Visual artist Zhiyu Xiao

Anthology of Landscape: Mapping the histories of bodies-land relationships

Taiteellinen työ / siihen pohjautuva työ | Yksivuotinen

“Anthology of Landscape” is a multidisciplinary project that involves painting, exhibition making and collaborative practices. The two year project will dive into a genealogical research on the notion of landscape and its conceptualization with its embedded economy of gendered, colonial and racial discourses across different historic contexts of the West. Drawing upon a critical analysis of the historical conceptualization of landscape as a precursor to Modernism in Europe, the project will involve archive research - both textual and visual sources - as well as community based workshops and collaborative projects and readings, to urge the importance of rethinking human-land relationship to face the ecological and technological crises caused by the ever accelerated pace of global capitalism. What is the position of queer bodies in an understanding of landscape which is built historically on gender binarism? How to frame a post-colonial production of human-land images today, when landscape is still often instrumentalized as a visual icon of national identity? How to conciliate the contemporary images of the landscape/nature as symbols of resistance towards anthropocentrism on one hand and their nature as products of this capitalist system on the other? The outcomes of the research will be documented through both by the production of a body of artworks and by the making of a series of exhibitions, with the hope to uncover a more nuanced understanding of the complex and multifaceted relations which tie bodies and the land.