Interview with James Elaine

ArtAsiaPacific talked with Elaine about the new nonprofit organizations that have recently cropped up in China, including his own gallery, Telescope, and what this might mean for the Chinese art scene as well as the greater art world.

Tell us about Telescope. Why does China need an art space like yours?

As a younger artist years ago [in the United States], I remember how important it was to be able to show my work in nonprofit spaces, as it was difficult to break into the commercial gallery system—especially since my work was viewed by the commercial galleries as a difficult “fit” into the art market. Nonprofit galleries offered me and so many other young artists a chance. They gave us hope.

Telescope provides opportunities for emerging artists to work with and collaborate with a museum curator and an established artist—to be able to work out their ideas in the context of a gallery exhibition and learn about making a solo show, as well as installing their work in a gallery space. It offers an alternative to the hyper-commercial market system.

I have been funding Telescope with my own resources, and I don’t get a salary, but one day I hope for it to be supported by China itself and the citizens within it. I also hope to offer a simple model of a nonprofit space that gives opportunities to emerging artists and curators in China. Philanthropy is one of the foundational elements to the survival of a nonprofit, but charitable giving does not widely exist in China. Neither does a true understanding of a nonprofit or alternative gallery. This makes it difficult to keep a space operating for a long period of time. Telescope seeks some type of hybrid middle-ground to survive as it teaches these principals. 

My artist friends and other gallery directors say that it is important that I do this for China, and to persevere, but through the grapevine I keep hearing that I am a “fool,” and “What on earth is he doing?” “Non profit? Not make any money?” “He is crazy.” “Don’t trust him, he just wants your money…”

One artist, when I first asked him to do a show with me at Telescope, had no idea what “nonprofit” was. He did not understand the benefits or purpose and, therefore, was hesitant. But now that he has been through the process with me and Telescope, he has realized that this was the most important thing he has ever done with his work, and he wants to keep exhibiting with me or other nonprofits in this manner. 

Are there other spaces like Telescope out there?

Nonprofits are slowly starting to pop up. Arrow Factory was started by three artists, and it has been running for about four or five years now. With the preponderance of video art in China, the Video Bureau is doing a great thing by archiving these materials and creating a space to watch videos and meet artists. 

This January, a new foundation, the first of its kind, was created by Chinese art collector Wang Bing called New Century Art Foundation. It is the first foundation in China to support nonprofit contemporary art spaces. They selected ten organizations to support, with Telescope being one of them. 

You moved to China in 2008 and started Telescope in 2012. Having built a successful career and culling prestige in New York and Los Angeles, why did you decide to move to China, where you didn’t know anybody and had no network or guanxi?

I didn’t know anybody when I first moved here. Ma Qingyun [dean of the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture and founder of Shanghai architectural firm MADA s.p.a.m] picked me up at the airport, gave me a cell phone with some minutes on it and dropped me off at the 798 art district, which was where I was staying at the time. The gallery came several years later. In the meantime, I was still doing shows for the Hammer and writing the Hammer blog.

The Hammer kept me on as an adjunct curator, which helped to support what I was doing. Being a curator in the US has a lot of cachet in China. 

My mother and father were missionaries and built hospitals in China before I was born, so I grew up with a love of China. I always knew that I would at some point live in China, just as my parents did. Annie [Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum] didn’t want me to leave, but going to China felt like a completion. 

Everything was too perfect at the Hammer. I had created Hammer Projects, and I was going in perfect circles. I wanted to start over. For 25 years I focused on emerging artists. In China—the art scene, economically and politically—the whole country was emerging. 

I was first drawn away from New York and to Los Angeles in the 1990s, because the latter was like the Wild West in terms of its art scene. But I had been in Los Angeles since 1999, and I was longing for China as an interesting new challenge with a lot of potential. The system in China is totally different from the US: they have no nonprofit system, little to no philanthropy and a history, language and culture that I was not a part of. 

It’s clear from your blog for the Hammer that you hold China in high esteem: the people, the rituals, the food, the landscape, the systems in place and their intricacies. You seem utterly humbled by and grateful for your experiences. 

You’re right. Many curators skim the top and think they’ve done China [after having visited for] a week or ten days. It’s a very imperialistic attitude. Americans don’t think Chinese have any contemporary art history, but they have their own history and their own ecosystems outside of ours. I want to be part of the local people. I don’t hang out with expats or go to expat bars. I hang out with the Chinese. I ride the trains and I like eating the things they put before me.

With Telescope, I do hope to affect China. But, if the West pays attention, maybe China will offer us a new way. I think our system needs changing too.