The Water System Rhizome
A
n artist’s talk by Cao Minghao
AHVA Distinguished Visiting Artist
Coach House\, Green College\, and livestreamed
6201 Cecil Gre
en Park Road\, University of British Columbia
greencollege.ubc.ca
Please contact the AHVA Visual Resources Centre for access to the event recording: ahva.vrc@ubc.ca.
Durational water-system practice – ro oted in local field investigation\, research\, and knowledge exchange – is important both to a good understanding of the relationship between a place and traditional knowledge\, and to the discussion of the diversity of geo-s ocial contexts. This generative practice of art-based research goes beyond the ways in which a natural environment is defined through predictive and c onceptual means.
In this presentation by Cao Minghao\, she will elabo rate on the ways in which she and her collaborator\, Chen Jianjun\, ground their work through long term research and find a particular site as the bas is of their ecological practice. In their work\, they attest that any place \, any subtle details of the water system rhizome\, can become not only a p otential method for discussing and exploring deeper environmental issues bu t also an impetus to build a mutual alliance among the earth’s ecologies.
[caption id="attachment_34025" align="aligncenter" width="620"]
Cao Mingha
o and Chen Jianjun. Courtesy of the artists.[/caption]
Artists and tr ansdisciplinary researchers Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun currently live and work in Chengdu. Their art practices are research-based and process-orient ed\, highlighting the reciprocal collaboration between the artists and thei r partners. Dedicated to the dialogical relationship between the realities and the survival of myriad things\, their practices grow from a space of en tanglement in between the material ecology of waters and the current socio- environmental realities of humankind. Tapping into this space largely untou ched by existent inquiries\, they explore the vicissitude of ecologies and the re-imaginaries of the future. The entanglement space indicates neither a reactionary and passive way to protect water nor a conservative view that only emphasizes human society and its survival\, but rather how we can rec onstruct our comprehension of the future and countless possibilities betwee n material ecology and human society. Practicing multiple visual narrative methods through long-term\, site-specific art making\, they build up a mome ntum for the alliance among all beings. Their projects have been shown in e xhibitions and at screenings throughout Asia and Europe\, including documen ta fifteen in Kassel (2022)\, Rethinking Nature at Madre Museum (2021–22)\, the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020–21)\, COSMOPOLIS #2.0: Repenser l’humain at the Centre Pompidou\, Paris (2019)\, and Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intel ligence in Chengdu (2018). They won the 2022 Jonathan KS Choi Foundation Co ntemporary Art Award and the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris: 2020. T heir 2021 works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contempora ry Art Shanghai.
Presented as part of the Distinguished Visiting Arti st Program co-organized by Green College and the Department of Art History\ , Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia with support from the Departments of Geography and Asian Studies\, the UBC Centre for Ch inese Research\, and Canton-sardine.
We acknowledge that the UBC Vanc ouver campus is situated on the traditional\, ancestral\, and unceded terri tory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam).
Image: Cao Minghao & Chen Jianju n\, Water System Refuge #1\, 2019\, public installation.
LOCATION:Coach House\, Green College GEO:49.271156;-123.256433 URL;VALUE=URI:https://ahva.ubc.ca/events/event/cao-minghao-the-water-system -rhizome/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ahva.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2023/11/Cao-Minghao_Event-featured-image-715x402.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20231105T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR