China Dragon
A 12.8-metre painting whose body is the Yangtze and whose ground is 1,800 cells of living heritage.
- Year
- 2012 – ongoing
- Status
- Installation · Ongoing
- Form
- Painting · Installation
- Materials
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 1280 × 260 cm
The work
The dragon's form is the course of the Yangtze. Behind it, rendered like a satellite cloud map, lie the eleven provinces the river passes through — and within them 1,800 cells, each one a national intangible-heritage craft, festival, script or story from one of China's 56 peoples.
Begun in 2012, the painting is still being completed cell by cell. It is installed as a corridor work, read while walking.
Cultural source
The Yangtze basin; China's national intangible cultural heritage register.
The artist's transformation
A river becomes a body; a register becomes a landscape. The method — turning a body of knowledge into a single, walkable image — is available to commissions at the scale of a corridor, a lobby wall or a façade.
Making
Oil on stitched canvas panels; installed on a stone corridor with concealed lighting.
Scale & variation
Corridor, wall or façade commissions from 4 m upwards; content written for the place — a province, a company's supply chain, a city's crafts.
Placement
Corridors, hotel and headquarters lobbies, cultural venues.
Certificate & provenance
Every completed commission is delivered with a certificate of authenticity, a unique work ID, a cultural source note and a making record, and is entered into the atelier's private provenance archive.
Commission
Commission a work in this direction
Made to order, price on request; installations are project-based.
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