Chinese artist Yun-Fei Ji creates artworks using Chinese traditional materials such as ink and watercolor on handmade mulberry or xuan paper to explore the violence and suffering of communities affected by the Three Gorges Dam project in China, world’s largest hydropower plant.
Sponsored in part by Illinois Arts Council, a state agency and Krannert Art Museum
The dam project was not without controversy especially considering the displacement of millions of vulnerable communities and its destruction of the environment. The loss of forests and agricultural lands together with the displacement of villages has created an environmental disaster of epic proportion. Ji’s images capture the struggle and despair of people forced into worse conditions of poverty and degradation. These works raise questions and document the accountability of industrial development to local communities.
Yun Fei Ji's work is exhibited alongside the video Manufactured Landscapes (2006).
This documentary, directed by Jennifer Baichwal, features the world and work of Canadian photographer and visual artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes” —quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, and dams—Burtynsky creates beautiful and troubling images from scenes of environmental devastation.
Manufactured Landscapes follows Burtynsky through China as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution, including a critical focus on the Three Gorges Dam.
Curator: Tumelo Mosaka
