Associate Professor of Art History Stephen J. Goldberg published an essay, “The Fate of Place and Memory in the Art of Yun-Fei Ji,” in the catalogue to a recent Wellin Museum of Art exhibition. Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe was on display earlier this year and featured scroll paintings, sculptures and drawings. The catalog was co-published by the Wellin Museum and Delmonico Books.Prestel, New York.
In the essay, Ji’s paintings are shown to bear witness and testify to his personal experience of the displacement and forced migrations of peoples, known as “floating weeds” (foucao??), and to the environmental effects of industrial pollution in the land and waters of rural and urban China.
To facilitate a nuanced reading of Ji’s work, Goldberg provides a relevant cultural context within which to consider the innovative ways that Ji makes strategic use of the traditions of Chinese landscape and figural narrative painting in order to address the fate of “place” and “memory” in contemporary China.
The exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase through the Wellin Museum.
