Review.
The most prominent use of zomia to date is in James C. Scott's 2009 book The Art of not being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Historically, the inhabitants of the zomia region were largely unmonitored by the imperial system and were not socially or culturally disciplined. It was not until the establishment of the People's Republic of China that demography and the promotion of Mandarin Chinese became widespread. For over 2000 years, they have carefully managed to escape the oppression of the valley states and the control of the regimes. The regions in which they live might better be described as shatter zones or refuge areas, empty spaces in urban planning, a place where power is not threatened.
In recent decades, however, this utopian kingdom has been transformed by new forces and trends. One such phenomenon is taking place in my hometown, near the Sino-Vietnamese border. The Ban Gioc-Detian Falls are a natural feature that marks the border between two countries. It is also a scenic area that I have visited many times since my childhood. The landscape depicted is full of different values. With trade, exploitation, surveillance and persecution largely erased by painting techniques, these paintings were produced to infiltrate nationalist pride and sovereign ideology, mobilising people's identification with territory and regime.
Hermits who used to hide in the landscape have nowhere to run when confronted with production, political power and authoritarian rule. One of my intentions for this practice is to convey the experience of being a resident and a viewer. I use landscape painting as a starting point to provoke questions and conversations about geography, borders, power and production.
In my previous practice I observed objects through online shopping platforms. I am interested in small commodities that have a common feature in their colour scheme, which is the widespread use of bright and vibrant neon. My first-hand research suggests that the people involved in the transaction of neon commodities are almost invisible. The usual discourse around them is associated with a label of unsustainability and poor quality, and this kind of label runs counter to modern home decorating tastes. As a result, even in the domestic spaces of the rural-urban fringe, they will no longer appear on a large scale. They are on the verge of being lost, flowing into the hands of hidden individuals. Therefore, I assume that any individual who has been coloured by neon is in danger of being shielded by systems, ignored by people and downgraded by society. The colouring phenomenon of fluorescent pigments on everyday household products reveals a potential social distinction.
Although the busy patterns and strong colours should have been eye-catching, they remained in a liminal space. I am drawn to their trick of disappearance, which has greatly influenced my practice. This approach led to an attempt to reference the invisible individuals in the landscape through fluorescence, similar to the anarchist history of the Zomia people who hid in the mountains and forests. I associated these neon products with landscape paintings to replicate the image processing techniques of e-commerce and to identify marginalised groups. The critical decision in this process is the juxtaposition of small pieces or ready-mades to create a more comprehensive narrative.
As Zomia is a geographical term, it refers to the highlands of Southeast Asia. I surveyed the area around the Ban Gioc-Detian Falls and made several contour maps. Based on these contour maps, I made and re-categorised the pieces that symbolise political memorabilia - statues of great men, small flags, pamphlets and star-shaped medals. They are divided into elements common to the hills, such as rivers and terraces. By arranging and combining them, a new terrain was created.
I read Marc Augé's Non-Places and this perspective helped me to explore how the non-place exists in the form of landscape painting and thus homogenises identities. The people of Zomia were once considered runaways, fugitives or maroons. The history of their frequent migrations reflects the constant invasion of their utopian homeland by representatives of supermodernity, such as supermarkets, hotels and airports. To take the example of the Ban Gioc-Detian Falls, the construction of the motorway has turned a large part of the petty bourgeoisie into a tourist attraction, the entertainment industry has developed accordingly and the society of the spectacle has formally taken shape. The former realm of nature has now become a world invaded by what Marc Augé calls the non-place. The ideal shanshui (literally, mountain and water, or landscape) is gradually reduced to the archetype in a landscape painting, becoming an anticipated image that constitutes the infinite imagination of tourists before visiting a new kind of non-place. There are magnificent sceneries along the artificial borders. They stand in stark contrast to the trade, exploitation, surveillance and control that sometimes takes place in the same area. In summary, by tracing the phenomenon of homogenisation that underlies contemporary landscape painting, I have reflected on the anonymity and exemption from state regulation that individuals have maintained in the political void of past zomia, and explored how contemporary people are inspired to seek strategies of liberation through landscape. I criticised the phenomenon of homogenisation underlying contemporary landscape painting, namely the infiltration of national sovereignty and ideological indoctrination by the state. For example, the landscape is trapped in the circle of capital, the 'nameless and faceless' indigenous people uniformly use the official language, etc. In Shore of the Labyrinth, the Sky at Dawn I analysed how the landscape calls people to confront the 'restrictions' of the world through escape.
The Magic of Staying: A Summoning Spell of Wealth discusses how shanshui (literally mountain and water or landscape) has been stripped of its historical elegance and reduced to commonplace imagery in the current Chinese internet context. To illustrate, consider Balenciaga's ad for Chinese Valentine's Day in 2020. The bright red and green background combined with the non-mainstream, sentimental text was not as popular with Chinese netizens as expected. However, the combination of shanshui with tuwei (literally 'taste of the soil', earthiness or vulgarity), nostalgia and low resolution has long been evident on live streaming platforms. In the memes and tiktok special effects for the middle-aged and elderly, many shanshui elements have been processed using early retouching techniques. These over-retouched images are highly saturated and surreal, creating a kitschy effect that is wacky and entertaining. As a result, the diction surrounding these images is almost entirely mocking and derisive. Inspired by the tone of gambling and pornographic slogans in Southeast Asia, I edited two travel advertisements with a visual style similar to the tuwei memes, using a teasing and persuasive voice to lure the viewer into zomia. In this context, I explored the style of rural photographic studios in the 1990s and retouching techniques around 2000, and how they appropriated elements of shanshui to create outdated images full of bad taste. I also examine why shanshui has been unconsciously reduced from elegance to vulgarity, starting with counterfeit products and shanzhai (a Chinese neologism meaning knockoff) culture.
Bibliography
[1] Auge, M. (2009). Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. New York: Verso.
[2] Meme My Valentine: Balenciaga and the aesthetics of Tu Wei (2020). Retrieved March 31, 2024, from:
https://www.chimera-magazine.com/posts/meme-my-valentine-balenciaga-and-the-aesthetics-of-tu-wei
[3] River Pulses, Border Flows (2022). Retrieved March 31, 2024, from:
https://timesmuseum.org/en/program/rpbf
[4] Scott, J. C. (1999). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[5] The Birth of "Socialist Landscape" (2019). Retrieved March 31, 2024, from:
https://ica.shanghai.nyu.edu/program/the-birth-of-socialist-landscape/
Installation view of the RCA degree show, 2024, 294.5*175.5*221 cm.