“Beating Drums in Criticism of Cao” is a story that uses the figure of Cao Cao to portray a classic example of a treacherous court official. The story is based on three different literary texts whose time of writing span over 1000 years: History of Eastern Han, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the traditional play called “Kuang Gu Shi Yu Yang San Nong”. The writers and styles of these sources vary greatly: the first text is a court historian’s annals, the second text is an oral narrative passed down and collected among the common people, and the third text is a traditional dramatic play.

The exhibition entitled Ceremony is founded on the historical process of the creation of these three literary texts, and it uses a personal story to analyze a historical event . During this ceremony, everybody participates both as a speaker and as a performer, and the stage turns into a place where history and the present come together. In doing so, the audience plays a role in furthering the relationship between drama and history.

Essay

Invitation (Mandarin)

Wang Jianwei was born in China’s Sichuan province in 1958 and obtained a masters degree in 1987 from China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou where he studied in the oil painting department.