Kongkong has a human body, a child’s face, masculine, a flat head with eyes as tiny as peas and a big mouth. He has three horns on the head, one body but many shapes. It could change in seven colours, could change body shapes (even sex), could practice samsara in ancient and modern times. But Kongkong is not a strange animal or spirit in ancient myth nor an animated cartoon toy in the popular culture, it is only an art “image” created by Xiong Wenyun.

1． Blood Vein
Man fixed a point in the perpetual time, created some standards for time counting, as if by doing so, man can face its limits with more calm. “One hundred years” is set as “a century”, for a limited life, it is situated between « attainable » and « not attainable ». Man is really excited about this invention, whenever there is a “new century”, there will be such a longing and celebration. We have humbugged ourselves for two thousand years with this game. The yearning for the year 2000 is a hundred times stronger than that for other century changing, therefore the celebration will be much more spectacular. On the eve of the year  2000, together with Lao Li and thousands and thousands of other people, we were waiting for the “moment” on Time Square in New York. Twelve hours had already passed since that”moment” arrived in China. Beginning from three o’clock in the afternoon we were standing in the cold wind, by seven o’clock in the evening I could not stand it anymore. Compared with the attack of the cold on my frail body, the temptation of waiting for a big golden apple descending from the sky and a count down from ten to one with thousands of people who speak another language which was not in my blood appeared so much less significant. Therefore I escaped. However a moment like that, expected for so long and celebrated by so many people at the same time, perhaps could possibly change the natural course of things? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Because the life of Xiong Wenyun and that of many other people (including myself) really met with the unexpected change in the new century.

At the beginning of year 2000, I left the foreign country, returned to my own country body and soul.  I was so relaxed that I became pregnant at an advanced middle age. I met Xiong Wenyun at this very moment. The work she showed me was about “pregnancy”- she had wanted a have a child, she kept a detailed record of body temperature. Unfortunately instead of a pregnancy she had a divorce. So the “pregnancy” became her work of art. To be honest, being “Chinese” to the marrow of my bones, I felt the pregnancy should be entirelyly natural, I did not approve the “western” way of test. And from the point of view of my professional art concept, I did not feel her « work » complete.

At the beginning of 2001, I gave birth to my daughter. Xiong Wenyun told me that she would go to Tibet to do the ‘Flowing Rainbow’ project. This meant covering the transport carriages with donated rainbow coloured tarpaulin and required that the artist “walked” following the transport carriage. I went to Tibet in 1997, when looking at the photos of Tibet, I felt deeply about its extraordinary charm. But when I was in Tibet, I was also aware of its hardship and even danger. The transport carriages on the road with no road was particularly dangerous. We donated one tarpaulin in the name of our three member family (including my newly born daughter). But since I had just turned mother, I felt that even if for the sake of art and ideal, this was somehow “too vague” and “crazy” especially for Xiong Wenyun who was no longer very young, living for many years in big cities in a foreign country and mostly doing painting in a traditional way. Subconsciously I even felt that she had deviated from her true nature and normal course. In fact from the very beginning, the preparation for the “Flowing Rainbow” was not simple, bringing her under a lot of pressure. She was travelling back and forth between China and Japan, in a state of constant anxiety and yearning. As a woman, the easy way of relieving this pressure was to idle around in the streets of Tokyo and do shopping. Having lived for many years in Japan, influenced by its fashion trends, the young nature of her character, the love for beauty and the desire for daily life and all aspects “belonging” to Xiong Wenyun were gradually aroused and finalised in the knitting of a pearl and flower ring. In the process of returning to the “blood vein of herself”, she was “pregnant” with a “son” who was Kongkong and she brought “him” with her to Tibet and this was the initial image of “Kongkong”. Many years later Xiong Wenyun realised that in the latter period of the “Flowing Rainbow”, she was quite absent minded because Kongkong accompanied her in her walk and gradually took her heart. After a good deal of trouble, she moved back from Japan to China, she bought a house and settled down in Beijing. Kongkong helped her return  not only to her own blood vein but also to her original cultural blood vein.

2. Image
Around 2004, my daughter was three years old. From a full time mother I slowly returned to art work. However my state of mind and my approach became different perhaps because of nurturing a child. I was immediately attracted by the “virtual self” – another realisation of “self”  in the art world and in the internet. And I thought of Kongkong.

