THE RENT COLLECTION COURTYARD: Fifty Years

The Rent Collection Courtyard: Fifty Years will recreate the original installation paired with a critical essay on the works and their legacy in setting the stage for later waves of Chinese contemporary art.

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary landmark Chinese installation work,The Rent Collection Courtyard. In 1965, a group of sculptors from the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts created 114 life-size clay figures depicting starving peasant farmers bringing their rent to a tyrannical feudal landlord's residence, a trenchant Communist critique of practices of serfdom and servitude in imperial China. After the groundbreaking installation at a landlord's former residence in China, the figures were reproduced in a unique maquette (scale model) which belongs to USC Pacific Asia Museum. The Rent Collection Courtyard: Fifty Years will recreate the original installation paired with a critical essay on the works and their legacy in setting the stage for later waves of Chinese contemporary art.