Alternative Narrative is an exhibition of video art by Chinese artists who have expanded the genre in numerous ways. And though the exhibition may seem as both an up-to-date assessment as well as looking back to its emergence, by the same token, it is only a fractured historiography for this art form is as much a heterogeneous practice as other genres that Chinese artists are working in today including painting, sculpture, performance, and photography, for example. There is not one dominant style or painting aesthetic that can be characterized as Chinese, for the global nature of Chinese painting underscores this as it rubs up against all forms of international practices. Similarly, then, the state of Chinese video art is as diversified as any of its counterparts in the UK, US, or any other country.  The subtitle of the exhibition also needs some clarification as well: it alludes to nothing short of astonishment if not unimaginable how quickly video art in China has exponentially advanced; and the subtitle is not only descriptive for the sheer diversity of video as well as the high level of accomplishment of its Chinese practitioners.

As the exhibition Alternative Narrative makes quite clear, Chinese video art is an extremely diversified field that is only exponentially growing and subsequently getting more complex and sophisticated. The selected, albeit strong, examples presented in this exhibition underscore this. Already artists are working and expanding the formal and conceptual vocabularies of video art in ways that can only be characterized as astonishing if not…well…unimaginable.