Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the University of Washignton, by Anne Mathern, 2010.

Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the artist (detail).

Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the artist (detail).

Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the artist (detail).

Artwork copyright Gu Xiong. Photo courtesy of the University of Washington (detail).

Smile, 2005

Gu Xiong
(Canadian | Chinese, born 1953)

Location: University of Washington, Seattle

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Gu Xiong shows us a man, a woman, and a young girl smiling at the viewer. This is a response that the artist, as an immigrant and speaker of English as a second language, uses to cope with cultural barriers.

The text on the artwork says, in English and in Chinese: "I smile when I don't understand the words that people say to me. It is like a baby's innocent face. I smile when people yell at me. I don't understand why they do it to me. My smile is like a baby's cry. I smile when I serve people. My smile is the only way for me to communicate with others. I give warmth to people and I hope they will return it. I smile when people help me. I slowly understand how important it is to take my first step and then walk independently. I smile when I am tired. I see what I have earned from the hard work that I have done all the time. I smile when I finally can listen and speak. The more I smile the more people treat me like a real person in this society. I smile no matter how hard a life I have. I smile to the past, smile to the present, smile to the future, and I smile to all."

This artwork is part of a collection of artworks located in the University of Washington's Kane Hall. The collection pays tribute to the diversity of UW's campus community and features nine artists whose art explores identity. Student leaders from the UW Minority Think Tank were involved in the selection of the artworks in 2005.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with University of Washington.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Based in Vancouver, Canada, multi-media artist Gu Xiong creates artworks that explore questions of cultural identity. Xiong is a professor of art at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His artworks are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the China National Museum of Fine Arts, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among others.

Xiong was born in Chongqing, Sichuan, China in 1953. At age 18 in 1972, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he was sent to live in the countryside with millions of other youths and forced into "re-education" with peasant teachers. After being allowed to return to the city, Xiong earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree (1985) from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where he also taught traditional woodcut printmaking. In 1986, he attended an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, becoming the first artist from China to do so. After returning to China, he was a part of the 1989 "China/Avant-Garde" exhibition in Beijing that was shut down by the Chinese police a few hours after it opened -- four months before the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Gu Xiong had to flee China as a result of his participation in the China/Avant Garde show and the Tianamen Square demonstrations. He immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1989.