User:Ms.Rain Zhang/邹文

Owen Zou (邹文)， Ph.D. in Art, Professor and Ph.D. supervisor of Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, China, Public Artist, Founder of April Art Center, U.S. (A 501 c 3 Nonprofit Organization)

Has served successively as Executive Vice Director of Zhuang Shi (Decoration) Magazine; Consultant of Beijing Construction and Planning Committee; Board Member of the 6th China Artists Association, General Secretary of China Sculpture Art Council, Vice Director of China Ceramic Art Council; General Secretary & Vice Director of China City Sculpture Art Council; General Secretary of the Committee, Executive Curator and Organizer of 2008 Olympic Landscape Sculpture Design Competition and International Traveling Exhibitions; General Secretary of the Committee, and Curator of the US-China Peace and Friendship Commemorative Sculpture Donation and Exchange; Chief Planner and Curator of Washington Chinese Cultural Festivals and Theme Weeks; Judge of Shanghai Expo Public Art Projects and Shanghai City Planning Schemes；Judge of China National Art Fund; Judge of National Art Exhibition; Curative Board Member of Beijing International Art Biennales.^[1]

Public Art, Art Dissemination, Art and Charity 

His study Focuses public phenomena in art history of China and the world, and artistic rules of cultural dissemination, including their definitions, meanings, characteristics, methodologies, channels, and functions. He tries to reveal the values and meanings of aesthetics and art, as productive forces, combining field study of primitive and folk art in both China and abroad. He advocates deeper understanding of culture's public feature and art's effect in dissemination, in a background that global democratic and civil society is reaching maturity. He emphasizes to shorten the distance between distribution and acceptance of art, in order to promote inter-cultural exchange and sharing of art.

1996-1998, he started "Art Helps Integrity" project, promoting integrity in mainland China for the first time, which caused profound response and popularity, and making "Integrity" a hot and widely accepted word. He has over 200 articles published, and as a single author he has written the following books: Introduction of Public Art, The Source of Art, Cetology of Art and Craft, Sociologist Perspectives on Art, and so on; Art Dissemination in Contemporary China; and served as chief editors of the following books: China Art Encyclopedia, China Arts and Crafts Set, The Olympic and Sculptures, and so on. He resided and finished 2008 Beijing Olympic Sculpture Landscape Planning Scheme, Edition of China Craft Encyclopedia, American Public Art Field Research; Exploration of Chinese Crafts in Europe, and so on. He executively curated and directed more than 100 public art exhibitions, projects, and events in more than 60 cities. He designed Olympic Declaration Square and Sculptures, Statue of Martin Luther King: Buttress of Dreams, Worldwide National Flowers Sculpture Park Sculpture Assignment and Placement, and so on. Many of his sculptures are collected by National Art Museum of China and the Water Cube, or placed permanently in urban spaces. He is selected to be a member of “One Hundred Art Talents Program” and “Four Kinds of Talents Program”.

Owen Zou, Candidate of tellers of the most recent half century Chinese history with special perspectives, Public Artist, Founder of April Art Center, U.S. (A 501 c 3 Nonprofit-Organization)

At the end of the most desperate famine in the 1960s, a little life came to the world, fighting for food against other survivors.  

The inherent sense of original sin drilled a tunnel through which the Christian Spirit connect with him, a boy born in the remote Guizhou Province, China. 

The Chinese Cultural Revolution burst in 1966 in Beijing and even rippled to Guiyang, which is 2000 kilometers away. The boy witnessed a man beaten to death in armed fighting, whose body laid out on the ice outside the province's government, a lucky guy whose belt stopped a bullet piercing through in the half way, a river salvager whose last work was raising his own son and staring the dead body in silence. His childhood memories were like scenes in blockbuster movies. 

Almost the whole age of elementary and middle school was overlapped with the 10-year cultural revolution. But he was avoided from the mass-productive education. The Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau，covered by the Karst Topography that amazes the world, is far away from the Central Plains’ cultural center. Its natural history can retrospect to the Cretaceous or Jurassic period, while its cultural history is so easily forgotten and ignored. With the rarefaction of authentic and traditional culture, but the compensation of relative unrestraint and freedom, he destined to have a marginalized life. His parents couldn't read and raised him in a "cage-free" mode, which developed in his mind an inborn resistibility to feudalist main stream. He is a wild cultural animal, without much historical sediment, burden, influence or sense of superiority as a Chinese. 

1977, he dropped out of school and became a porter of the government-owned staffing system. Having escaped from a fatal work-related accident with 1/1000 second possibility, but still trapped in a closed era of 7 years, he therefore experienced the reality of Chinese society. Not long time ago, as the intense cultural revolution is shambling into a waning stage, some literary masterpieces of China or the world slipped from the censorship and appeared to the public. He read them and believed there was a big world outside there and great people watching at him. “Brainwashed” by biographies, he struggled to be “a noble man, a pure man, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, and a man that benefit the people”. He was elected “Province Role Model” as a labor worker. 

He accepted 7 years of contaminating and desperate test as a gift. Within harsh working schedule, he squeezed time for studying for college enrollment test in 3 years. After 2 fails, he was admitted in the Central Academy of Art and Craft in Beijing, and majored in Art History and Theories (He changed to Public Art area in when pursuing doctoral degree). A thick callus was left on his distorted index finger knuckle, because of transcription of the whole New Chinese Dictionary. It was not to escape from the bottom social class, or to terminate the confusion and desperation of laboring work that urged him to study hard. The motivation was to be kind and responsible to the soul living in the flesh that he was so proud of. To gain time for tests preparation, he voluntarily required to guard 3 warehouses for poisonous and hazardous articles far away deep in the mountains. Close to the biggest death sentence execution ground at the suburb of Guiyang, during working in the warehouses, he had the "priority" to see at least 50 lives ended up.   

