Columbia School of the Arts’ Year of Water initiative continues with a symposium held by the Wallach Art Gallery on Saturday.

As part of Columbia School of the Arts’ Year of Water, a year-long initiative to study the cultural, poetic, and political aspects of water, the Wallach Art Gallery held a symposium this Saturday. Speakers at the event were Eric Fan Feng, assistant professor at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Tsinghua University, Beijing; Betti-Sue Hertz, director and chief curator at The Wallach Art Gallery; Sophia Kidd, Associate Research Fellow at the College of Literature and Journalism, Department of Classical Chinese Literature, Sichuan University; and Yi Xin Tong, visual and musical artist.

The purpose of this event was to study Chinese people’s relationship with nature over time through art, how this relationship has changed as a result of political and ideological influence, and how contemporary Chinese art can inform the modern ecological movement.

Feng discussed how early “shan-shui” paintings of the Liu Song Dynasty expressed early Chinese people’s views of nature. He underscored that the purpose of “shan-shui” paintings was not to represent nature as seen but the artist’s feelings regarding nature. This vision of man’s symbiotic relationship with nature was challenged when Mao Era ideology began to stress man’s dominance over nature. When asked whether his study of China’s environmental degradation has been difficult given political context, Feng explained that as a result of having been through the investigation of art his research has been relatively supported.

Adding onto Feng’s investigation of changes in Chinese ideology regarding nature, Betti-Sue Hertz discussed how literati paintings in the Song and Han dynasties reveal deep appreciation for nature. Hertz argued that despite this history, contemporary Chinese environmental artists may not actively attempt to emulate literati style due to the literati emphasis on rejection of society and retreat into nature.

Yi Xin Tong, a visual and musical artist originally from China but now based in New York, was also invited to the symposium. Tong, an avid fisher, shared his artistic process in transferring intimate moments with nature into artistic concepts. When asked why his work has not been limited to any one medium but has been an exploration of various mediums ranging from the musical to the visual, he explained how such mediums allow him to better capture various emotional experiences with nature.

Last to speak was Sophia Kidd, a researcher of Chinese literature, intellectual history, geography, religion, philosophy, and historiography at Sichuan University. Kidd’s presentation was on contemporary efforts at spreading water systems awareness through art. Specifically, she discussed the successes of various Keepers of the Water  projects in informing and engaging local Chinese communities about protection of water systems.

The symposium was an engaging discussion on the increasingly important topic in discussion of the environment and water. The diversity of speakers’ backgrounds created a multidisciplinary and big-picture approach to understanding the topic.

If interested in upcoming Year of Water events, check out their calendar!