Today No Water

Today No Water by Wu Shanzhuan (c. 2004)

Ink on paper, 181cm x 97cm

Collector: Susan Acret

Wu Shanzhuan was born in 1960 in a village in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China.

This is one of two works I bought by Wu Shanzhuan in Hong Kong in 2006 from Johnson Chang (Chang Tsong-zung) at his gallery, Hanart TZ. At the time I was working part-time as an editor at the Asia Art Archive (www.aaa.org.hk), which was co-founded by then-director of the Archive Claire Hsu with Johnson Chang. I had recently worked on a monograph on the work of Wu Shanzhuan (including collaborative pieces with the Icelandic artist Inga Svala Thorsdottir). In the process of editing the book, I learnt a great deal about Wu’s practice, and also spent some time with the artist. When the opportunity came to buy his work, I was excited to purchase two works from his series Today No Water (section of second work shown below). These two paintings have been hanging on my walls ever since and have not been seen in the public domain.

Wu grew up in China in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of great deprivation and change. The sign ‘Today No Water’ could often be seen outside apartment blocks, letting residents know that there was no running water available that day. While critiquing the lack of water, as a conceptual artist Wu uses the phrase as a jumping off point to express his personal ideology through symbols, words, and images that address wide-ranging concerns that include political systems, environmental damage, and the use of language.

Susan Acret

(Susan Acret is a writer, editor, advisor and collector with particular expertise in the field of contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific region.)

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A section of  the second painting in the Today No Water series by Wu Shanzhuan in Susan Acret's collection.