BODY DOUBLE

Pioneers of contemporary Chinese photography, RONGRONG and INRI learned to tell love stories through their lens. christina ko becomes enraptured

BLINDSPOT GALLERY OWNER Mimi Gradel and I are chatting as photography artists Rongrong and Inrii finish up their interview with another publication. “I told the driver that went to pick them up at the airport, ‘Just look for the couple with the longest hair,’” says Gradel. “He found them immediately.”

Those matching Rapunzel manes, falling in straight black sheets, are typical of many beautiful idiosyncrasies that hold the couple together in an epic love story. The tale is as mesmerising as their joint work, the two subjects bizarrely intertwined. Their story is part of their work, as much as the work is part of their story.

Born in China in 1968, Rongrong grew up in Fujian province wanting to be a painter. After three years unsuccessfully applying to art school, he thought his dreams were dashed, until he came across a camera in a photography shop. He had to work for a further three years in order to afford that single piece of equipment. Once it was in his hands, he moved to Beijing, where he settled in the capital’s East Village, which would become a burgeoning community for artists “because the rent was cheap,” he says.

The likes of artists Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming soon moved to the area, becoming Rongrong’s first subjects. Their portraits were included in his acclaimed East Village series of photographs. “The influence of my time at East Village was great, because during that time in Beijing, there were no arenas for people to discuss art or have exhibitions,” Rongrong says. “But there we were, with our own forum to discuss our hopes and dreams.”

The photographs were a documentation of performance art pieces – pieces that were consciously grotesque, sometimes bordering on the violent, in their use of the human body as a means of expression. As well as useful in cultivating a circle of friends and contemporaries, Rongrong’s time at East Village, when he learned how to utilise his own body as a canvas, has greatly informed his work.

The absence of bodies, however, was noticeable in his second series, Ruin, a commentary on the destruction of old Beijing in the name of modernisation without the consent of its inhabitants. The Wedding Gown series brought in new themes, and Rongrong began to hand-dye his subjects (often his nude self, posing alongside women in worn-out white gowns).

In 1999, while in Japan for an exhibition of his images, Rongrong met Inri. A former photographer for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, she had started to pursue a career as a freelancer. Inri wished to meet the Chinese artist to discuss his work, but neither spoke the other’s language. Because Chinese and Japanese share many characters, she wrote a few words on a piece of paper. “I became curious, and wanted to ask what she did,” says Rongrong. “She said she was a photographer. I asked to see her work, because without that understanding, I didn’t know what type of interchange we could have. So, the next day, we met, and she showed me her photographs. Once I saw her work, I could make a connection with the human being behind it.

“I couldn’t forget her, and I felt that what I had earned from this exhibition was nothing, artistically speaking, but that I had met her. I called her, and even though she couldn’t understand me, she would have known that it was a call from China, and that it must be me calling. We began to write to each other, and send photographs via fax. But it was me that took the initiative to pursue her. I wanted her to come to China, and after nine months, she really did.”

Without being able to understand each other, they were married, and Inri began to learn Putonghua. Today she is nearly fluent. Their communication necessarily began through Photography, and through physical interaction, but it took time for them to collaborate through their shared passion. “The first time we travelled, she carried a particularly heavy camera,” says Rongrong. “I wanted to carry it for her, but she wouldn’t allow me. We were on the Great Wall and it was a long trek. But she was strong, she refused, she was independent. And I was independent, too. We couldn’t collaborate in the beginning. I shot my photographs. She shot hers. What she photographed, I did not, and what I photographed, she did not. It was being polite, and also showing independence, not repeating what the other had shot.

“Then once, in the desert, looking out at the landscape, both of us were struck with emotion by the same sight. And what happened was that she began to photograph me, and I began to photograph her. We began to have a mutual understanding, and eventually, we set the camera up to do self-portraits. And then we began to explore this new world.”

Their style continues to be based upon the premises of the performance art that Rongrong once photographed – shedding their clothing, they place themselves amid various landscapes, using the camera as an audience, capturing the way that their relationship can change the nature of the environment around them, and how the environment changes them. In the In Bad Goisern, Austria series they are nymph-like and uninhibited; in the We Are Here collection, they are stark and haunting; in the In Fujisan, Japan series, they are romantic and light; in the Liulitun, Beijing series, sentimental and small. Is their work intended to hold larger significance, or are they happy to traverse only the realm of the personal? “Our work is a commentary on human life, love and nature, and the dialogues and relationships between those,” says Rongrong. “It is not a direct commentary on what goes on in the world, but it is our voice, our expressions on life.”

That said, what viewers derive from the photographs allows the work to transcend their intentions. “I want people’s reactions to surprise me,” Rongrong says. “Just like the first time I met her – I was surprised. Is that what she sees in me? My work is one piece, but the audience can take that and expand it into an infinite discussion. Every person who views it has a different background, and what they understand from it will be different.”

In 2007, the couple established the Three Shadows Photography Centre, comprising today an exhibition space and library in the 798 Art District, and designed for them by Ai Weiwei. For a pair so intensely embedded in the personal, this is an opportunity to open up and share. “Photography is our fate,” says Rongrong. “Without photography, we would have never known each other. We worked hard together, and took a lot of photographs together. We began to feel that our lives were very full. We had everything we wanted.

“And then we began to want to let it go, to clear space in our lives. It signified a new beginning. In English, when you talk about photography, you ‘take’ a photograph. We take it into ourselves. And we didn’t want to keep taking and taking. We needed to reverse the flow and return, give back.

“We saw so many young people interested in photography, and yet in China, there still isn’t enough of a space for them. There’s no research facility for that, either. So our initial thought was to open a library, and it slowly grew into Three Shadows.”

Today, Rongrong and Inrii have three children aged three, four and seven, and their series Three Shadows and Caochangdi are focused and family oriented. “We just let nature take its course,” Rongrong laughs. “I thought because she is Japanese, the [one child] policy wouldn’t apply, but it turns out that wasn’t true. In the end, we had to pay fines.”

Will their children follow in their footsteps? The more reticent Inri speaks up: “Sometimes they’ll steal our cameras and secretly take photos. But I want them to know more first. I don’t want them to get into it while they’re too young, but if in the future they want to do it, then so be it.”

The reluctance is understandable, on some level – the couple has become so intensely conjoined in work and life. “At this point, we cannot distinguish me from her, or her from me,” says Rongrong. “We are one body.”

“Our work is to do with our lives, and so, because it is neither his life alone nor mine alone, it is ours, together,” Inri says. “Perhaps people will find us strange. Why are we always together?”

Rongrong laughs, looking to his partner but maintaining the distance that has remained between them throughout the interview, a space that is significant only if you consider that body language has long been their primary form of communication. It’s a comfortable expanse; close enough so that they could join hands, if they wish, but far enough that, despite their joint artist by-line, they are separate. “She wasn’t going to come to the exhibition this time,” says Rongrong. “And I disagreed with her. I said, this is her  exhibition, too, how could she not come? I have to come by myself? You must be joking.”

A retrospective of Rongrong and Inrii’s work, Three Begets Ten Thousand Things, is showing at Blindspot Gallery and Blindspot Annex until November 13.