Yao Lu is an artist motivated by an impulse to represent the world as he preserves it, in grandeur and horror. Deeply committed to social and environmental issues, Lu believes in art’s ability to communicate, reframe, and debate urgent concerns to effectively usher change. Utilizing photography, one of the most objective of all art forms, he documents the external world in an honest appearance. What makes Lu’s work independent from propaganda is the undeniable artistic status of his work. Providing aesthetic work united with composition, color and lighting, symbolism and abstraction, he allows the viewer to look at the world with a fresh perspective.
At first glance the photographs by Yao Lu seem to be a lyrical representation of Chinese landscape paintings from the Song Dynasty. However, the shapes that suggest poetic cliffs, waterfalls, and foliage are not artistically rendered scenery. Lu’s landscapes are in fact landfills and rubble that have been covered with colorful netting to keep dust contained and to discourage thieves from constructions sites. The green covers are a common sight in Beijing today, becoming a contemporary symbol of China’s urgent urbanization that is altering the country. While many people view the construction drapes as an ugly invasion to China’s natural landscape, many see it as a progressive step into the future. Often, when cities do not have heavy construction areas it is a sign that a city lacks the confidence and vigor needed to enter the modernization process, thus lacking a future.
Yao Lu is an artist and photography professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Lu’s work, created from photographs taken by Lu and then reassembled using digital technology, seem far from the idyllic paintings and prints they resemble. From a distance, a lush paradise of green landscape behind a dreamy mist is exposed with an observed look of a harsh reality. Rubbish strewn banks, toxic fumes from factories and workers moving through contaminated locations subtly occupy Lu’s compositions. The images of Yao Lu exposes and conceals the truth of current China. Appearing to be a traditional Chinese landscape when in reality something else, the construction covers are a metaphor for exposure and reveal the harsh consequences of modernization.
Viewing the Waterfal from the Pine Rocks, 2007
“I chose traditional Chinese painting because there is an aesthetic and poetic sense, while garbage is destructive and undesirable. The undesirable comes from what was once good, so I wanted to restore their beauty and poetic sense, to express my memory of the past. I myself don’t like works full of blood and nonsense. I hope there is a concept of beauty in it. Even if it is criticism, it should be expressed in a language of praise…Photography can be understood in traditional ways: it can “record” many histories long before our own time, and situations many years ago. But photography is also very contemporary. It can reassemble and re-edit the things that we see in order to produce illusions that people see when they are in front of such photographic works. In these works, you see images that are both real and fictional.”
—Yao Lu
