Chinese Cries and Whispers

In the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new China show, visitors are endeavouring to interpret 'Between Past and Future', as the title of the exhibition goes; in the form of live tableaux of heroic human groups photographed as a sceptical ‘dig’ at past displays of social realist art. But, as in all things Chinese, realism is many layered, and meaning is all the more diffuse, with not a little scepticism on the part of the artist, Wang Qingsong. The exhibition opened on 13 October.