam Sweet

the very big ants

The event at the Meridian International Center last week was an extraordinary achievement, even for Herself. I have never been to this place before, but talk about stodgy establishment: it’s a ferociously manicured campus around an old mansion tucked behind high brick walls just off of 16th Street NW, or, as they are fond of saying, “”1.5 miles north of the White House.” The institution describes itself as a “not-for-profit public diplomacy institution” which, among other things, manages high-level exchanges for the State Department, hosts briefings for international leaders, and “facilitates public-private partnerships between corporations, governments, NGOs and private actors to extend global exchanges and collaboration.” Definitely no casual Fridays here. We knew for sure that we were not in the usual art venue when guys dressed like Secret Service agents sans earpieces smilingly shepherded us into a room to hear the Chinese cultural attaché speak.

They Group

Holly Bas climbing the wall!

It seems that the Meridian International Center had been hosting a big show of contemporary Chinese art called “Metropolis” for a couple of months and the new “Vice President for the Arts” wanted to try to get a demographic more representative of the local artfolk in for the closing party. So he went to Phillippa and she took it in hand, invited all her friends, hired a terrific musician, a DJ and Holly Bas, an amazing dancer. The turnout was great, the scene hopping and the Chinese diplomats kind of nonplussed, I thought.

Margaret Boozer and Claire Huschle

The theme of the art was the warp-speed of change in China and some of it was quite interesting, although the crush of artfolk prevented much prolonged interaction with the work. The huge steel ants on the front lawn by Chen Zhiguang were the consensus show-stopper. I loved Goa Lei’s digital prints, featuring nightmarish video game scenes of urban decay and incipient violence (but strangely beautiful, I promise) and two immense oils by the “They Group”, who apparently always paint essentially the same scene: these were a birdseye view inside a modern highrise apartment, with a huge window opening onto the hyper-urbanized scene of modern China and the young inhabitants seeming a bit unmoored.
I do have a bone to pick with the curators, though: the information available was almost completely about the mission of the Meridian Center and the Chinese government and almost nothing about the artists and their work. This was very frustrating and you need to fix it next time.

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