I went with my daughter to her home – the home of Xiong Wenyun and Kongkong. What a surprise! This did not look like the home of a single women, it was in such a state of disorder- even more messy than my home with a child! Kongkong of all kinds of colours and Kongkong’s dresses and small objects are scattered all over the sofa, on the tables and on the ground. With my daughter we actually entered a small person country. Xiong Wenyun talked endlessly about everything regarding Kongkong as if a mother talking about her child, and my daughter was extremely happy to meet with pals with whom to play. She especially liked a pink coloured very thin Kongkong made from smooth and bright material.   Xiong told us that was one of the experimental images of Kongkong which she had tried for Kongkong. But at the end of the day she  abandonned the fashionable, lovely, naive and female elements too typical of ordinary toys. The image of Kongkong she fixed had a human body, a child’s face, masculine, like a “boy”, flat head, tiny eyes, big mouth, Asian style, simple and honest, and with somewhat  “bad air” “not caring about anything”. All this corresponded directly with the boyish character, the Asian(Chinese and Japanese) style she is familiar with and her desire for “I don’t care” attitude. This was easy to understand. What was particular was that on the head of Kongkong, there are three hors. According to her own explanation, she was inspired by the original design of the pearl and flower ring and the three horns were intended for growing trees and flowers, discharging energy and connecting with spirit. Kongkong became supernatural and magical.

According to the imagination of my daughter, it was a game called <Spring Head>. In the spring, among peach flowers and fresh grass, a peach coloured little spirit with two peach coloured ears, two golden coloured horns and five purple blue small bumps. If you point at any one of the bumps, from each bump will grow small things. Point one time five flowers will come out, two times, five birds will fly, three times five planets will come over, four times five little spirits will be born, five times you have five cheese, six times you have five deserts, seven times you have five letters FUNNY. Eight times you have eight logos. This was really fun. Association on my mind: On the way to Mozhugongka, no real road, the so called ìroadîwas as wide as the width of the car, steep cliff on the left and deep ravines on the right, terribly dangerous! Slightest carelessness would cause a mortal accident. Very few cars on the ìroadî, everybody was fixing eyes on the ì road î ahead which was covered with blue white crushed stones. Gazing for too long, we began to feel dizzy. Sometimes at a slightly wider space on the side of the road, we would find quite a few crushed stone blocks piled up on purpose, the smallest block was consisted only of three stones, the bigger one on the bottom, the smaller one on the top and the middle sized one in the middle. The smaller one on the top reminded me of the ìhornî as if connected to a spirit. This simple but magical sight deeply touched me. My Tibetan friends told me that was the MANI stone used for prayer by truck drivers.

The basic method for inventing ´ virtual self ª was to provide the reality with the supernatural magic. Born from the Flowing Rainbow, the seven coloured Kongkong has one body but many shapes. Xiong Wenyun took complete liberty to give him different identities and sex. She knitted for him clothes, decorative objects, objects for routine life. She traveled with him to Paris, Vienna, Tokyo and Sicile, visited with him Beijing ; Tian An MEN Square, Xidan, Sanlitun, Zhong Guan Cun, circulated with him in the subway, invented stories for him : daily transport, lost love,media stirred robbery, anti terrorist activity , doing publicity, seeing world cup, participation in social election, UN Conference. There was nothing that Kongkong was not capable of. In the process of inventing all these real and non real stories, she successfully got rid of the depression and anxiety typical for a middle aged single career woman unwilling to be reconciled to reality, tossing about and in a complaining mood. She obtained pleasure, peace and satisfaction of a mother nurturing a child. Pampering Kongkong she experienced the fictitious ìachingî for him. She told me that the birth and the growth of Kongkong ìmade it possible for her to go through all the feelings related to becoming and being a mother, she has no more regrets now, she feels pleasant, natural, steady and secure, no more vanity, in one word, life turns smooth in every sense of the word.î

The most precious thing about the creation of Kongkong was that Xiong Wenyun did it wholly out of  her psychological desire for experience without the slightest motive for fame and money. She did not even think about the method for putting in order, display and collection for Kongkong as a work of art. As a result, the photos showing the early travels and stories of Kongkong could not be enlarged. Even now when I was discussing with her about the current exhibition, when trying to ìcombî the work of Kongkong, she was still limited to ìgarrulous talksî full of emotions.

