Three Gorges Dam Migration

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Yun-Fei Ji studied both in Beijing and in the United States. 'Three Gorges Dam Migration' was printed at a publishing house in China from 500 carved woodblocks. The scroll addresses the destruction of thousands of villages and the dislocation of more than one million people as a result of the construction of the monumental Yangtze River dam, completed by the Chinese government in 2009. Ji uses a style and format that evoke traditional painting techniques. However, the dress and possessions of the tenderly-portrayed figures indicate that the events depicted in the ten-foot-long scroll are recent. Ji merges past with present and description with allegory—“floating weeds” serving as metaphors for displaced people. He describes his works as “meditations on the mountains and waters as the image of our own moral failures.”

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