Vividly watching vivid lives dying, suddenly inspired his understanding and cherishing about life. He started to get involved with some non-governmental elites of ideological emancipation, as well as books of advanced western thoughts. Since enrolled in college in 1983, he valued time of learning, infused himself with masterpiece books from home and abroad, and output more than a million words’ of unpublished poems and novels. He considered himself as a "youth of literature". 

The intention of never disappointing life was always a propelling force for all the choices he had made. On the way to excellence, he consoled himself, by being willingly guided and encouraged by great people, and by keeping irreconcilable with vulgarity, hypocrisy and duplicity. During college stage, he resided and published wall-newspapers (as an early "We Media" form), and then was selected into the editorial department for the college magazine. He was promoted to the Vice Executive Director position, however, he felt no sense of beauty but only boredom about the official career. Marks he left in the college era was that he organized the 85' students in Beijing University to established the Monument of Democracy and Science. The plans and designs solicited by them were never realized due to some reasons, but it directly led the dismantlement of the Mao Statue, and the emergence of Yuan-Ming-Yuan Art Village. 

He became a teacher in the college he graduated from in 1987. April 16th, 1989, the experience of staying 60 days consecutively at Tian-An-Men Square, added more than 30 years old on his psychological age. Yet temporary bewilderment delayed his maturity of middle age. He looked up into the starry sky and believed in the narrations, foresights and promises of great people. While seeing through the reality, he chose to be practical in activity and to value the idealism in inner soul, so that postponed to become a hopeless mid-age man. 

He felt that the sense of original sin and guilty, which companied his childhood, had infected a new era in China. The era then launched Reform and Opening-up policy, trying to compensate its people. He is one of the beneficiaries. The first decade of 21st Century, China kept on progressing in the Economic Reform, which is not only a top-down pull, but also a down-top push. The establishment of US-China Diplomatic Relationship acted as an auxiliary power. Entry into WTO, holding the Olympic Games and the World Expo were 3 important events that promoted the big cultural country of five-thousand-year history to be concerned of the world and human beings more than ever before. He made all his effort to get engaged in these events in the perspective of his study field, and was received by the former WTO Director, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. Michael Kenneth Moore, the signer of US-China Diplomatic Relationship Communiques, former president of the U.S., Mr. Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Carter, and former President of International Olympic Committee, Mr. Juan Antonio Samaranch. He considered himself as a non-official helper of the Economic Reform and Friendship between U.S. and China. At the turn of the centuries, he never lavished time. Some of his creative projects and events caused a sensation or discussion nationwide, putting him in the spotlight of TV or magazine programs. 

A wind of vanity and arrogance blew, like dirty water trying to smear the shoes. He was anxious to extricate himself. He rejected online chatting or social media, abandoned web stars and authorities. He felt all the great people, Lu Xun, Hu Shih, Wang Yangming, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Jack London, Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Eugene Delacroix, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Norman Rockwell, Christo, Banksy, Steven Spielberg, were coming closer. He combed all the influence created by the cultural wave riders in Beijing during the 1930s, and realized that art is pale, unless we use it to distribute the accomplishment of human civilization, and promote social progress. To apply art on charity is the best way that art works. 

So he drifts in the world, and roams to mountains, valleys, rivers and seas in over 50 countries, accumulating 50 thousand miles' mileage of road trip in Europe and America. He traveled to the sites of Hindu, Troy, Sahara, David City, Ottoman, and Yucatan; explored the mysteries of Mosuos, Karens, Maoris, Vikings, Eskimos, and Native Americans; visited and reminisced Captain Cook, John Adams, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, General Grant, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Mahatma Gandhi, Bernard Law Montgomery, Dwight David Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and other heroes. He has been to more than 300 museums, dozens of cultural heritages, and gathered tens of thousands of photographs. Therefore, he proved that though people are from different regions and cultures, their points of view are largely the same but with minor differences. And America is the home to return for people who seek the beauty of life. 

Admittedly, it is a time that some policies are eroding the beauty. But he believes that the society with widest tolerance of immigrants will draw the most diversity of sources and power, will conserve the most humanity and emotion, and will keep the best environment and largest proportion of kindness. When the policies that stand against the common values of human get disproved by testing, and abandoned based on sacrifices and lessons, people will believe more and try to achieve the praised American Spirit and Values. Eventually, the U.S. will converge all the advanced streams from Europe, Russia and China, and make the world more beautiful. He wants to report to the great people he has admired since his early age, that in the 50 more years he has lived so far, he maintains the purity and integrity, keeps the "freedom of thought" and "Independence of Personality". He offers himself as a sample of individual experience of China among the world, and would like to benefit to the human with beauty, to prove at least one of 1.4 millions of auspicious signals. 

• Owen Zou on Tsinghua University Website（Chinese）
• China Writer website, Washington American Asian-Pacific Month New World China Week（Chinese）
• MLK statue donated by Owen Zou in Birmingham Thursday （English）
• Birminghan Times, MLK Statue donation（English）
• Art China website, US-China Friendship Sculpture Exchange Projects (中文)
• www.JNOCNews.jp, Owen Zou and The Source of Art（中文)

[[Category:1962 births]] [[Category:Chinese artists]] [[Category:Chinese art critics]] [[Category:Communication studies]] [[Category:Public art]] [[Category:Tsinghua University faculty]] [[Category:Artists]]