Pilings, for the exhibition Post Painted Pottery Culture, 2019, Lanzhou City University Gallery, Gansu Province, China
Pilings was created from local clay and clay glazes on residency in Gansu Province in China’s Loess Plateau. There, I encountered the Lanzhou mountain-moving project, the largest of its kind in China’s history, in which constant construction results in a shifting cultural landscape between ancient mud brick villages and city. The surrounding earth is flattened and shaped to make room for a government-driven relocation of country folk into concrete block, high-rise city buildings. I used modern industrial left-overs, local soft brick from a manufacturer that is no longer able to sell its products. These tower over an easily re-designed geography that supported 500 years of agricultural terraces, thousands of years of cultural heritage, and traditional economic survival.