In the summer of 2002, the young artist Xiao Xiong joined the Long March Project, an ambitious Chinese contemporary art collective led by curators Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie. With artistic and curatorial projects planned for twenty-six stops on a lengthy itinerary, the group aimed to retread the path of the historic Long March, the epic strategic military retreat of 1934-36 that is the founding heroic narrative of Chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.
While the artistic and curatorial team led by Lu and Qiu began their journey in Ruijin (the beginning point of the historic Long March), with the intention of arriving in Yan'an (popularly considered the birthplace of the Chinese communist revolution), Xiao Xiong embarked alone and traveled in reverse, from Yan'an to Ruijin. The group led by Lu and Qiu never completed the route of the historical Long March and altered course to Beijing to found the Long March exhibition space instead, but Xiao completed the impressive trek, using rural public bus service, in two months.
in Thresholds 34, Spring 2007.
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