Huang Yong Ping

He then became a secondary school teacher in Xiamen. He soon became a major figure of the Chinese avant-garde by founding the Xiamen Dada movement in 1986. In 1989, he was invited to Paris for the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, and decided to move there permanently, at the time of events in Tiananmen Square. Jean de Loisy, who was then curator of the Fondation Cartier, provided him with accommodation and a space to work during his first few months in France.

Huang Yong Ping nurtured this special relationship with the Fondation Cartier over the decades. It played a key role in the promotion of his work and in his integration into the European art scene. In 1994, his solo exhibition, Should we construct another cathedral? explored the themes of written memory, and of freedom of knowledge and expression through books and newspapers. In 1997, Huang Yong Ping created Péril de mouton especially for the Fondation. In this installation, he invented a contemporary mythology borrowed from a real-life current affairs event: “mad cow disease”. He went on to participate in the group exhibitions Etre Nature in 1998 and Mémoires Vives in 2014 with the installation La Maison d’augures (1989-1992) which now forms part of the Fondation’s collection.