Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017)
Bo Wang and Pan Lu’s split-screen video essay Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (2017) charts the relationship between its titular categories and British imperialism in China, especially the colonial possession of Hong Kong as a result of the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. It centres on the co...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University College Cork
2022-07-01
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| Series: | Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media |
| Online Access: | http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue23/HTML/ArticleCooper.html |
| _version_ | 1818006300140765184 |
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| author | Sarah Cooper |
| author_facet | Sarah Cooper |
| author_sort | Sarah Cooper |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Bo Wang and Pan Lu’s split-screen video essay Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (2017) charts the relationship between its titular categories and British imperialism in China, especially the colonial possession of Hong Kong as a result of the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. It centres on the collecting of plants from China for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, along with their documentation through botanical drawings by local Chinese artists. The video essay shows fleeting glimpses of several anonymous Chinese paintings, revealing in the process the dual sense of screening at the heart of the colonialist enterprise that involved showcasing the art while obscuring the artist. Wang and Lu, in contrast, return attention to the skills of the Chinese artists. Through their own dual vision, they challenge myriad hierarchical colonial images of human-plant relations. Drawing on Vilém Flusser’s work on the gesture of video and combining this with Walter D. Mignolo’s discussion of decolonial gesture, I show how Wang and Lu question through their own artistic gestures the distortions of the colonial gaze evident within dominant western image regimes. In this, their work speaks indirectly to recent writings in the environmental humanities and critical plant studies that valorise more lateral relations between humans and plants. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-14T04:59:17Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-ecf6892407d149eea5aa20819587d6b9 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2009-4078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-14T04:59:17Z |
| publishDate | 2022-07-01 |
| publisher | University College Cork |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media |
| spelling | doaj.art-ecf6892407d149eea5aa20819587d6b92022-12-22T02:11:04ZengUniversity College CorkAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media2009-40782022-07-01239311010.33178/alpha.23.05Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017)Sarah Cooper0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7385-6489Film Studies Department, King’s College LondonBo Wang and Pan Lu’s split-screen video essay Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (2017) charts the relationship between its titular categories and British imperialism in China, especially the colonial possession of Hong Kong as a result of the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. It centres on the collecting of plants from China for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, along with their documentation through botanical drawings by local Chinese artists. The video essay shows fleeting glimpses of several anonymous Chinese paintings, revealing in the process the dual sense of screening at the heart of the colonialist enterprise that involved showcasing the art while obscuring the artist. Wang and Lu, in contrast, return attention to the skills of the Chinese artists. Through their own dual vision, they challenge myriad hierarchical colonial images of human-plant relations. Drawing on Vilém Flusser’s work on the gesture of video and combining this with Walter D. Mignolo’s discussion of decolonial gesture, I show how Wang and Lu question through their own artistic gestures the distortions of the colonial gaze evident within dominant western image regimes. In this, their work speaks indirectly to recent writings in the environmental humanities and critical plant studies that valorise more lateral relations between humans and plants.http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue23/HTML/ArticleCooper.html |
| spellingShingle | Sarah Cooper Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media |
| title | Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) |
| title_full | Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) |
| title_fullStr | Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) |
| title_full_unstemmed | Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) |
| title_short | Decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (Bo Wang and Pan Lu, 2017) |
| title_sort | decolonial gesture and the screening of the botanical artist in miasma plants export paintings bo wang and pan lu 2017 |
| url | http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue23/HTML/ArticleCooper.html |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sarahcooper decolonialgestureandthescreeningofthebotanicalartistinmiasmaplantsexportpaintingsbowangandpanlu2017 |