Art may not revitalise the countryside, but Guangdong aunties certainly revitalise art

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● At the Nanhai Land Art Festival in Guangdong, looking out over Taiping Market: in the distance stands Ma Yansong’s ‘Lighthouse of Time’, while in the foreground, floating on the water, is Chen Fenwan’s ‘Land Window-flowers’.
The theme of today’s Central Document No. 1 is, unsurprisingly, rural revitalisation once again. With rural affairs having been the focus of this document for twenty consecutive years, the media, the public, and the government are all under pressure to innovate and ‘find some highlights’. In recent years, the involvement of art in rural revitalisation has become exactly such a highlight. The ‘Land Art Festival’, originating in Japan, has frequently been held up as a model, garnering acclaim from both the media and the cultural elite.

The Nanhai Land Art Festival, currently taking place in Foshan, Guangdong, has brought in the ‘original’ Japanese curator, Fumio Kitagawa, for guidance, and has invited several artists who previously participated in the Japanese festivals. The media have reacted with astonishment: ‘So this is how you do rural revitalisation!’

 

But can rural revitalisation really be treated as a ‘game’? When artists and their works arrive in the countryside, what kind of interaction actually occurs between them and the local environment, community, and culture? How can farmers and rural villages truly benefit from art? Driven by these questions, Foodthink travelled to Foshan to take a close look at the festival.

However, after spending three days exploring, we found ourselves with even more questions…

I. Art or Commodity? Revitalisation or Gimmick?

For our first stop at the Land Art Festival, we decided to head to Taipingxu. A *xu* is essentially a traditional southern market. As someone who regularly visits the Beijing organic farmers’ market, I thought I’d follow local custom and spend the weekend *chenxing*—hitting the market. According to the official guide, Taipingxu lies on the banks of the Xijiang River; it dates back to the late Ming Dynasty and once flourished as a bustling trade port. After falling into decline in the 1990s, only two shops remained open. This festival aims to kickstart the revitalisation of Taipingxu.

Arriving at the street entrance, it felt as though we had stepped into an abandoned movie set: the buildings were still standing, but almost every storefront was shuttered, save for the spaces opened for the festival.

Only three shops were still in business. At the Wenxing Cake Shop at the entrance, we tried almost everything on the menu (six varieties in total), and at an eatery specialising in instant noodles, we bought a bottle of sour plum drink. Unfortunately, none of the three of us needed a haircut that day, so the sole remaining old-school barbershop went unvisited.

The only other open doors were installations by artists invited by the festival to “revitalise” the neighbourhood.

Just as I was lamenting the decline of the traditional high street, I spotted a supermarket with fully stocked shelves. Wait—isn’t this that famous art piece, the “Fake Supermarket”?

Sure enough, the products were merely empty shells. At the checkout, an Auntie holding a festival stamp greeted visitors enthusiastically: “Come and check in here!” Seeing a bewildered tourist picking up one of the hollow products, she recited the official line with total sincerity: “This is a satire of consumerism.”

“That’s odd, Auntie—why do you have a ledger? Can we actually buy these things?”

The Auntie beamed with pride. “Yes, we keep a record every single day!”

As we pored over the ledger, we chatted: “This is impressive! You’ve already made over 100 yuan today just from selling empty shells!”

The Auntie calmly replied with two words: “Art pieces.”

● The cashier auntie (Photo: Guohui) and her meticulously kept ledger of sales.

That kind of dry, ironic humour is simply impossible to convey in writing; regardless, we were all absolutely delighted. “Auntie, so what do you think an artwork is?”

“I don’t know. If everyone understood it, it would sell for a lot more. Since the festival opened, I’ve only made a little over 2,000 yuan, which proves that plenty of people don’t get it. Art is hard to understand!”

We thought the auntie had fully grasped Xu Zhen’s famous line from an interview—”Everything on display is a commodity; only that which sells is art”—but she quickly cut us down to size.

We asked her, “Would you buy it yourself?”

