The green touch
Joyce Yip meets some of the artists, and a curator, who have spent decades trying to draw attention to environmental concerns through their works.
The day of the fox
Julia Mao, co-founder of Purple Roof Gallery and Mao Space in Shanghai, claims to have introduced eco-art to China. In 2016, she was instrumental in bringing a monumental straw sculpture of a fox by British artist Alex Rinsler to be installed at the Jing'an Sculpture Park. The artist's usual practice is to burn the pieces he creates once the exhibition is over. Though there were concerns that burning Rinsler's Urban Fox will cause air pollution in Shanghai, eventually the piece was incinerated.
"Straw is burned to make fertilizer, but the burning process harms the environment. Such ironies exist all around us. But art is not meant to solve problems. Rather, it should be valued for inspiring new ways of thinking," Mao says.
She mentions that she often finds it difficult trying to persuade artists based in China to adopt sustainable practices as the materials needed to make art come cheap and are available in abundance. However, many of the artists Mao represents strongly believe in using recycled materials.
- Study pushes back arrival of Chinese silk in Central Asia by nearly 2,000 years
- Guangdong brings China's charming culture to Papua New Guinea
- Fire in high-rise building leaves four dead, two injured
- Shanghai's civic aesthetic education program returns in fall
- Probe into deadly Gansu flash flood ordered
- 62 people face penalties for deadly Baotou steel plant blast
