Feng Mengbo

b. 1966, Beijing

Painter, video artist

After graduating from the Design Department of the Beijing School of Arts and Crafts in 1985 and from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (1991), Feng became a prominent proponent of post-Maoist art and earned his reputation by subverting revolutionary icons. While still a student, Feng produced a series of three paintings entitled Taxi! Taxi!—Mao Zedong (Lao Mao dadi), which showed the Chairman making a typical gesture of waving his hand, only instead of facing the Red Guards at Tiananmen Square he is hailing a cab. In 1994 Feng produced Game Over: Long March, a video game which features as the animated fighters Red Guards armed with Coca-Cola cans.

In 1997, Feng created an interactive CD-ROM-based artwork entitled Taking Mount Doom by Strategy, based on the video game Doom and populated with figures from the Cultural Revolution model opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Feng’s recent works include the film Q3 (1999), based on the video game Quake III Arena, in which Feng plays a CNN reporter who joins a clone rebellion, and the installation Q4 (2001), based on the same game. In these works Feng has moved beyond recycling Maoist images and associated himself with international video art, yet his art may be said to indirectly address China’s postsocialist condition.

Further reading

Dal Lago, Francesca (2000). The Fiction of Everyday Life: Video Art in the PRC’. ART AsiaPacific 27:53–7.

YOMI BRAESTER