One image transformation of Kongkong is the graphic animated version. The smooth thin line outlined the neat and simple shape with simple flatly painted somewhat powdered colours. She made a series of animated stories, illustration of various expressions, books of drawings, Kongkong was circulated on the net. Animated Kongkong, no sex identity, no history, changed roles more freely with stories more about daily routine life in a city . Jostling on the buses, massage, beauty parlour, weight loss, eating meat string, typing computer, dating and loving by internet, playing mahjong, being on closestool, killing roaches, brushing teeth, sleeping, having an injection, bone setting, self torture, swimming, dancing, taking photos, doing Taiji, celebrating Christmas, going to party, shopping, ribbon cutting, selling things, jumping from the buildings, etc.etc. By this time, Xiong Wenyun had already moved back from Japan to Beijing, her life and state of mind was relatively serene. Being strongly influenced by Japanese popular culture especially animated culture and finding herself in the middle of the rapidly developed network and animated culture in China, the linking up was easy and immediate.

Another image transformation is the datura Kongkong. Paper cut silhouette, with the derived shapes similar to the original cells, symmetrical and balanced, with simple colours, were all set to transmigrate in the layers and layers of datura images. The newest image of Kongkong is like a Buddhist monk idling around in the mountains and waters like those in Buddhist decorative painting. Tibet, datura and Buddha- the knot at Xiong Wenyun’s  heart is linked up once again with the countryside like life in Songzhuang through Kongkong.

3. The origin
There is a psychological test aiming to find out “you ” in the eyes of the other, “ you ” you actually want to be and the  true “you”. The result is that the three “you”s are all quite different, if not completely different. In the real life, the “you” in the eyes of the others is only part of “yourself”.  Every “oneself ” has a part which cannot be realized in reality; in other words, the “oneself” in reality is never complete, it is therefore often transformed and realized through “another” form.

Those sitting in meditation often realise that there are two “ oneselves ” having a dialogue constantly and there is the third “oneself” observing the two “oneselves”. Actually we do not need to sit in meditation, as long as we are in a relatively calm mood, we can already feel the inner dialogue within our hearts. This dialogue stops at heart, it does not need to be displayed in the real life, not constrained by space and time. It can be considered as the most basic and most natural “self” transformation. The outer forms of transformation include various kinds like simply talking to oneself, keeping a diary, or more complicated way of being very attached to a “object” even “entering directly into a situation”, imagining oneself as another kind of man, animal, plant or object super to “oneself”. The Chinese often pour out their hearts to the sky and the earth, comparing ourselves to flowers and grass, mourning over spring and autumn… The European people regard the pets as their parents, being attached to objects… All this perhaps out of the need for another part of “oneself”.

“Kongkong” is the art image of another realisation of Xiong Wenyun’s “oneself”.

Another realisation of “oneself” is a Greenland reserved for oneself for self entertainment and self realisation outside the real society. It is a complement, a further development and a re creation of oneself. It coexists with the image in the actual society, representing the same important value of existence. It can change with the psychological need at different periods in life. In the new century, another realisation of “oneself” has a wider cultural background. Through internet directly related to the reality (either net games or net exchanges)we can play several different oneselves, or create a perfect oneself, or even create a complete new self. The invented virtual oneself hides the real identity in real life, escaping the constraints of social rules . As a consequence, the possibility of self realisation and the reasonable value of action surpasses largely that in the real life.  It is a real breakthrough.

“Kongkong” ‘s life is continuous  – from pregnancy to birth to growth, closely bound up to  the changes of the artist in the daily life and the entanglements of her personal psychological experience. Moreover Kongkong is still “growing”. Kongkong has comprehensive “language forms” – from the traditional painting to the contemporary concepts, to photo, performance and installation,  to the most fashionable animation,  to the most ancient datura illustration,  to the utmost paired up patterns, to the most feminine handicraft labour...

“Kongkong” is the most unique work of art in China’s Contemporary Art world.