ecoArt Speaker Series
Past speakers
Bovey Lee 李寶怡
Thursday, December 02, 2021 at 7 pm MST
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On Thursday, December 2, at 7 pm MDT ecoArt China curator Lisa Claypool will be in conversation with the cut paper artist Bovey Lee about her magical and fragile artworks that nonetheless embody the harsh realities of environmental crises and immigration. They will discuss what it means to be a contemporary artist working in the medium of cut paper, the stories she tells through it about departure and arrival, and her feminist commitment to exploring ways of seeing nature and Chinese culture. Bovey Lee did most of her growing up in Hong Kong, before teaching oil painting in the States. She began to focus on the age-old art of cut paper around the time she moved to Los Angeles, where she currently resides and works. Her artwork often focuses on the tenacious rootedness of nature in urban built landscapes. It has been collected by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, BNY Mellon Corporate Art Collection, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Museum of Art, Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Pacific Asia Museum, among others.
Wen Fang 文芳
Monday, November 22, 2021 at 7 pm MST
Our sincere apologies. Due to technical difficulties, this recording is not available.
On Monday, November 22, at 7 pm MDTecoArt China curator Lisa Claypool will be in conversation with the Beijing-based photographer Wen Fang about her feminist art practices. They will discuss her global project Maskbook, her local work with rural women in Ningxia and with AIDS orphans, and the critical question about the ways her projects ask us to see each other and the planet with greater clarity. Wen Fang lives and works in Beijing. She graduated from the Department of Photography at ENS Louis-Lumière, France. When creating art, she often collaborates with ordinary people: migrant workers, women farmers, children, and in a sense, all of the people across the planet who have participated in her online Maskbook project. Her work has been exhibited at “Le festival Images Gibellina” in Sicily, the March Art Space in Geneva, Le 6b in Saint-Denis, and in Beijing, at the MUYUN Space, The University of Chicago Center in Beijing, the Today Art Museum, and the Beijing International Photography Festival.
Yao Lu 姚璐
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 7 pm MST
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On Wednesday, November 17, at 7 pm MDT ecoArt China curator Lisa Claypool will be in conversation with the Beijing-based photographer Yao Lu about his images of damaged landscapes, sites of unexpected beauty, and ghostly environments. They will discuss his translation of environmental concerns into an aesthetic, how Song-dynasty idyllic images of nature have found their way into his art practice, and the critical question about the ways his artwork asks us to see each other and the planet with greater clarity. Yao Lu is a Beijing-based artist and professor of photography at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has developed a technique of photo-montaging pictures of garbage and the ruins of demolished buildings that borrow from (and are disguised by) classical Chinese styles of landscape painting. His chronographic prints have been displayed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the China Institute Gallery in New York, the Shenzhen International Photography Exhibition, and the China Cultural Center in Stockholm.
ZHENG CHONGBIN 郑重宾
October 21, 2021 at 7 pm MST
On October 21 at 7 pm MDT ecoArt China curator Lisa Claypool will be in conversation with the artist Zheng Chongbin about his recent ink paintings and light installation art. They will discuss the his translation of environmental concerns into an aesthetic, the participatory dimension of his artwork, how he works in the studio and with scientists at Stanford University, his installation at the Ryosoku-in Zen temple in Kyoto, as well as the critical question about the ways his artwork asks us to see each other and the planet with greater clarity
Zheng Chongbin is an artist interested in the architectonic spaces of ink painting and light installation, and in seeing mosses and trees, as well as other natural forms, from shifting micro- and macro-scopic perspectives. Born in Shanghai, and educated there, he now lives and works in the Bay Area. His work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, New York Metropolitan Museum, the Ryosokuin Temple in Kyoto, M+ in Hong Kong, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Stanford Cantor Arts Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Shanghai Biennale, and the Venice Biennale.
Michael Cherney 秋麦
October 7, 2021 at 7 pm MST
On October 7 ecoArt China curator Lisa Claypool will be in conversation with the Beijing-based photographer Michael Cherney about his Ten Thousand Li of the Yangtze River project, a series of haunting photographic handscrolls of his journey along the river. They will discuss the pathways that brought the artist to China, how he makes artwork, his translation of environmental concerns into an aesthetic, and the critical question about the ways his artwork asks us to see each other and the planet with greater clarity.
Michael Cherney is a Beijing-based photographer interested in rivers, the visual possibilities of the handscroll format, and calligraphy. His work has been exhibited at the Cleveland Art Museum, the Canglang Pavilion in Suzhou, the New York Metropolitan Museum, China Art Museum in Shanghai, Three Shadows Photography Arts Centre in Beijing, and The Getty Research Institute.
Joshua Goldstein, Remains of the Everyday: A Century of Recycling in Beijing
September 23, 2021 at 7 pm MST
Remains of the Everyday traces the changing material culture and industrial ecology of China through the lens of recycling, placing the sustainability and plastic pollution crises of our present day into historical and global context. On the one hand, the Chinese state has repeatedly promoted acts of voluntary recycling as exemplary of conscientious citizenship. On the other, China's informal recycling networks—such as the collectors of plastic and cardboard in Beijing’s neighborhoods today--have been represented as undisciplined, polluting, and technologically primitive though in fact they have been the engine of a highly complex globalized recycling system reaching into household trashbins across North America. Dr. Goldstein’s talk will address the human and environmental impact and intrinsic liminality of recycling as an economic process and the role of these marginalized migrant workers who have been at the center of the global scrap trade in the 21st century.
D
r. Goldstein is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California, and a contributor to the ecoArt China catalogue project.
Remains of the Everyday: A Century of Recycling in Beijing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021.
About ecoArt China
ecoArt China is an exhibition of artworks that respond to ecological disasters in China and across the planet. The exhibition is curated by Lisa Claypool, Associate Professor of History of Chinese Art and Design (University of Alberta), on the principles of ancient Chinese correlative thinking about the five elemental phases of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. Each of the exhibiting artists examine collective and personal experiences of environmental crises associated with those phases, such as river pollution, deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels, waste production, and mining. They test the power of art to change the way we see ourselves and the planet.
About the Speaker Series
The ecoArt China Speaker Series is convened by Dr. Lisa Claypool, and is co-organized by the University of Alberta China Institute, the Department of Art & Design’s Curatorial Design Research Lab, and the Sustainability Council, with support from the Kule Institute.