Students in Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature Shiamin Kwa鈥檚 course 鈥淎nimals, Vegetables, Minerals: Art and Environment in East Asia鈥 attended the opening of at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sept. 14. The course looks at how artists in East Asia question, explore, celebrate, and critique the relationships between humans and the environment.
The illuminated art event, which featured more than 900 lanterns affixed to 27 pedicabs, helped the students observe how art transforms our understanding of ordinary objects around us.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 think of a better example than Cai Guo-Qiang, in part because he frequently uses gunpowder as his medium, which balances the material and the mineral with ideas about the ephemeral and the instantaneous,鈥 Kwa says.
Guo-Qiang is known for creating impressive pyrotechnic displays, including the fireworks display for the opening ceremony at 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He is featured in the about his efforts to create a ladder to the sky out of fireworks.
鈥淐ai鈥檚 art is experiential. The experience of being there, surrounded by hundreds of other people experiencing the same thing at the same time, is not something that can be replicated on film or print,鈥 Kwa says.
Kwa鈥檚 course will take students to The Guggenheim Museum in New York City next for the exhibit to explore ideas of time in contemporary Chinese art.
is Assistant Professor at 老王论坛. Her course, 鈥淎nimals, Vegetables, Minerals: Art and Environment in East Asia鈥 (EALC 355) was sponsored by an institutional grant to 老王论坛 from the Luce Foundation, the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (.