“Displacement”

Chen Qiulin, The Garden (still), 2007.

Zhuang Hui, Longitude 109.88° E and Latitude 31.09° N (detail), 1995–2008.

To get a sense of how the Three Gorges Dam has affected China, consider the outrage that followed Hurricane Katrina. Now imagine what would have happened if the government had abandoned New Orleans indefinitely—and ordered the city’s entire population never to return.

The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River has forced more than 1.3 million people to leave their homes. Its 375-mile reservoir has flooded almost 1,400 towns and villages. And according to the catalog of “Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art,” contaminants from the inundated buildings are polluting the Yangtze. “The ecosystem of the whole region will be disrupted,” writes curator Wu Hung, founder and director of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Art of East Asia.

Yet the Three Gorges Dam could have a positive effect on the environment as well, Wu explains. When it becomes fully operational in 2009, the dam will supply one ninth of China’s electricity, offering a cleaner source of energy than the coal that’s currently choking the nation with smog. The largest hydroelectric project in history could also “help control the chronic flooding in the area,” Wu adds, “which killed 300,000 people in the 20th century.”

The construction of the dam, from 1994 to 2006, was preceded by decades of research and debate, so it’s had ample time to inspire numerous works of art. In the exciting, accessible yet scholarly “Displacement,” Wu brings together recent pieces by Chen Qiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong and Zhuang Hui that portray the dam’s world-changing impact without telling viewers what to think about it. Their work primarily commands attention for its aesthetic innovation and acknowledgment of China’s artistic heritage: Chen’s videos refer to Chinese legends, and Liu and Ji work in the traditional genres of realist oil painting and ink painting, respectively. In the catalog, Wu contends that this combination of artists and media yields a more accurate overview of contemporary Chinese art than most American exhibitions, which overemphasize experimental work in trendy media such as video.

So we feel slightly guilty for finding the eye candy in Chen’s hip, electronica-scored videos easier to digest than the rest of the show. The Chengdu-based artist made Rhapsody on Farewell (2002) in her hometown of Wanxian, while its buildings were demolished to accommodate the Three Gorges reservoir. Chen alternates footage of demolitions with her own dances amid the resulting rubble, for which she’s swathed herself in silk and rouge to look like the heroine of the Chinese opera Farewell My Concubine. Chen’s allusion to this classic tragedy—which ends with the concubine’s death—and her lingering shots of the devastated landscape as well as Wanxian’s depressed-looking citizens suggest the Three Gorges Dam is killing the community where she grew up. But in the artist’s three subsequent videos, equally memorable images reveal that her bitterness toward the dam has abated. The cool couple strolling past new construction fueled by the dam in River, River (2005); the group of boys clowning around a demolition site in Color Lines (2006); and the laborers toting vases of hot-pink peonies through a new city in The Garden (2007) connote growth and optimism.

Other works in “Displacement” are less overtly youthful and upbeat but no less enjoyable. Conceptual artist Zhuang’s Longitude 109.88 E and Latitude 31.09 N (1995–2008) includes 30 black-and-white photographs of holes in the ground that feature exquisite tonal ranges. (The knowledge that every hole is now underwater still haunts us.) Liu’s dynamic, 30-foot-long oil painting Hotbed (2005) could almost be a Communist portrait of heroic workers—except that the artist advertises his presence by leaving portions of the canvas unfinished, and his opinion of the workers’ demolitions isn’t clear. Ji’s Water Rising (2006), a long ink painting on mulberry paper, seems more critical of the dam’s social upheaval. Two nearby ink paintings from the Smart Museum’s collection keep “Displacement” open-ended, however: Both of these centuries-old works concern the dangerous floods that the Three Gorges Dam should alleviate.

One of the exhibition’s most beautiful moments occurs when an angel wearing a striped construction tarp glides through Chen’s Color Lines, observing a demolition site without revealing her feelings. She’s the perfect emblem of a show that offers no easy answers yet leaves us wanting more.

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