To open the series, we welcome scholar Lisa Claypool, who will lecture on the theme of the “technological sublime” in the 1960s work of Chinese painter Fu Baoshi. In conjunction with this lecture, we will be hosting a special screening of Zhao Liang’s acclaimed 2015 film, Behemoth, with a short introduction by Lisa Claypool.
Image: Fu Baoshi. Flying waterfall at Jingbo Lake 镜泊湖飞泉. Detail. 1962. Hanging scroll, ink and pigment on paper; 117.9 x 70.1 cm. Nanjing Museum.
This 2015 film by the contemporary artist and film-maker Zhao Liang uses an experimental documentary form to explore the coal mines of China and Inner Mongolia, and their environmental and human impacts.
Scholar Lisa Claypool describes the film this way:
The terrible mythological vision of the Behemoth — awesome in its strength as it gorges on mountains, its sinews made of stone, bones of iron — takes on disturbing reality in a film of the same name about coal mining by the independent filmmaker and artist Zhao Liang. The camera takes us into coal mines in Inner Mongolia, iron smelting yards, homes of miners, a hospital where black lung is treated, and a ghost city. Loosely structured around the spaces of hell, purgatory, and paradise, and glossed with words drawn from Dante, the filmmaker reflects on ways of seeing the fragility and connectedness of the human body to its environment when that environment, mirroring the Behemoth, is violent and dangerous. Though perhaps it would be more to the point to say that the filmmaker grieves over his subject.
About the speaker
Lisa Claypool teaches and curates Chinese art at the University of Alberta. She writes about science and art, interculturalism and visuality, and exhibitions in modern and contemporary China. She recently completed her first book manuscript, titled Boundary Forms: Design and Science in Modern China. She is currently curating a forthcoming exhibition, ecoART CHINA, which will be held in 2021.
Presented by
The Sydney Asian Art Series is presented by the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, The Power Institute, and VisAsia, with support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.