“Digging a Hole in China,” a new exhibition, will open at OCT Art Terminal (OCAT), featuring a range of works produced in contemporary China that connect to the land.

    The exhibition attempts to expose and analyze the discrepancies between this genre of work and “conventional” land art as understood in the Western-centric art historical context, thereby probing the potential of “land” as a cultural and political concept in artistic practice.

    While traditional Western land art seeks a conceptual and geographical nowhere, the works in “Digging a Hole in China” turn to a variety of issues such as the rights of ownership, management, and land use, and the transfer of land restrictions on these rights, weaving together a massive network that has already exceeded “land.”

    In “Planting Geese,” a video from 1994, artist Zheng Guogu directly employs soil and the practice of planting as a means of production, performing the symbolic and absurd act of “planting geese” to rethink the agricultural activity in the era of drastic changes in Chinese social structure. Lin Yilin’s “Whose Land? Whose Art?,” a site-related project made specifically for the LAND Foundation in Chiang Mai, Thailand, also testifies to a return to agriculture. Through the performance of building walls in paddy fields, the artist reconstitutes the relationship between culture and agriculture: the wall, as the separating line of “inside/outside,” prompts contemplation of land issues.

    The mixed-media work “Upstream” (2011) records the artist Xu Qu and a friend aimlessly rowing a dinghy upstream in a stinky creek that runs through the outskirts of Beijing, eventually arriving in the downtown area at the end of their trip. This random voyage — wherein the farther away from the urban center they are, the more enchanting the scenery they witness — reveals the inevitability of stratification in both the urban landscape and social structures.

    Dates: March 22-June 26

    Venue: OCAT, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Nanshan District (南山区华侨城恩平路创意文化园OCT当代艺术中心)

    Metro: Luobao Line, Qiaocheng East Station (侨城东站), Exit A(SD News)