The Scroll and the Story of the Three Gorges

December 07, 2009, 6:00 PM

Almost every year, MoMA’s Library Council publishes a specially printed artist’s book to explore the genre and to benefit the Library and Museum Archives. This year, as an alternative form of artist’s book, the Council has cast a hand-printed and mounted scroll by artist Yun-Fei Ji. The scroll addresses the damaging impact of China’s Three Gorges Dam, the construction of which has had devastating effects on the Chinese landscape and displaced over one million people living in that area near the Yangtze River. On the occasion of the publication, MoMA presents this program exploring the artistic, social, and cultural meanings of and responses to this site. Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University, addresses the history of both the river and the scroll form, and how reading and visualization may be understood as an extended spatial experience. Wu Hung, Professor, Department of Art History, and Director, Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, presents a brief overview of the art, history, and politics of the river and considers the work of several contemporary artists, including Yun-Fei Ji, who have documented or interpreted the social, environmental, and historical loss associated with the dam. Finally, Sarah Suzuki, The Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr., Assistant Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, and Yun-Fei Ji engage in a discussion about his collaborations with a long-established Chinese woodblock printer and maker of scrolls.

View works mentioned by Wu Hung on Smart Museum’s website: http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/displacement/index.shtml.