Art often has an uneasy relationship with tourism. Art and artists will usually consider themselves to be above the industrialized consumption of leisure and relaxation. The art of tourism is epitomized as crude street-side caricatures of hapless holiday-makers drawn for fast cash.

The tourists are, in turn, pictured as little more than an uncultured mob that descends upon beautiful locations, trashes them, then flies home with a bag of tawdry souvenirs and phone full of selfies.

This polarized distinction exists, at least in part, to preserve the dignity of the artist. Reality often betrays far more communication and complicity between the artists and tourists. Modern tourism began in the 19th Century with the spread of railways and where did the tourists first go? They went on The Grand Tour, to the artistic centers of Renaissance that had become popular with aristocrats and had been popularized by artists and poets, a century earlier.

I remember an artist friend of mine from Europe told me about her Summer holiday. Together with her partner they wanted to catch some sun but had to be careful with money so asked the agent where was on discount. This brought them to a Greek island for ten days. The island was beautiful but the town and beach were very crowded. The evenings in the town saw wild scenes of drinking and partying every night till the sun came up, which brought a brief respite, before the tourists crept out again and began the cycle once more. At first my friend avoided the crowds and explored the stunning nature in the hills but with each day’s passing, she started to join the nightly party. By the end of the holiday she said she had become exactly the same as the other tourists, drinking till dawn and waking at noon.

Tourism in China has grown at breakneck speed over the last two decades. What’s more, at the same time as I have watched Chinese tourism grow, I’ve also noticed a huge expansion in artist residencies both within China and around the world more generally. It has become very normal for artists to travel and to make their artworks away from home. That is indeed how I first discovered Xiamen: I came to CEAC for a three-month artist residency. As artists we like to believe our ideas and impulses are unique and an integral part of our artistic process.
Yet, we are human too and when we first arrive in a new country and city we are apt
to look at the place somewhat as conventional tourists do. Our insights, which inform
our artworks, might be no more penetrating than those of any other tourist.

Alongside this growth in tourism has been an effort on the part of cities to present
themselves for the tourists. We have learnt to look at our home cities with the eyes
of the tourist to the extent that the tourist imagination has gotten under our skin.
It has become one of the main ways we look at the world around us. Following this
absorption of the tourist gaze, our streets, cafes, squares and entire cities have
started to be designed and constructed with tourism in mind. The tourist gaze is not
all bad but it is selective. We are in danger of losing our respect for nature and
losing our sense of darkness and mystery. The tourist city is a cleaner and more
brightly packaged city that exists primarily on the phone and only secondarily in
reality.

This exhibition features artworks that attempt to reimagine tourist sites and deal
with this question of the tourist imagination and the simulation of reality. I have
tried to create my own narratives around many of the popular tourist sites of Xiamen
and beyond. I am happy to accept the labels of both tourist and artist, for me they
are not in contradiction. Indeed, the more one tries to deny being a tourist, the more
likely you are to unconsciously be one anyway. What I can hope for is that art can be
a means by which I become active in engaging with and even adding to the meaning of the
space around me, rather than consuming it with nothing more to show than a few images
that belong in the realm of pure tourist simulation.

Bill Aitchison 2022

Gallery