Praying for Blue Skies: Artistic Representations of Air Pollution in China

Thomas Johnson,Kathinka Fürst

doi:10.1177/0097700420967288

Thomas Johnson, Kathinka Fürst

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700420967288

Copy DOI

Journal: Modern China	Publication Date: Nov 3, 2020
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Duke Kunshan University, University of Sheffield

Abstract

This article examines how artists have engaged with the issue of air pollution in Beijing, where poor air quality has become a serious public health matter. Artists have utilized various mediums including performance art, photography, and painting to represent smog. Through generating media and online attention this work has contributed to a relatively vibrant “green public sphere” (Yang and Calhoun, 2007) of air pollution discourse. In contrast to much resistance in China that relies upon making specific claims to government officials, artistic expression bypasses the authorities and appeals instead to public opinion. Artists utilize ambiguity to portray air pollution in novel ways that subtly question the structures that produce and sustain it. In this way, artists can challenge popular perceptions of smog and raise public awareness, thus intensifying support for policies that tackle smog. Yet art can also embody deep frustration at the powerlessness that artists, and the public more widely, experience when confronted by severe air pollution. Art therefore serves both as a form of activism and as an expression of curtailed agency in a politically restrictive environment.

Highlights

This article examines how artists have engaged with the issue of air pollution in Beijing, where poor air quality has become a serious public health matter
In contrast to much of the resistance documented in the literature on China that relies upon making specific claims to government officials, artistic expression bypasses the authorities and appeals instead to public opinion
Instead we focus on prominent artists and artworks that are likely to have exerted the biggest influence in order to explore the potential and limitations of art as activism in China

Summary

Introduction

This article examines how artists have engaged with the issue of air pollution in Beijing, where poor air quality has become a serious public health matter. Most famously Ai Weiwei, adopt overtly critical stances that problematize China’s one-party state, most work within the confines of the Chinese political system In this sense, “[socially engaged art] is not an intellectual dissident movement, and those who engage in it do not adopt a strong antagonism or an openly antiauthority attitude” (Wang, 2018: 262). Visual representations of environmental degradation, including artistic creations, have long been a crucial part of activist repertoires (DeLuca, 2009) They perform various functions including stimulating public environmental concern, challenging people’s perceptions of environmental issues, and generating dialogue (Desai and Chalmers, 2007; Dunaway, 2008; Duncombe, 2016). In authoritarian political systems, where the risk of repression is heightened, this often happens in understated ways through activists who “tear tiny fissures” into hegemonic discourses (Gleiss, 2015)

Objectives

Conclusion