SmartShanghai | Can Art Prevent Suicide?

Can Art Prevent Suicide?

By Melanie McGanney, Jul 23rd, 2008 | In Art

Dozens of hideously mangled dead crows, claws curled and beady eyes glazed over with the yellowing film of decay are the red carpet welcome to Zendai MoMA's white cube exhibition space. It's a jolting first glimpse into Qiu Zhijie's installation work, "Ataraxic of Zhuangzi," a stomach-churning examination of suicide in China.

The gruesome exhibition engulfs the entire building and the highlight is an enormous mud and coal trench installation reaching two floors high. Sheath your shoes in plastic and become a part of the doomsday scene: warm mud squelches beneath your feet while you fight off the all-pervasive death stench. More dead crows hover -- some styled to appear alive, others camouflaged under layers of mud and grime in the walls, and still more strewn on top of one another, their once-living bodies crushed and distorted.

Ostensibly, "Ataraxix of Zhuangzi" addresses the suicide phenomenon at China's Nanjing Bridge. Constructed under Mao from 1960-68, this double-decker feat of modern engineering appears on the second page of every school child's textbook in China. It's also the spot where as many as 2,000 Chinese citizens have chosen to end their lives.

Qiu's grotesque presentation of avian carcasses is a physical distillation of emotions the artist underwent while investigating and archiving the Nanjing bridge suicide phenomenon. "Ataraxic" is a tranquilizer and the phrase, "Ataraxic of Zhuangzi" refers to the Taoist philosophy of Chuang-tzu, a precept that rejects materialism to enhance spiritual well-being.

It's an apt title for Qiu's exhibit, which sheds a metaphoric tear for the "suicide" bridge. An artist known for exploring themes of social fragmentation and transience, Qiu traveled to Nanjing to gather information about the structure that has become one of the most dangerous spots in China for the deeply depressed.

During his research Qiu became intimately acquainted with Chen Si, the so-called "soul catcher" of the Nanjing Bridge. Chen, a man with an eagle eye for the disheartened, has been patrolling Nanjing's bridge every weekend since 2003. When Chen sees a potential jumper he talks them down and escorts them to the "Soul Clinic," a psychological consultation room that emphasizes art therapy as treatment. Chen is estimated to have saved nearly two hundred lives.

Qiu replicates this clinic on the second floor of Zendai. The reproduction includes three wooden cots with alarm clocks tied to the bedposts and a floor-to-ceiling photograph depicting a handful of the many "soul catchers" who have joined Chen's humanitarian efforts.

By replicating a clinic for the suicidal in a museum, Qiu effectively forces mental illness and death into the artistic spotlight. Suicide, a phenomenon that much of modern society would blithely shovel into unseen crevices, is unearthed and exposed in this exhibit. Qiu shines a light of compassion on the human soul at its most distraught, but more importantly, his work asserts that preventative action can be taken to help these individuals.

Although Qiu himself became a "soul catcher" manning the bridge, perhaps it's his act of bringing metaphorical suicide prevention to the museum that will prove to be most effective. This exhibit could be viewed as an ultimate trial for "art," so often deemed an effete confluence of over-stimulated intellectuals and the wealthy. Could an exhibit actually have enough impact to save lives?

Numbers can and do lie, but the increasing rate of suicide in China is no fabrication. Qiu attributes the spike in self-immolation to a "material spirituality" overhauling all other value systems in the Middle Kingdom. Zendai's curator, Shen Qibin is in agreement: "China practices an emerging money worship system," he writes. Does the emphasis on money worship in the social sphere leave individuals searching for meaning elsewhere without recourse to deeper happiness and well-being?

As of 2008 China has no national plan for addressing its suicide problem. While the country continues to produce and distribute textbooks glorifying the bridge's ingenuity, "soul catchers" mourn the individual bodies that slip through their fingers, dropping silently into the water below.