How does art make the world? ecoART CHINA poses this question of arts depicting the land- and city-scape in 21st-century China. Artworks by a brush-and-ink painter, a paper cut artist, photographers, new media artists, and video artists capture and convey struggles with the capitalist-scientific rationalities that have prefigured the end of the world; critically, they also embody the emotions and imagination lodged in and about the natural and built environment that generate a hopeful sense of possibility for renewal.
The curatorial project probes the ways in which arts in China now engage perceptual reverie over fire, water, metal, earth, wood. Those same "five elements" (wuxing 五行) of the landscape in imperial-era correlative thinking can better be understood as the "five phases," transfiguring and melding into each other. The "five phases" are the fluid lines on which this exhibition will be curated.
An ecological crisis associated with each elemental phase is the focus of curatorial attention: air pollution and the burning of fossil fuels (fire); river pollution (water); deforestation (wood); garbage mountains (earth); mining (metal). Grasping the historical and ecological complexity of these crises is critical. Even more importantly, our curatorial strategy seeks to awake sensitivity towards constant environmental change, and return to a sense of the undifferentiated in the differentiated. It maintains an openness to how the perpetual transfiguration of the five phases moves us -- emotionally, thoughtfully, imaginatively-- and in doing so, encourages us to gain new perspectives and to commit to seeing the planet and possibiltiies for environmental justice in a new light. Rather than embracing human-centric preoccupations of the anthropocene or falling back on mystification of Chinese landscape painting theories and "traditions," we instead think about arts making the world in China now as a form of ecology itself.
Prerequisites: Consent of the department. Undergraduate students are required to have completed one 300-level course with a minimum grade of B.
Professor Lisa Claypool
2019 Fall term, Thursdays 2:00-4:50 FAB 2-30
Office FAB 3-89B
email: claylisa@ualberta.ca
Office hours after conference and by appointment
course blog: ecoartchina.blogspot.com