Hua Biao, a Chinese Totem' is not so much an installation as an inflation, a pumped-up sign buoyed by cultural afflatus, a commercial chimera. They are a concrete but collapsible expression of cultural appropriation. During the 1998 Spring Festival they were placed at the crossroads of the city, at the fulcrum of commerce and politics. The red totem poles celebrated the wealth generated by China's reforms, but in their form there is a more coded message about the insubstantiality of prosperity. They are decked in the symbolism of the Spring Festival, a cheerful message of good fortune on a cartoon tower of classic Chinoiserie.
Spring Festival is a time of renewal and rejoicing, when debts are retired and harmony celebrated.
But for me and Sang Ye the twin Hua Biao were also an exclamation mark emphasizing the unsettling evanescence of inflated, or bubble, economies. The garish kitsch of the columns entwined with the dragon totem of the past is a pronouncement on the fetishes of today, the commerce of signs and the triumphalism of capital. Once emblematic of dynastic fiat, after 1949 the Hua Biao were claimed by the leaders of the People's Republic of China as symbols of the New China. Originally, it was stuck in the ground as a simple road marker or sign, placed in such a way as to indicate to an army on the march the direction of their advance. Later the Hua Biao did more than just give directions.