Cosmopolis #1:5: Enlarged Intelligence

Contemporary Art in Chengdu

The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...

On an overcast Monday morning, as I was leaving Chengdu in China’s southwest Sichuan Province, Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence was already crowded. It was a sign of things to come: a dutiful official group, troops of schoolchildren, young couples. A collaboration between the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation (MJHAF) from Shanghai, Cosmopolis #1.5, embraced by Chengdu’s administration, was now open to its citizens. Outside in the streets, it was Chengdu as usual: small-scale commerce bustling at ground level in older tree-lined streets, smog around steepling skyscrapers seen through hotel windows. Wenshou Yuan’s great garden, sheltering a Buddhist temple established in the seventh century, was busy with pilgrims; elderly friends engaged in tai chi or disco. The city’s week had begun, as it has for more than two thousand years.

What is Cosmopolis? A platform invented by the Centre Pompidou’s Kathryn Weir, Cosmopolisexplores the circulation of ideas and interests through global pathways.1 The first edition, Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence, exploring ‘cosmopolitan forms of interaction and dialogue that go beyond national boundaries’, was staged in Paris from October 2017 to January 2018, the next iteration scheduled for October 2019.2 That contemporary art is dispersed and mobile is arguably its most distinctive characteristic, and Cosmopolisresponds to ephemeral and site-specific works across media. Cosmopolis #1.5 in Chengdu provided the first of the extra-European sites that will distinguish Cosmopolis: unlike most large temporary exhibitions which, with the exception of Europe’s roving biennial Manifesta, stay put, Cosmopoliswill roam far from Paris, this time with support from its Chinese patron.3

Importantly, along with other contemporary projects, Cosmopolisgenerates new forms of knowledge. Cosmopolis #1: Collective... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, In-Habit: Project Another Country (Here, There, Everywhere), 2018. Installation, dimensions variable. Commissioned for Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence, Chengdu, 2018. Courtesy Mao Jihong Arts Foundation.

Tricky Walsh, The Ana-Kata Scope, 2018. Optic fibres, light engines, plywood, pine timber, balsa wood, basswood, dichroic prisms, modelling styrene, acrylic, maple 250x300cm. Commissioned for Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence with the support of the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation. Courtesy of the artists.