Curated by Mark Tansey and Peter Drake of the New York Academy of Art, Figurative Diaspora presents works of “unofficial art”—subversive, non-state sanctioned art—created by five Soviet artists and five contemporary Chinese artists.
PETER DRAKE “Figurative Diaspora at the New York Academy of Art in some ways was motivated by the Transformations exhibition that was put together by Mark Tansey back in 1994. It was hosted in his apartment and consisted of four Chinese socialist realist artists including Liu Xiaodong, Chen Danqing, Yu Hong, and Ni Jun. In Figurative Diaspora is this notion that a visual language was migrating across cultures in the East while it was marginalized in America and Western Europe. It was still being preserved and to a degree, re-enlivened as propaganda. This language was kept alive.”
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