“No. If I took this stuff home, it would just take up space! And look, the lids are completely intact, which means it’s all surface and no substance. He’s trying to say that under today’s consumerism, we’ve already over-consumed.”

Well, perhaps the artist himself, currently busy collaborating with luxury brands, should sit down for a chat about consumerism with this auntie.

● On the same street, alongside the fake supermarket, a few pop-up shops selling the real deal had also crept in.
Leaving Xu Zhen’s supermarket, we realised that perhaps the real stars and hidden gems of this art festival were the volunteer aunties, cheerfully encouraging everyone to snap a photo by the exhibits. During the rest of our visit, we encountered many such volunteers: retired women who had worked in nearby factories, local university students volunteering during their holidays, a breakfast shop owner who had been volunteering for over a decade, and ‘new locals’ who had worked in Foshan for years and were now settling there permanently.

We remain sceptical as to whether local art can revitalise the countryside, but there is no doubt that these local aunties and volunteers revitalised the works they were ‘explaining’.

II. Whatever happened to the promised ‘site-specificity’?

On Pingsha Island, we viewed three iron sculptures by Japanese artists Seizo Tajima and Junichi Akake: *The Composed Dancer*, *The Contemplative Dreamer*, and *The Successful Mycologist*. The works were housed in a renovated, abandoned cocoon structure, where the smell of fresh paint made the air thick and stifling. The visitors were equally bewildered; the pieces were so abstract that their meaning seemed utterly elusive.

● “The Composed Dancer” in the foreground. Photo by Guohui

Just as my eyes were darting back and forth between the artwork and its description, the volunteer auntie stepped in once more.

“Just keep looking and you’ll get it! This ‘Mycologist’ is simple – the top is just a mushroom! As for why this one is called ‘The Dreamer’… well, I couldn’t tell you for sure, but it’s black and white, so it must represent day and night. You can only dream at night, after all.” Her breezy tone was that of a tour guide leading a group through the sights: *Look over there, doesn’t that mountain look like a reclining beauty?* I imagine the tourists would have all shared a knowing smile.

This auntie, a master of deconstruction in her own right, surely felt as we did: baffled as to why a piece that had drifted over from Japan had ended up here. As an exhibit in a Land Art Festival, it ought to have resonated with the “land” – echoing, at the very least, the surrounding society, culture, and natural environment. This “site-specificity” was, after all, the organisers’ original vision.

● As a regular contributor to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field in Japan, Tajima has produced outstanding works with a deep sense of site-specificity: he transformed a closed primary school into a “museum of picture books”, attempting to evoke the students, teachers, and even the monsters that once haunted the halls. Source: Echigo-Tsumari Art Field official website

Yet this abstract iron sculpture was genuinely perplexing. This was a common flaw among several pieces at the festival: appropriated works placed in borrowed spaces. Some were designed for nothing more than “Instagrammable” moments, offering little in the way of actual artistic value. With quality so wildly inconsistent, it was a disappointing affair.

● One of the “Instagrammable” pieces. While the artist intended it to be a dog, one passerby mistook it for a special Lunar New Year decoration for the Xiqiao Mountain scenic area, asking: “Since it’s the Year of the Rabbit, is this a rabbit?”
● One of our favourite pieces, *The Gift of 500 Million Years*. Artist Yusuke Asai mixed pigments from over ten different colours of soil found around Foshan to paint on the floor of a derelict communal canteen. Intriguingly, visitors can crawl beneath the floorboards to experience the sensation of a plant sprouting from the earth.

III. Artworks: Whose Meaning?

At the art festival, Foodthink’s primary interest was naturally agriculture. One of the festival’s exhibition areas was situated within the “Fishery and Farming Cantonese Rhyme” scenic area at the foot of Xiqiao Mountain. It is said that the renowned “Mulberry Dyke Fish Pond” model was pioneered by the farmers here, and the local government has already designated it as a protected agricultural heritage site.

