CUTTING THROUGH HISTORIES
Beijing traffic flows around six concentric ring roads. Demarcating the megacity and carrying its infamous traffic, these quadrilateral highways are in many ways markers of growth. Much like the layers of a tree trunk, Beijing’s rings have expanded with age as the city’s population has surged, and the need for living space has increased.
Although Ma Quisha works out of a studio situated just inside the sixth ring road, her early childhood was spent in the city’s core. Born in 1982, Ma lived with her mother, father and great-grandmother in Shijing hutong, located a kilometer and a half south of Tiananmen Square, for the first three years of her life. These narrow alleyways, framed by clusters of courtyards found within the second ring road and laid out within the ruins of a demolished Ming-dynasty city wall, were traditionally occupied by single extended families dating back to the Yuan dynasty. With the arrival of socialism in the mid-20th century, many were divided up and are now mostly inhabited by dozens of intergenerational families, giving these complexes their compacted, swirling energy.
Academics and critics of Chinese modern and contemporary art often emphasize the massive impact of generational differences on artists’ output, categorizing those who were born before 1980, during the 1980s, and after 1990. Distinguishing the various generations can seem logical, particularly because of the seismic social, political and cultural shifts that have taken place in post-1949 China, which are often reflected in artists’ works—beginning with the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)
