Zhang Yaxin: Model Operas, Presentation House Gallery until July 26. Yang Ban Xi, (2006) by Yang Ting Yuen and Weegee's New York, (1948) by Weegee, Wednesday, July 17 at 7 p.m. at Pacific Cinémathèque. For more information visit presentationhousegallery.org.
FOR a decade they were as inescapable as Alcatraz, as pervasive as religion and opiates combined.
Chinese model operas were the sole entertainment outlet for a nation of 800,000,000. The six operas and two ballets were intended to dramatize the values prized by Chairman Mao while instructing and inspiring the country in the ways of communism.
Soldiers soared and women wielded pistols while standing aside a flag bearing the hammer and sickle, and at those moments of rigid perfection, a camera flashed.
Former newspaper photographer Zhang Yaxin was assigned the task of photographing the operas, capturing the painted vistas and the stony stoicism of stern soldiers wearing makeup in Tammy Faye Bakker quantities.
Yaxin's work is currently being exhibited at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver, just the second Canadian gallery to show Yaxin's photos.
The pictures are strongly militaristic. Under a moonlit sky two women dance, their bodies flawless vessels from their clutched red ribbons to their pointed toes. But one woman is holding a gun.
It's that curious juxtaposition that intrigued curator Helga Pakasaar.
"Every aspect of those operas was related to Mao's ideas around class struggle, the way women are represented. They really are not feminine at all, they're almost androgynous," she says. "It's so controlled as a series of images."
Using a Swedish-made Hasselblad camera and an unlimited supply of colour film stock, Yaxin captured the operas in their moments of thunder. However, when viewed in large prints on gallery walls, the photos reveal more than they were perhaps intended to.
"I think for me it's the very staged quality," Pakasaar says about the appeal of the pictures. "They are like tableaus that are very articulated in their details."
Both the photos and the operas were intended to be the blunt tools of a propaganda machine, but when viewed through a modern lens, the pictures are somewhat subversive.
Flying soldiers appear to be clutching wires, and the red sky of certain operas is reminiscent of the Technicolor sunset in a lush Hollywood musical that would have been decried as bourgeois in China.
"A lot of the artifice that we see in what's in the gallery would not be visible once they were tiny postcards," Pakasaar explains.
While the operas were staged, they also went far beyond the stage. "They were really mass distributed. Everywhere on the streets there were posters, many, many postcards. Some of the images were put onto ceramic cups and different kinds of crafts. They were just everywhere, ubiquitous," Pakasaar says.
During a time when North America had Spider-Man and The Beatles, China had the operas, which adorned both comic books and record sleeves, often being blasted in public squares and factories.
In her novel Red Azalea, Anchee Min recounts growing up in China at a moment in history when it was not unusual for children to have names like Guard of Red, Liberation, Revolution, Resist U.S., and Space Conqueror, so-named to mark Mao's call for China to build a spaceship.
The climate was often conflicting for Min. She won praise for memorizing the words of Mao, but she also saw her well-educated mother sent to be reformed at a shoe factory after wiping with a newspaper that included Mao's picture. She wasn't able to afford toilet paper at the time.
In the centre of it all were the operas. "To love or not to love the operas was a serious political attitude. It meant to be or not to be a revolutionary," she writes. "I grew up with the operas. They became my cells."
The operas were generally created to do away with what Mao considered counter-revolutionary dramas featuring landlords, generals and emperors.
The new operas were pointed political lessons. One aria, entitled, "I won't quit the battle until all the beasts are killed," included the lyrics: "My Dad is a pine tree, his will is strong. A hero of indomitable spirit, he is a true communist."
The exhibit is balanced with Presentation House Gallery's Dr. Strangelove exhibit, which includes photos of the pie-fight scene stricken from the final film.
Those photos were taken by New York tabloid photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee.
"The Weegee exhibition was presenting a real puzzle for us, and this seemed to present itself as the perfect (balance) because it was also about a historical period," Pakasaar says.
The gallery is planning to host a discussion with artist Gu Xiong, who first learned his trade during brief breaks from forced labour during the Cultural Revolution. The talk is scheduled for July 20 at 1 p.m.