Because of the efficient recycling of materials within the system (“mulberry grown on the banks, leaves feeding silkworms, droppings feeding fish, fish waste fertilising the pond, and pond mud nourishing the mulberry”), it is now seen as a form of circular agriculture invented by the ancients.

● Fishponds on Pingsha Island.

Local residents told us that this method of production has long since been abandoned. The only remaining trace is a small cluster of fishponds preserved within the tourist area for agritourism. As it was currently the off-season, neither fish nor silkworms were in sight, making it impossible for us to conduct an impromptu survey of the local agricultural industry.

It was here that we met another wonderful volunteer auntie. She had raised silkworms from a young age, until the local sericulture industry gradually declined after the 1990s. She told us she loved all the works related to silkworms, particularly *The Book of Trays*.

● *The Book of Trays* by artist Wang Yuexin.

In this piece, the artist employs silkworm trays—containers woven from bamboo strips used to house silkworms before they spin their cocoons. Animated drawings are projected onto these trays.

The auntie remarked that in the age of industrial sericulture, many of the processes can be automated or replaced, but the silkworm trays remain indispensable, just as they were in the era of manual labour.

Another piece she admired was titled *The Silkworm Room Project*, in which the artist used silkworm mounts—the surfaces upon which silkworms spin their cocoons.

She explained that her fondness for these two pieces stemmed from her deep familiarity with objects like the trays and mounts. She added that the mounts they had used in her day were denser than those featured in the artwork.

● *The Silkworm Room Project* by Shi Weina; the objects are supported by silkworm mounts.

When we asked if anyone still raised silkworms, the auntie replied, “It’s a thing of the past; nobody does it anymore.” While some villagers are still engaged in farming, only the aquaculture side of the mulberry-dyke fish pond system remains; sericulture has vanished. Although the nearby Nanhai Silk Factory is still in operation, the cocoons it requires are now transported from other regions.

Other aunties we spoke with also noted that the environment for raising silkworms must be kept impeccably clean, otherwise the insects are prone to disease. With the industrial expansion of the Pearl River Delta after the 1990s and the resulting increase in air pollution, it has become nearly impossible for farmers to return to sericulture, even if they wish to.

● An auntie who once raised silkworms.
Without the stories shared by the aunties, the abstract descriptions on the exhibits—such as “circular regeneration”, “harmony between humanity and nature”, and “the tension between tradition and modernity”—would likely be nothing more than empty shells. In fact, the other aunties and women we encountered each had their own stories and were all more than happy to be part of the art festival. If there were a genuine effort, it would be far better to record their oral histories; would that not be the most fitting source of inspiration for Land Art?

IV. Beyond the Critique

A three-day whirlwind tour by an art layman is hardly enough to produce a professional “art critique”. Yet, since this is an art festival that has stepped outside the museum and into the village, Foodthink—given our commitment to rural affairs—dares to express our expectations for the “Land Art Festival” format: If art is to integrate with rural communities, we hope to see more active expression from the locals, rather than artists using the countryside as a mere shell for far-fetched, pseudo-profound, or entirely nonsensical flights of fancy.

If art is to document cultures and ways of life that have vanished, we hope to see the reflection and action behind it, rather than hypocritical dancing on graves.

If art is to contribute to rural revitalisation, we hope to see it unearth and nurture the endogenous strengths and culture of the village, rather than simply creating Instagrammable spectacles to boost tourism.

We believe that the land, and the people who toil upon it, possess an inherent artistry. If the curators and artists of the Land Art Festival work in detachment from this foundation, not only does site-specificity become a moot point, but the festival becomes indistinguishable from any other gallery.

Our thanks go to the local volunteers we met, especially the enthusiastic aunties, who allowed us to see the true vitality and value of the countryside beyond the art.

Finally, a friendly reminder to readers planning a visit: please keep a close eye on your art festival “passport”.

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs were taken by Foodthink

Editor: Foodthink

Published by Foodthink