Hui Huang

The Mirage

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains is the most famous Chinese traditional landscape painting. It was a tribute that came from a court painter nine hundred years ago. This painting was used to showcase the beautiful countryside under the empire's rule, which was always regarded as the symbol of vision, culture, and authority in both the past and the present.

This thesis includes two mixed videos: one is footage of Chinese smog pollution, shot on location. The other is an experimental video that aims to reframe the drawing A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. As a multiple channel video installation, the two videos will be arranged together. The reality of air pollution, as the inevitable byproduct of modernization, acts as a metaphor of China's modern social psychology. For the drawing video, the performer is seen as a ghost, following the appearance of the fog effect. The ghost moves from the right to the left in the beautiful world of the painting. Then the traditional landscape is covered by the smog and gradually fades to the white. At the end, the pollution footage and the drawing mirage dissolve together. Both the emblematic picture of Chinese beauty and the onset of the smog work together as a reflection of contemporary politics and authority juxtaposed with the past and fading virtues of natural beauty.