Roots of Clouds Adrift—Temporality: OCAT Nanjing Public Art Project 2019

Our exhibition title alludes to the phrase “cloud-roots,” which has multiple meanings in classical Chinese. It refers to mountainous terrain from which clouds arise; it can also refer to mountain-like rockeries in gardens; it can also refer to monastery buildings. For traditional Chinese literati, visiting old temples on legendary mountains was always a favorite activity, and it offered a way to ponder and express themselves in an expansive setting. Qixia Mountain, which is adjacent to our exhibition site, has long been characterized as “a nexus of Nanjing’s history” and “a geological museum.” This mountain not only gives us a special view of our ancient city, but it also gives a window upon geographical and historical changes that have affected Chinese civilization overall. In this modern-day environment filled with unsettledness and displacement, our loss of connection with tradition and nature has set us adrift like floating clouds. How can we regain roots to a spiritual homeland, or should we say, how can contemplative dialogue serve as a possible means to reconfigure our cultural disorder and confusion? These questions constitute an important premise for further inquiry.  As the British sociologist Mike Featheringstone wrote in his book Undoing Culture, “It is precisely this ongoing fact of relocation and migration, to which some people have attached the label ‘post-modern,’ which is considered to be both a methodological key and a real-life description of the contemporary world.”
This exhibition will strike a note of thematic counterpoint with the previous year’s exhibition “A Flowing Book,” which focused on the element of water. It is both a refrain and a variation on the Chinese cultural ur-theme of landscape (i.e., “mountains and streams”).
Under the premise of respecting the artists’ consistent creative context, the exhibition was bred and structured a kind of artistic creation in dialogue style. The form and composition of the exhibition not only covers installation, sculpture and video art, but also extends to sound art and performance art. This year, we focus on the most energetic artists in China, and invites the local independent art institution — “Huamao First Floor”, graphic designer and artist — Zhu Yingchun as participant, as well as, the architect — Chen Weixin to do the space design.