Clear Waters, Green Mountains, Mountains of Gold and Silver

Earth, Fire, Plants, Scores, Experimental Music
2019

This project is informed by my residency in Yunnan where I observed the process of “green developments” as initiated by the state as well as by local farmer efforts. “Green development” strives to create new natural systems to replace old ones. The structural rifts generated in this process are often obscure yet deeply affect society, ecology, culture and even cosmology. Cheung’s work is not a direct answer to the structural rifts of society, but regards these point of change as opportunities to create a new cosmology. Cheung has worked alongside loca l shamans to develop an organic form of writing through her interactions with th causal chain of plant-medicine-herb-body-nature-society.

Clear Waters, Green Mountains, Mountains of Gold and Silver is a “written” landscape that is best viewed while walking. This landscape has evolved from her research on botanicals and herbal medicines; it is an invented ideographic script system that engages indialogue with the Naxi Dongba script.

Cheung’s other work, Fertility, Economy,and Power, uses 37 fables to explor the conflicting fields of ethnicity, culture, tourism, economy, and land fertility. These landscapes are counterpoints to those in Clear Waters, Green Mountains, Mountains of Gold and Silver, and begin with the fable of the cycle of life and death, collected by the artist in Yunnan’s Lashihai region.  The artwork’s resemblance to fable problematizes the notion of fable as a “prehistorical” narrative mode. Through her field work, Cheung points out that fableis actually something that arises when the ecological
cycle is drastically thrown out ofbalance.

青山綠水金山銀山

土、火、植物、樂譜、實驗音樂
2019